Way back in 2008, we reported that Seagate was lowering warranties of its hard disk drives from 5 years to 3. This trend quickly spread throughout the HDD industry and unsurprisingly, wasn't something that customers were too happy about. Now, Western Digital is lowering the warranty on some of its HDD lines from 3 years to a mere 2, with the affected lines being the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue. Lines not affected are the Caviar Black, Scorpio Black, A/V drives and externals. Also, as the stock feeds through the channel, there will be a transition period where the same model in a store will have either a 2 or 3 year warranty, depending on its serial number, which can be checked on WD's support site. It will be interesting to see if retailers will clearly differentiate to customers which drives have which warranty, as it might be rather convenient for them not to.

Channel partners have received a letter from SelectWD about this:

Western Digital today announced that its newest generation of the popular My Book Studio external hard drives are designed for use with Mac computers and Apple Time Machine. Now available with a 3 TB storage capacity, the new design features a brushed aluminum casing to match the appearance of a Mac computer, and also serves to keep the drive cool while in use. The aluminum exterior, combined with its WD Caviar Green drives, eliminates the need for an internal fan to reduce drive noise and extend the life of the drive. Although formatted for Mac computers, the My Book Studio external hard drives can also be reformatted for PCs.

The My Book Studio external hard drive includes all the features and benefits that have made it one of the favorites among creative professionals and Mac computer enthusiasts, including its fast and flexible FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, user-controlled automatic backup software and drive management, password protection and hardware encryption. Shipping in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB, the My Book Studio drive includes the WD Caviar Green series of internal hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology.

WD today announced that the company is shipping the world's largest capacity SATA hard drive. As the latest addition to its WD Caviar Green family of SATA hard drives, the new hard drives deliver up to a massive 3 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity on a single drive. WD is leading the industry in capacity for SATA hard drives by utilizing 750 GB-per-platter areal density and Advanced Format (AF) technology.

WD Caviar Green drives are an eco-friendly storage solution with WD GreenPower Technology, which reduces power consumption by enabling lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and decreases acoustical noise for quiet operation. The WD Caviar Green 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives are designed for use as secondary external storage and next-generation PC storage in 64-bit based systems.

QNAP Systems, Inc. is pleased to announce Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB (WD20EADS) SATA hard drive is now supported by the entire TS-109/ 209/ 409/ 509/ 439/ 639/ 809 /809U-RP and the latest TS-119/ 219 Turbo NAS series.

'The latest 2TB Caviar Green hard drives from Western Digital consume up to 70% less power than two 1TB hard drives and are relatively quiet in operation. These hard drives are ideal for customers requiring higher capacities and the right balance of energy conservation and ensured reliability. The maximum capacity can be extended up to a total of 16TB now on a TS-809 or 809U-RP' says Andy Chuo, Product Manager from QNAP. The complete HDD compatibility list is available here.

WD today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive - the world's highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WD's popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD Caviar Green hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD's industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2TB.

Western Digital (WD), seems to have matched rival Seagate's per-platter storage density mark, with its 500GB platter technology. What's more, WD is planning to release a quad-platter hard drive totaling two terabytes of unformatted capacity before Seagate could achieve that feat with its Barracuda 7200.12 series. Seagate was the first to come out with a 1.5TB hard drive with four 375GB platters.

The 2TB hard drive by WD (model: WD20EADS) lists under the company's Caviar Green series. It makes use of a 32 MB cache. Its access time is rated at 8.9ms, though its spindle speed is variable, between 5400 and 7200 rpm. The variable speed brings in power savings. It uses the standard SATA II interface. European online retailer Czech Computer started listing the drive, though its price isn't announced just as yet.