Western Digital have revamped their My Book range and added three new editions, the Essential, Home and Office. Each edition sports units ranging in capacity from 320 GB up to 1 TB and is aimed at specific users. The Essential Edition is a no nonsense plain jane storage range providing USB 2.0 connectivity. The Home Edition is aimed at the home user who is looking at something a bit more fancy with triple connectivity options of USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and eSATA plus automatic backup functionality. Whilst the Office Edition despite only sporting USB 2.0 connectivity not only provides the auto backup functionality but allows secure shared file access to the unit across a network. The Home and Office Editions also sport a capacity gauge for those of you who like that sort of thing ;)

All the drives are housed in similar sized boxes at 166 x 137 x 54mm and weigh 1.15 kg regardless of unit capacity with USB 2.0 connectivity providing the usual 480 Mbps. The Home Edition FireWire 400 gives users 400 Mbps with the eSATA connection pumping out 3Gbps.

The units are priced as follows - Essential Edition from US$130 (320 GB) to US$350 (1 TB), Home Edition from US$170 (320 GB) to US$380 (1 TB) and Office Edition from US$170 (320 GB) to US$380 (1 TB).

So there’s nothing new in terms of numbers but ther are a few extra bells and whistles that may just tempt you to take the plunge.

Source: PRNewsWire

An article has appeared on the American Physical Society website concerning the spin precession of magnetic material. When a hard drive is written to the data is stored as a series of zeroes and ones, which is indicated by the polarity of an area of the drive’s magnetic surface, i.e. the area is either postively or negatively charged. To change the polarity and thus the data bit then the spin direction of the atoms in the magnetic area is changed. It was believed that this change in direction was straight-forward and almost instantaneous during a write process.

However a bofffin at the University of California, Joshua Deutsch, along with Andreas Berger of Hitachi have published the article on the APS website that suggests that the change in rotational direction of the atoms is not as straightforward as first believed. The guys have found that the atoms undergo spin precession for a few nanoseconds as they change direction. In densely packed magnetic surfaces this could cause an ‘avanlache’ effect where neighbouring atoms change their rotational direction as well. Thus the neighbouring data bits becomes corrupted as the magnetic areas around have their polarity changed due to this spin precession.

Fortunately in current hard drives a damping effect occurs which generally prevents this corruption from occurring. However as drive spin speeds increase (another factor in causing atom spin precession) and the magnetic areas become smaller to increase drive capacity the ‘avalanche’ effect will become more of a problem. It’s not all doom and gloom for drive manufacturers as Deutsch and Berger suggest that improving the magnetic surface of drives would increase the damping effect and therefore offset the negative influences.

On that note, Western Digtal have just announced the latest addition to their MyBook hard drive range, a ‘huge’ 2TB external storage unit to be priced at around US$750.

Source: ComputerWorld

On Monday Western Digital announced the launch of a new range of 3.5 inch hard drives that consume up to 40% less power than a standard drive. Entitled GreenPower the new drives range in size from 320 GB to 1 TB with the first of the range to be the 1 TB Caviar GP shipping in July.

According to the blurb from WD

By WD estimates, in certain applications, the new GreenPower platform can save greater than $10 per drive per year in electricity costs. For example, a data center with 10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons - the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road for a year.

However a data center may be more concerned with performance than power savings and/or the environment, but we shall see. Certainly for the individual user the GreenPower range may give them that planet-saving feel-good effect when the drive whirrs into action.

Source: Western Digital

I always thought the world was becoming a smaller place, but apparently I’m wrong as according to the latest press release from WD

WD MAKES THE WORLD A BIGGER PLACE WITH 1.5 TB AND 750 GB MY BOOK™ WORLD™ SHARED STORAGE APPLIANCES

The new drives are part of their My Book range, whose features include a visible capacity gauge, three interfaces (FireWire 400 & 800, USB 2.0), optional data mirroring at reduced capacity, and WD’s own backup software.

The MyBook series now spans a price range of US$270 to US$699, with presumably the 699 tag reserved for the 1.5 TB big boy. I was able to find the Maxtor OneTouch 1.5TB available for under $500 at ANTOnline but I would imagine that retailers would be offering the WD 1.5 TB at less than the $699 WD price. Happy data dumping!

With Hitachi announcing their portable 250 GB this week, Western Digital bounce back and announce their own 250 GB portable, slip in your pocket, hard drive. As noted over at DailyTech although the WD 250GB offering rocks in at US$50 under the Hitachi price, it is a good inch longer than the Hitachi and most importantly doesn’t have the ‘go faster’ stripe down the side ;)

So as usual you pay for what you get, although with a saving of US$50 I’d be happy with a larger option, I’ll just have to buy trousers with extra large pockets!

The Scorpio 250GB is the latest 2.5 inch hard drive offering from Western Digital. The drive uses WD’s WhisperDrive technology to optimise seek time thus improving power consumption - also a bonus for laptop users - and reduce drive noise. The drive also encorporates WD’s ShockGuard tech to protect the drive and platters from damage.

From the specs on the product page, it is certainly one of the largest capacity and fastest 2.5 inch SATA HDs around boasting a whopping 250GB and an external transfer rate of 600 Mbps. The MSRP for this puppy is US$199, not cheap but that’s what you pay for speed and size.

Source: Legit Reviews