WDC Announces 3TB My Passport Drives

http://www.legitreviews.com/wd-rede...w-3tb-capacity-model-available-for-199_164271

I hope we can start seeing some 3TB 2.5" HDDs soon for laptops

 

That's good to see.. Too bad that these new drives are 5200/5400rpm.. I'd really like some 7200rpm drives in capacities greater then 1TB and in 2.5" form factor!

 

Looks too thick, may be 15.5mm drive. Datasheet?

 

Datasheet: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/4178-706707.pdf
Info Page: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1490#Tab3
Dimensions: (21mm height, second one, based on data sheet)

Likely not 9.5mm

 

These are relatively fat compared to my 2TB Seagate Slim drives which are about 12mm thick.

Perhaps the main feature is the encryption, which I would be wary of using for longer term storage in case I forget the key.

John

 

That would be a good start it will put a dent in SSD laptop drives since they only go up to 1tb.

So what ...5400 or 7200 you should be glad they make a 3tb HDD for laptop. They could stop at 1tb and you be stuck there. I use 5400 with no problem better yet it saves on battery life as well. SSD on the other hand even saves more battery life but since they can't make price comparison to HDD on laptop SSD will have a hard time against a 3tb HDD as a 3tb SSD would be way to expensive for the masses to get just to get storage capacity and some laptop only come with one Drive bay for smaller laptop and some have swap the OD out for HDD but that to me is a asking for trouble setup.

 

The Seagate M9T is 2TB 9.5mm.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MPWYLHO/ref=s9_hps_ft_g147_ir02?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Most larger drives are 5400RPM, partially because the areal density is so high, and the larger caches help as well. Hoping we get 2TB 2.5" SSD's under $300 in the next year or so though.

 

We can pray but I think it will take more then a few years to happen...

 

StormJumper, one can always get dual msata to 2.5" (or ODD) adapter, and 2x1TB SSD. Damn expensive, but still almost the same capacity as M9T in single 2.5" slot.

 

Hmm why is having a 2tb drive in the odd bay trouble? If you can't have msata drives then it makes a lot of sense! I have run my odd external for years now and won't put it back inside....

 

So I'm guessing these are 1TB platter drives by WD, maybe perhaps we'll start to see a WD Blue 2TB 2.5" drive hit the market soon.

 

Unless it's 2TB at 7200 RPM it won't bring anything worthwhile over the existing Seagate M9T

 

I agree but there are some who just prefer WD hard drives over Seagate/Samsung hard drive regardless if it's 5400 RPM as long as the platter size is up to par with current Seagate/Samsung hard drive offerings (1TB platter).

Also worth mentioning OEM laptop manufactures tend prefer to use WD 5400 RPM drives in their laptops over other brands (maybe because WD's are usually cheaper sold in bulk?), so if WD can release a 2TB 5400 RPM hard drive close enough to what Seagate/Samsung has on the market right now it'll make for great competition pushing the need to get some higher capacity 7200 RPM notebook hard drive onto the market.

 

Why, because Backblaze's Seagate smear campaign convinced them that WD is more reliable?

 

Smear campaign? Data doesn't lie. Backblaze simply put numbers behind what I and many clients experienced with Seagate drives. And also backed up my belief that Hitachi drives were outstanding examples of what a HDD should be.

 

It's been proven time and again that Backblaze's methods are inherently flawed and not scientific at all. I'm done with this discussion.

 

Can you point/link to where it's 'proven'?

 

Running consumer drives in an enterprise fashion and reporting failures? That's like driving a Fiat hauling two tons behind it every day and saying the transmission failure rate is high.

Here's one of many articles:

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...clear-winners-and-losers-but-is-the-data-good

How much weight should consumers put on these results?
The Backblaze data is interesting, but it’s still shot through with problems that limit just how much weight I’m willing to put on it. Backblaze has redesigned its storage pods several times since it began gathering data in an attempt to limit vibration. The company has an admitted habit of sourcing the absolute cheapest drives it can find, which virtually guarantees that some of the products its stocking are going to be used or refurbished units. Its relentless focus on price above all other characteristics makes sense for its own operating environment, but the company’s use of consumer drives in enterprise-class deployments may create massive confounding variables.

It’s entirely possible that the cheapest HGST drives include superior vibration dampening technology to the cheapest Seagate drives. This isn’t a problem in consumer systems where there are rarely more than two physical discs, and those discs don’t usually spin at the same time. It could be a profound problem when 45 drives are stacked in an enclosure. Compounding this issue is the fact that Backblaze’s previous reports have acknowledged that different drives are put under different workloads, with apparently no regard for whether or not the stated workload matches the manufacturer’s intended ratings for the disk. Price, not workload, governs Backblaze’s decision process.

None of this is meant to imply that Backblaze’s work is wrong, as such, but it’s not at all clear how applicable it is to every day consumers and would-buy reliability hawks. We can be reasonably certain that Seagate’s 3TB and 4TB drives don’t fail at anything like 25-40% in the real world, or else the entire internet would be on fire with self-reported problems. We checked, and it isn’t. Tweaktown wrote an article discussing many of these issues last year; it’s worth a read if you want to explore them in more detail.