back to article Mighty 4 Terabyte whopper crashes down on the desktop

WD has released a 4TB desktop drive, an extension of its Caviar desktop range, now branded the WD Black. As with previous versions, it comes in a 3.5-inch form factor, rotates five platters at 7,200rpm, has a 64MB cache and a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. It carries over technologies like the dual-stage actuator head from the …

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  1. Lee Dowling Silver badge

    Wow, a disk that breaks another barrier in terms of filesystems / partitions, etc.

    Having been through several such limitations, including everything from 138Gb down to even just 1G being a problem, that's quite impressive in such a short time. Sure, you've always been able to RAID things to break them, and 2Tb was the last "real" barrier to anything, but that's still good progress there.

    Pity SSD's are stagnated around the 256Gb mark still.

    1. Tom 38
      Flame

      Wish the HD manufacturers could break through the barrier of reliability. You only have 4 choices for cheap spinning rust these days, WD, Seagate, Hitachi and Toshiba. WD and Hitachi have 2 year warranties, Toshiba and Seagate only offer 12 month warranties.

      12 months. Yes, you read it right. Seagate want you to buy a 4TB hard drive, but they don't think it will last much longer than 12 months. Mmm, my data feels safe with you Seagate.

      HD manufacturers have been gouging us on price for over a year, and now they produce shit product.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Tom 38

        Ah, the old 12 month warranty scam that is illegal in the EU where all goods must have a 2 year warranty. Even the great law unto itself, capple, had to comply in the end

        1. Tom 38

          Re: Tom 38

          The manufacturer has no obligation to obey EU rules on consumer sales. So whilst you are right, all goods sold to consumers in the EU have 2 years warranty, that warranty comes from the retailer.

          If the drive fails after the manufacturer warranty has expired, but before the EU mandated warranty expires, the manufacturer has no obligation to replace your broken drive (and will not), you would have to get a replacement via your retailer. Good luck with that.

      2. whome
        Pirate

        Warranty

        Seagate have been 2-5 year warranty on offical stocks so you need to look at your suppliers.

  2. Busby
    Boffin

    Am I missing something or it there a typo? 1.333gb per platter?

  3. Craig 12

    Heads up el reg storage fans! Amazon have 3TB drives under £100. I'm all for new products, but at that price, 4TB can wait a while...

  4. jai

    Hitachi

    Hitachi have had 4tb usb drives out for a while - they're about 180 quid on amazon, i've bought 3, although 1 did fail.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: Hitachi

      Ah - you too have encountered the curse of the Hitachi Deathstar ...

      1. Pastafarian

        Re: Hitachi

        Me too-I wouldnt touch Shitachi drives

    2. Stephen 11
      FAIL

      Re: Hitachi

      Sadly, that is better reliability than I have experienced with Seagate 3TB drives... I bought two, and by the time I finished returning, receiving replacement, and returning failed replacements too, I ended up with: 5 out of 6 drives failed. Two were DOA, while the other three each failed within a day of usage. On the fifth replacement, I gave up on Seagate and went for an alternative.

  5. Zilla
    FAIL

    Maths fail?

    >The WD Black 4TB GB hard drives, with capacities ranging from 500G to 4TB, are available through WD's channel now, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $339.00 and at £239.50 in the UK, a cost averaging out to around $10/GB - or a cent for a megabyte. ®

    The maths is wrong here. AT 10$ per /GB, the a 4TB drive would cost $40k. Using the figures in the article, a $339 drive with 4TB would mean a cost per GB to be $0.08/GB.

    And how long has it been since $10/gb? Surely about 15 years or more?

    1. jamesb2147

      Re: Maths fail?

      IDK how this got missed. Quality SSD's are <$1/GB these days (note: not the newest gen, necessarily). How did the author not catch that he was writing "or a cent for a megabyte?"

      It's Thanksgiving here in the US, perhaps the author is celebrating with a liquid Wild Turkey feast?

      1. Fatman

        Re: ... perhaps the author is celebrating with a liquid Wild Turkey feast?

        No, more likely, he is just giving us the "bird".

  6. Dr. Mouse

    "The WD Black 4TB GB hard drives, with capacities ranging from 500G to 4TB"

    I'd be a bit miffed if I ordered a WD Black 4TB and it had a capacity of 500GB! Are they saying it's "up to" 4TB?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone know...

    ...what the peak and average watts on this are please?

    Currently my home HP N40L has three WD Greens in it, and a Pico silent 120W PSU. Nice combo.

    If I'm going to upgrade, then I want to ensure that I don't overload my nice, quiet little system.

    Yes, that's 5.5TiB effective storage, at home, and I'm already thinking that I need more. As I sad, or is it a sign of the times?

    1. Shaun 2

      Re: Anyone know...

      Is that all? I've currently got 24 3TB drives spinning away in my loft. 60Tb of usable storage after RAID.

      And if you head over to the HardOCP forums, I've got a fairly tiny home server setup compared to some crazy people.........

      http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1033721843&postcount=7

      1. Lee Dowling Silver badge

        Re: Anyone know...

        They have far too much money, and far too much time, and far too much space in their house. ;-)

        In my (English) house loft, you'd be lucky to get a full tower case standing upright anywhere but the centre of the house in amongst all the rafters and it would die in a week from all the dust up there.

        Hell, I think twice about putting anything bigger than a laptop in the house because I know it'll stagnate and end up staying around forever, I won't use it to the full, and won't want to replace it with something smaller.

        A couple of PC's is usually the limit for most people, hence STB etc. projects are more common that 60Tb RAID's.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Anyone know...

      My Qnap has 5x 2TB drives in Raid 5. Good to know that I can now double up in a year or so when the price point crossess my capacity limit.

      1. Shaun 2

        Re: Anyone know...

        That's assuming the Qnap supports drives larger than 2TB.

  8. Graham Jordan

    Ouch on the price

    Ebuyer were selling 3tb drives for £110. Why would I pay an additional £120 for 1tb? Why not buy two 3tb drives?

    Fail

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: Ouch on the price

      Paying a signficant premium for the highest-capacity drive has been par for the course for years. And buying two drives isn't always an option - how many HTPCs, set-top boxes and other "living-room" pieces of HD-based kit sport more than a single drive bay?

  9. Ed Cooper
    FAIL

    Hopeless maths and confusion of GBs and TBs by the Reg.

    However I just got the calculator out, is it really 5p/GB now, wow.

    1. Annihilator
      Go

      Cheaper yet

      It's about 3p/GB if you avoid the 4TB premium drives and settle for 3TB instead. Scary when I consider getting excited for drives that broke the GB barrier for £100 back in the mid-90's.

  10. bomski
    Go

    warranty extended on black line

    seems you get 5 years with the Black line from Western Digital

    http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

  11. Ramon Zarat
    FAIL

    NOT 3 platters...

    Just called WD presales support and this thing has not 1.333Tb per platter but 1TB, so it's a 4 platters unit, not 3. The numbers of platter if not even disclosed in the specifications on WD website. The only clue is the picture that shows 3 platters, but that's for the 2TB and 1TB models, not the 4TB. That's how the register empirically establish a fact? By pictures only? Wow...

    PS: I have "irrefutable" pictures of UFO, the Yeti and the Lock Ness monster. You want to publish those as fact too?

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: NOT 3 platters...

      Sometimes, regrettably, cock ups do happen. The article has been amended. Thanks for the feedback.

      C.

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