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Western Digital gets to 334GB per plater about a year after Samsung

When hard drive manufactures move to platters with higher storage densities, it is a good thing all around -- the higher the storage density for the platters, the fewer platters are needed to reach the same capacity compared to lower density platters.

That means less power is needed and less moving parts are required to make the drive operate. Impress is reporting that Western Digital has quietly updated its Caviar GP line of drives in Asia with a platter density of 334GB in the 1TB capacity drive. Other features of the drive remain the same with a 16MB cache.

Western Digital isn’t alone in moving to 334GB per platter. This week Samsung announced a new 1TB EcoGreen hard drive aimed at surveillance and audio/video applications that use platters of 334GB in size.

Samsung claims that the EcoGreen F1 drive provides a 15% power savings compared to other low power 1TB drives and a full 50% power savings compared to traditional 1TB drives often spinning at 7200RPM. Samsung’s EcoGreen F1 spins at 5400 RPM and uses the 3Gbps SATA interface. Availability for the Samsung drive is set for Q2 2008 at $199.

In January 2008 Western Digital introduced the single platter 320GB HDD, which was its highest density platter. Samsung was first to ship a 334GB per platter 1TB drive in June of 2007.

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4.3% is news worthy
By LostInLine on 5/23/2008 12:50:33 PM , Rating: 3
how much performance can you possibly get moving from 320 to 334?

Did i miss something?




RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By jonmcc33 on 5/23/2008 12:55:28 PM , Rating: 5
Don't you know that benchmarks mean everything? That's why everyone overclocks their CPU and video card. Even if you only get an extra 30MHz that's an extra 20 3DMark points and that makes your computer faster! 3DMark and PCMark rules! /sarcasm


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By ScottLuebke on 5/24/2008 2:57:51 AM , Rating: 2
Never heard anything more true. Preach it!


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By masher2 (blog) on 5/23/2008 1:02:25 PM , Rating: 5
WD went to 320TB a couple months back for some other drives, but afaik the 1TB drive was still using 250GB platters.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By LostInLine on 5/23/2008 4:26:04 PM , Rating: 2
ok, it was my understanding (and i could be wrong) that WD was using the 320G platters but limited the drive to 1TB. Using the higher aerial density platter mostly offset the slower 5400rpm.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By KernD on 5/23/2008 6:44:43 PM , Rating: 2
It's not running at 5400rpm, it's a 7200 like the other WD regular drives. The 5400rpm speed stated in the article is about a Samsung drive.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By yonzie on 5/24/2008 1:42:56 PM , Rating: 2
Oh, but it is. They just don't want to admit it since "noone" would buy it due to it being inferior (lower power consumption notwithstanding). A bit like the Ghz myth.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By KernD on 5/24/08, Rating: 0
RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By KernD on 5/24/2008 2:23:07 PM , Rating: 1
The GP line is 5400-7200 RPM but all that means is it varies between both, to reduce power, heat and noise. But if you look at the review at AnandTech, with the 4 plater version I think, it still does a good job. When the demand is there it will run at 7200.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By Lezmaka on 5/24/2008 2:31:23 PM , Rating: 4
http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0%2C1
quote:
For those that must know, WD admits "sub-6000 RPM operation" for the 1-TB Caviar GP


http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0%2C2
quote:
The GP turns in a measured access time of 15.0 ms, a score that lags the 7200-RPM WD7500AAKS by a significant margin. The WD7500AAKS's measured seek time when accounting for 4.2 ms of 7200 RPM latency is 9.5 ms....

Assuming the GP also shares such a seek time, that leaves us with 15 ms [measured access time] minus 9.5 ms [assumed seek time] which equals 5.5 ms, almost exactly the rotational latency associated with a 5400 RPM spindle speed.

quote:
The Caviar GP's outer-zone score clocks in at 79.8 MB/sec and as a result lags the older, less dense WD7500AAKS by 21%. Assuming similar sector-per-track zone configurations, a 7200 RPM drive would boast a 33% advantage over a 5400 RPM unit. The difference between the GP and the WD7500AAKS is less than that, likely of course due to a density advantage on the GP's part. Nevertheless, this second low-level diagnostic again suggests a 5400 RPM spindle speed.


But don't let any of that take away from your supreme confidence that it's a 7200 rpm drive...


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By KernD on 5/24/08, Rating: -1
RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By Ringold on 5/25/2008 5:23:06 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
but the benchmark did give good result compared to the Seagate and Deskstar 1TB drive,


If by "good result" you mean "it sucked", then I agree..

Take just the FarCry test;
Deskstar: 877
WD Caviar GP: 671

The Deskstar is about 30% faster.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By rs2 on 5/25/2008 6:20:53 PM , Rating: 3
320 TB? Now that would be impressive.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By Lonyo on 5/23/2008 1:03:16 PM , Rating: 2
Um, 3x3320 = 960GB. Current 1TB drives are made up of 4 platters, meaning you're only using 250GB of the 320GB available, or just different platters which have 250GB available, I'm not exactly sure how they work it.
The move to 334GB platters means 1TB drives become 3 platter drives instead of 4, reducing power requirements, and meaning there are increased densities (1TB split over 3 platters gives you greater density than 1TB split over 4).

It's more than "oh the biggest platters are now 4.3% larger", it's "now we have 3 platter 1TB drives with up to 25% increase in density per platter".


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By rninneman on 5/23/08, Rating: -1
RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By mcnabney on 5/23/2008 10:18:25 PM , Rating: 2
Re-read the post you responded to.

Th WDs were 320GB per platter, which didn't get them to the 1TB level since three of them would be 960. Now that they moved from 320 to 340 they can get to 1TB with a couple to spare. And in theory be faster due to higher densities.


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By Lezmaka on 5/24/2008 2:44:24 PM , Rating: 5
Um, no.

The original 1TB GP drive used 4 250GB platters. WD came out with a single-platter 320GB drive in February (see http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=32... ), then a two-platter 640GB drive in March (see http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=32... )
From that second link:
quote:
While the WD 640GB drive does not fit in with the industry-standard capacity sizes, we fully understand Western Digital's rationale behind this move. This allows WD to use economies of scale with their new 320GB per-platter design and allows a natural progression up to the 1TB~1.3TB level by simply increasing platter count for each logical step. Of course, unless you use sub-prime mortgage mathematics, three 320GB platters only equals 960GB of capacity. WD engineering told us they can easily stretch the areal density of the current platter design to get to the magical 1TB capacity to match their competitors


RE: 4.3% is news worthy
By nirolf on 5/23/2008 1:04:01 PM , Rating: 2
From what I remember current GP drives use 4 x 250 GB platters.


Even more importantly
By masher2 (blog) on 5/23/2008 12:37:29 PM , Rating: 5
> "That means less power is needed and less moving parts are required to make the drive operate"

An even larger factor is that a higher areal density translates into higher drive performance, as it means more bits are moving past the head each second.




RE: Even more importantly
By Oregonian2 on 5/23/2008 1:59:50 PM , Rating: 1
Unless it was done by squeezing in more tracks where each track is of the same capacity.