Western Digital has had 4TB internal hard drives for a little while now, but the drives were suited for the enterprise. On Tuesday, WD announced that with its new 4TB Black drive, WD customers on the consumer level can now get a 4TB performance-based internal hard drive.
Western Digital
WD’s Black uses a 3.5-inch 7200-rpm mechanism, 64MB of cache, a 6-gigabits-per-second SATA interface, dual processors, and dual actuator technology. Previously, the Black had a maximum capacity of 2TB, with 1.5TB, 1TB, and 500GB drives also available.
Though the Black is not as fast as WD’s 10,000-rpm VelociRaptor for workstations, the Black is plenty fast enough for gamers and media editors. Also, the VelociRaptor, which maxes out at 1TB, doesn’t offer anything near the capacity of the Black. WD’s Green drive is available in a 3TB capacity but it sacrifices performance, since it is designed to keep the noise it makes to a minimum, and to reduce power consumption.
The 4TB Black is available for $339 and comes with a 5-year warranty.
WD’s Black is not the helium-filled hard drive the company announced in September. Filling the hard drive with helium reduces friction and power consumption and increases capacity, according to Western Digital. But a helium shortage may cause a delay in the production of the helium-based drives.