Western Digital Intros Caviar Blue HDDs with SATA 6 Gb/s Interface

btarunr · Dec 9, 2010

Western Digital (WD) announced a new line of Caviar Blue line of 3.5" SATA hard drives that make use of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Caviar Blue strikes a balance between performance and energy efficiency, it's a middle-ground between the performance-oriented Caviar Black, and energy efficiency-oriented Caviar Green. The drive uses a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. The new lineup of Caviar Blue drives also support 4K sectors, also known as Advanced Format. The drives are available in capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB, and 500 GB, which feature 16 MB cache; 750 GB and 1 TB, which feature 32 MB cache. Fairly standard pricing which are on par with prices of existing price per gigabyte of Caviar Blue drives, can be expected.

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blu3flannel · Dec 9, 2010

Any word of increased speeds?

Mussels · Dec 9, 2010

to those who dont know, the 4K sectors make these drives unsuitable for use in XP. (make sure you read the second page)

these drives are the future, but incompatibilities arise because of it.

XP and older wont like them and will need to be aligned via special software.

Ghosting/cloning partitions will also need the same software, unless they're updated to support 4K sectors.

Linux and Mac OSX are not effected, funnily enough.

Salsoolo · Dec 9, 2010

non of the Caviar Black drives are 4k right?

Batou1986 · Dec 9, 2010

Mussels said:
to those who dont know, the 4K sectors make these drives unsuitable for use in XP. (make sure you read the second page)

these drives are the future, but incompatibilities arise because of it.

XP and older wont like them and will need to be aligned via special software.

Ghosting/cloning partitions will also need the same software, unless they're updated to support 4K sectors.

Linux and Mac OSX are not effected, funnily enough.

very interesting i noticed on the second page they mentioned USB with multiple partitions that would be nice

LAN_deRf_HA · Dec 11, 2010

There's already a line of sata 6 blues on newegg. So really all that's new is the 4k, either that or this announcement is months late.

newtekie1 · Dec 11, 2010

SATA 6.0Gb/s is a completely waste on any mechanical drive, and nothing more than a marketting gimmick.:shadedshu

Just like SATA 3.0Gb/s, in fact mechanical drives have only very recently started to surpass SATA 1.5Gb/s bandwidth...

Sapientwolf · Dec 12, 2010

newtekie1 said:
SATA 6.0Gb/s is a completely waste on any mechanical drive, and nothing more than a marketting gimmick.:shadedshu

Just like SATA 3.0Gb/s, in fact mechanical drives have only very recently started to surpass SATA 1.5Gb/s bandwidth...

Why not implement it anyway? It's not bringing up the costs of the drive in any way. I'm sure the drive may get up there in very small bursts when it's accessing cached data. Also SATA 3 offers more than just bandwidth, it also improves upon Native Command Queuing and power management.

It would be stupid for a company not to add improvements to their drives, even if it is a small one. The consumer is only winning here.

qubit · Dec 12, 2010

newtekie1 said:
SATA 6.0Gb/s is a completely waste on any mechanical drive, and nothing more than a marketting gimmick.:shadedshu

Just like SATA 3.0Gb/s, in fact mechanical drives have only very recently started to surpass SATA 1.5Gb/s bandwidth...

Damn, you beat me to it. lol :toast:

In fact, they're not even the fastest drives in the range, which are the Caviar Blacks, for those unfamiliar with WD.

newtekie1 · Dec 12, 2010

Sapientwolf said:
Why not implement it anyway? It's not bringing up the costs of the drive in any way. I'm sure the drive may get up there in very small bursts when it's accessing cached data. Also SATA 3 offers more than just bandwidth, it also improves upon Native Command Queuing and power management.

It would be stupid for a company not to add improvements to their drives, even if it is a small one. The consumer is only winning here.

It does add cost to the drive, the SATA 6.0Gb/s controllers are more expensive for the drives, so the drives cost more to manufacture.

And SATA 6.0Gb/s is all about bandwidth, NCQ and power management stays pretty much unchanged, the minor changes made in SATA 6.0Gb/s won't be noticeable.

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Western Digital Intros Caviar Blue HDDs with SATA 6 Gb/s Interface

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