WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

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WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

Post by Apoptosis »

WD MAXIMIZES TWO-PLATTER 3.5-INCH HARD DRIVES TO 640 GB CAPACITY POINT

Company Ships in Volume New Capacity Sweet Spot
LAKE FOREST, CALIF. – Mar. 19, 2008 – WD® (NYSE: WDC) announced today that it is now shipping in volume its WD Caviar® SE16 640 GB 3.5-inch hard drives based on 320 GB-per-platter technology -- a platform that it has been shipping since January 2008 and is serving as the foundation of all of the company's 3.5-inch drive families.

Ideal for data-intensive applications, high-performance computing and multimedia systems, the WD Caviar SE16 640 GB drives deliver high performance with their extreme areal density, 3 Gb/s transfer rate, and Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Its two-platter design promotes cool, quiet operation in a high-capacity drive.

"The 640 GB capacity point will be an important one for our desktop customers, and WD is leading high-volume shipments to the channel and OEM customers,” said Don Bennett, general manager and vice president of WD's desktop business unit. "Two-platter hard drives have always been the perfect balance of value, capacity and performance for many of our customers. Today's common two-platter drives are limited to 500 GB, but we are expanding capacity by 28 percent on the same design with WD's leading technology heads and disks.”

The 320 GB-per-platter technology is being deployed across WD's desktop, enterprise, consumer electronics and external hard drive product lines, including additional capacity points, throughout this calendar year.

The WD Caviar family of 3.5-inch desktop hard drives delivers high performance with 3 Gb/s transfer rate, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), and cool operating temperatures and quiet operation, enabling customers to integrate WD products in the most demanding desktop and external storage environments.

Price and Availability

WD Caviar SE16 640 GB (model WD6400AAKS) hard drives may be ordered on the company's online store (http://www.shopwd.com) and through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturer's Suggest Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Caviar SE16 640 GB is $139.99 USD. More information about WD Caviar desktop drives may be found on the company's Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=394.

About WD
WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage applications.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's Web site (http://www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
Newegg already has this drive for sale at $129.99 plus shipping if anyone is interested.
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

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REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!!
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

Post by Digital Puppy »

You know, this is a really good price for a HUGE amount of space. Why can't we see iPods or PMPs with more than 120GB?
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

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By the end of summer, the 500Gb drives could be very reasonable. :P
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

Post by stev »

Apoptosis wrote:Newegg already has this drive for sale at $129.99 plus shipping if anyone is interested.

Is it me or did the link to the NewEgg listing disappear? :-k

If $129 is the price for the drive, then that's only 0.201 cents per Gb. :shock: That's a really great price knowing that drives have been running near 0.28 center per Gb. =D>
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

Post by ikjadoon »

Yes, the Newegg link is gone. Deactivated, from what I've heard.

I have had my eye on this drive for many weeks; transfer rate is approximately 95MB/s with access times of 12.2ms, which puts this as one of the fastest, if not THE, fastest 7200RPM drive available. But I've only read user reviews so I've been patiently waiting for an official third-party review. If anyone sees one around, please link! :)

As of right now, I do not see a single seller for this drive. A shame; Newegg had it for $129.99 shipped a while back.

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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

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why did newegg deactivate it... I'm lost on that one...
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Re: WD Now Shipping WD Caviar SE16 640GB 3.5-inch hard drives

Post by hnzw_rui »

Digital Puppy wrote:You know, this is a really good price for a HUGE amount of space. Why can't we see iPods or PMPs with more than 120GB?
I dunno... Maybe because the Caviar SE16 640GB is even bigger than an iPod? Last I checked, iPod Classic goes up to 160GB. Besides, a large drive is kinda useless if your PMP's battery can only stay on for 1 hour.
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