Apparently, Seagate will not only increase the maximum storage space, but it will also enable higher transfer speeds by means of the 6Gbps SAS interface. Known as the Constellation ES, the HDD will have a capacity of no less than 3TB and will come to replace the Baracuda ES. The latter spins at 7,200RPM and has up to 2TB of storage of its own.

In addition to the 3TB model, Seagate is supposedly also planning to make advancements on the 2.5-inch segment. Currently, the Baracuda ES 2.5-inch tops at 500GB. The Constellation will supposedly have 1TB, which means it will be the world’s highest capacity compact storage device. Furthermore, the report suggests that even a new, 2.5-inch Savvio (the famed 600GB unit with a rotary speed of 10,000RPM) will be upgraded to 750GB.

The Constellation ES 3TB device should show up later this year, whereas the 2.5-inch, 1TB unit is expected to debut around the middle of 2010. Unfortunately, there is no knowing when the Savvio will come out. Of course, it should be noted that WD also intends to unleash its own 3TB unit, although it is unclear whether it will also be meant for the enterprise or if it will cater to consumer needs.

We reported about is last week already, yet now they are official. Western Digital have updated their high-performance VelociRaptor hard-drive range with another, even larger SATA 6 Gb/s model. The WD VelociRaptor 600GB 6Gb/s spins at 10,000rpm and has a whopping 32MB cache, and the company reckon it’s up to 15-percent faster than the previous generation of drive. That’s despite not using any more power than its predecessor required.

WD reckon likely applications for the new drive – which also has a 450GB sibling – will include blade servers, workstations and rack servers, but a fair few are also likely to find their way into gaming machines. The Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB 6 Gb/s SATA HDD should be available later this quarter, priced at $329.

LAKE FOREST, Calif., April 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC) announced today that it is now shipping WD VelociRaptor® 450 GB and 600 GB hard drives, the next generation of its 10,000 RPM SATA family of hard drives. The new WD VelociRaptor hard drive is designed for blade servers, high-performance PCs, Mac® computers, professional workstations, as well as 1U and 2U rack servers that require a balance of high performance and capacity. As the only 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive on the market today, and a favorite amongst enthusiast and enterprise groups, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive now comes packed with twice the capacity and up to 15% performance increase over the previous generation.

The most popular hard drive for high-performance enthusiasts who demand the ultimate SATA drive, the WD VelociRaptor hard drive is built with enterprise-class mechanics that provide 24×7 durability under high-performance demands and packs up to 600 GB of capacity into a 2.5-inch enterprise form factor. The WD VelociRaptor drive is also available in the IcePack™ enclosure, a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink – a factory customization that fits the drive into a standard 3.5-inch system bay and keeps this powerful drive extra cool when installed in a high-performance desktop chassis and 3.5-inch HDD form factor enterprise chassis.

* Killer speed – SATA 6 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache enhance the next generation 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor making it up to 15% faster than the award-winning previous generation.

* Monstrous capacity – WD VelociRaptor SATA drives are available in capacities up to 600 GB, double the capacity of the previous generation.

* Rock-solid reliability – Designed and manufactured to mission-critical enterprise-class standards to provide enterprise reliability in high duty cycle environments. With 1.4 million hours MTBF, these drives have the highest available reliability rating on a high capacity SATA drive.

* Ultra-cool operation – Consumes no more power than the previous generation WD VelociRaptor while offering double the capacity and higher performance.

* IcePack mounting frame – The 2.5-inch WD VelociRaptor is enclosed in a backplane-ready 3.5-inch enterprise-class mounting frame with a built-in heat sink that keeps this powerful little drive extra cool when installed in high-performance desktop chassis.

* Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF™) – Optimizes operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis.

* NoTouch™ ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

* Environmentally conscious – In addition to being ROHS compliant, this generation of WD VelociRaptor is also a halogen-free design.

Price and Availability
WD VelociRaptor (model WD4500HLHX and WD6000HLHX – 3.5-inch version with IcePack) hard drives are available now at select distributors and resellers. WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drives (model WD4500BLHX and WD6000BLHX) are under evaluation with OEM customers and will be available through select commercial distributors within this quarter. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD VelociRaptor 450 GB (model WD4500HLHX) is $299 USD and the 600 GB (model WD6000HLHX) is $329 USD.

