Western Digital announce larger HDD by 2010

October 18th, 2007

Western Digital With the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war remaining quiet for the moment, which is surprising as the season of goodwill to all manufacturers is not that far away, the hard drive boys have picked up their swords and are preparing to do battle. Not long after Hitachi announced their intention to be producing 4 TB 3.5 inch hard drives by 2011, Western Digital have picked up the challenge and announced they’ll be producing 3 TB models by 2010. Here’s the techie blurb from WD

Following WD’s growing investments in technology the past five years, the company achieved 520 Gb/in2 using its own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) head technology. This level of density produces a 3.5-inch hard drive storing 640 GB-per-platter and single hard drive capacities as large as 3 TB. Based on the industry’s current density growth rate of more than 40 percent per year, those capacities are expected to be available in the 2010 timeframe.

The WD announcement was made at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference in Tokyo after it was demoed earlier in California and whilst it does smack of a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ mentality or more accurately ‘mine’s earlier than yours’ it has to be good news for the consumer, doesn’t it?

At least it’s good to see a couple of hardware manufacturers squaring off in the storage arena, whilst all is quiet on the hi-def front.

Source: Western Digital PR