Western Digital drive hits 2TB

Users can now store 2TB of files in a single drive

Western Digital has announced the first 2TB hard drive to hit the market. The unit extends Western Digital's Caviar Green family of 3.5in drives, and will also be available inside the firm's My Book range of external storage products.

The company touted the Caviar Green 2TB WD20EADS as the world's highest capacity drive, and said that its would provide ample storage for users with burgeoning collections of music, video and images.

The drive features the 3Gbit/s version of the SATA interface, and carries a suggested price of €299 (£280).

While some may question the need for such large storage capacities, Western Digital quoted figures from data storage research firm Trend Focus which suggest that 10 per cent of 3.5in hard drive sales are already at the 1TB level or above. A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes.

Jim Morris, Western Digital senior vice president, claimed that the drives are also economical in terms of power consumption.

"With the launch of the new Caviar Green 2TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacities needed to operate today's highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files, while using less power than typical drives with similar speeds and capacities," he said.

The Caviar Green 2TB WD20EADS will be available from the end of January.