In a leaked PDF file it became apparent that WD is working on a new series VelociRaptor HDDs. Looks like WD is increasing capacity towards 450 and 600 GB models. The new VelociRaptor will get an extension in their name called VR200M. The platters will be 200 GB each, rotating at 10.000 RPM. Power consumption will roughly be 6.5 Watt and in standby 0.7 Watt.

The new VelociRaptor VR200M promises sustained read speeds of 145MB/s. Seek times will be 3,6 ms during read and 4,2 ms during write. Good news is also that the new HDDs will get a SATA 6-Gbps connector and 32MB cache.

There is no word yet on pricing or availability.

Western Digital announced today the debut of its new WD S25 2.5-inch traditional hard drive, featuring a SAS interface.

Designed for the traditional enterprise market segment, the new drive is the company’s first SAS-based product, offering an alternative for users looking for a high-performance storage solution. At the same time, it is aimed at mission-critical enterprise server and enterprise storage applications, such as data centers and large data arrays.

“Our entry into the traditional-enterprise market continues the strategic expansion and diversification of WD’s broad market and product portfolio, and significantly increases our addressable revenue opportunity,” said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. “As with our previous market expansion and diversification efforts, WD will approach the traditional enterprise space with the same focus on quality, customer service, technology and value that has earned us strong positions in every market we serve.”

According to the Lake Forest, California-based storage vendor, the WD S25 drive is capable of delivering a high level of performance, thanks to the adoption of the 3Gb/s and 6GB/s SAS interfaces. This enables the drive to deliver sustained sequential data rate of 128 MB/s. Furthermore, it can provide as much as 300GB of storage space and comes with a rated 10,000 RPM platter speed.

“We are thrilled to launch a mission-critical-class hard drive to these high-end OEM customers,” said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD’s enterprise storage solutions business unit. “This new family of SAS products adds to our existing large capacity SATA near-line enterprise product portfolio. This first product is the foundation upon which we will expand into the previously untapped traditional enterprise market.”

The drive is already available to select OEMs, and is shipping to the two largest OEMs in the industry, as Western Digital informs.

Lake Forest bit fisherman Western Digital has now rolled out another hard drive with the almost magical capacity of 2TB.

Part of the AV-GP family, which is aimed towards use in set top boxes, DVD recorders, and mainstream surveillance systems, the new drive has a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, 32MB of buffer, the SilkStream feature to provide smooth, continuous digital video playback of up to 12 simultaneous HD streams, and it makes use of GreenPower technology in order to have a power consumption up to 40% lower than that of similar HDDs.

“Our consumer electronics customers require hard drives that consume less power, generate less heat, and operate quietly,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups. “Audio and video recording applications, such as DVRs, media servers, media centers, and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24×7 operation from hard drives. Our drives meet the demanding requirements of these markets including higher reliability, universal compatibility, low power consumption and the ability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams.”

The WD20EVDS 2TB drive is now shipping and has a recommended price tag of $299.

Western Digital Corp. today expanded its enterprise family of hard drives to include the next-generation 2 TB capacity, the largest and only 2 TB enterprise-class hard drive shipping today. Combining industry-leading 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density, WD RE4-GP hard drives yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.

WD’s GreenPower technology platform is the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. These drives reduce average drive power consumption by up to 50 percent over currently available competitors’ drives and are ultra-cool and quiet, all while delivering solid performance.

The new WD RE4-GP 2 TB hard drive provides enterprise-class reliability for storage-hungry applications, such as cloud-computing infrastructure, large-scale data centers, data archive and tape replacement systems, commercial video surveillance and digital video editing houses, with an energy- and money-saving solution that combats the challenges facing the enterprise IT sector — limited available drive slots, maximum capacity required, and limited power and budget. Addressing the growing high-capacity enterprise market, WD RE4-GP 2 TB drives are reliability-rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF (mean time before failure) in high duty cycle environments.

Exclusive Intelligent Drive Technology
WD RE4-GP hard drives with GreenPower technology deliver exceptional power conservation, run ultra-cool and quiet, while providing solid performance. Following are several technologies responsible for the performance enhancements:

* Faster – 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density yield twice the processing power resulting in as   much as a 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.

* Greener – Improvements in our power-conserving technologies — IntelliSeek, IntelliPark, and IntelliPower – deliver up to an average 25 percent reduction in power consumption over our previous generation of WD RE-GP drive.

* Improved Rotary Vibration Tolerance – Advanced mechanical and servo control optimization along with system characterization and validation enable rock solid performance under extreme vibration conditions, with negligible impact to performance, substantially more robust than the previous generation, making this drive ideal for the most industrial IT applications

* Active Power Management – WD drives with GreenPower technology monitor work load and automatically invoke idle mode whenever possible to further reduce unnecessary power consumption by up to an additional 40 percent. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second, providing seamless power management between the drive and the host controller.

* StableTrac – Secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.

* RAID-specific Time-limited Error Recovery (TLER) – Pioneered by WD, this feature prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.

* Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) – This second generation WD RE-GP model increased rotational frequencies up to 1500 Hz, therefore optimizing operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems such as rack mounted servers or in systems deployed at industrial type locations.

Availability and Pricing The WD RE4-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD2002FYPS) is available from select e-tailers and distributors. MSRP is $329.00 (U.S.). The WD RE4-GP 2 TB will also be shown by WD partners AMCC (booth number SL13007) and Promise (booth number SL12008) at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV.

Western Digital is feeling the heat and has made an entry into the SSD market by acquiring SiliconSystems for $65 million in cash. This company supplies SSDs for the embedded systems market and will now be known as the WD Solid-Stage Storage business unit.

Press-release: Since its inception in 2002, SiliconSystems has sold millions of SiliconDrive® products to meet the high performance, high reliability and multi-year product lifecycle demands of the network-communications, industrial, embedded-computing, medical, military and aerospace markets. These markets accounted for approximately one third of worldwide solid-state drive revenues in 2008. SiliconSystems’ product portfolio includes solid-state drives with SATA, EIDE, PC Card, USB and CF interfaces in 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, CF and other form factors. SiliconSystems has developed extensive intellectual property to address the stringent embedded systems market requirements to ensure data integrity, eliminate unscheduled downtime, protect application data and software and provide for data security and protection through its patented and patent-pending PowerArmor®, SiSMART®, SolidStor® and SiSecure™ technologies.

WD’s storage industry leadership, worldwide infrastructure, and technical and financial resources will enable further growth in SiliconSystems’ existing markets and customer relationships. SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will provide additional building blocks for future products to address emerging opportunities in WD’s existing markets.

“We are delighted to have the SiliconSystems team join WD,” said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. “The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems’ existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established $400 million market for embedded solid-state drives. SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD’s solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements.”

Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD’s existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units.

“WD’s strong balance sheet, sales reach, and operations and logistics capabilities will allow us to greatly accelerate our penetration of our existing markets, while combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD’s existing customer base,” said Michael Hajeck, a founder and CEO of SiliconSystems, now senior vice president and general manager of WD’s Solid-State Storage business unit. “We are extremely excited to be joining WD and enabling an even stronger future for our talented team.”

Western Digital has introduced the WD ShareSpace network storage system, these units are available with up to 8TB of storage capacity.

Responding to small-business customers’ needs for increased shared storage, WD incorporated its industry-first 2 terabyte WD Caviar® Green™ drive into WD ShareSpace’s flexible four-bay design, creating a massive 8 TBs of storage in a small footprint.

The included WD Anywhere Backup™ software provides automatic and continuous protection for the valuable data from every PC and Mac on the network.

To speed up both backup and storage, WD improved WD ShareSpace’s read and write speeds up to 30 percent for large media files. Current WD ShareSpace owners may download the new firmware update (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdsharespace/) to experience these performance improvements.

Twenty-six percent of broadband households worldwide find it very appealing to be able to play PC-stored content on their TV, and the majority of consumers buying network storage cite as important the ability to serve content to other devices (58 percent), according to a recent Parks Associates studies (Aug. 2008).

To meet the needs of digital media enthusiasts, WD added a DLNA Certified media server to the WD ShareSpace system, making it easy to stream music, photos and videos to popular DLNA-Certified devices including Windows® Vista® PCs, Playstation®3, and Xbox 360®. The previously included iTunes® Music Server lets anyone on the network stream the music collection on WD ShareSpace to any PC or Mac running iTunes.

WD ShareSpace network storage systems also are offered in capacities of 2 TB and 4 TB. MSRP for the WD ShareSpace storage system with 8 TB is $1,699.99 USD.