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Today we are checking out the latest addition to the elite Western Digital Black hard drive series which supports a massive 4TB storage capacity. Designed to deliver a balance between speed, capacity and price, we are keen to see what this latest WD creation has in store for us...
It has already been 2 years now since Western Digital announced their first 3TB internal hard disk drive. Since then new releases have been few and far between, and the reason for this has been blamed on the 2011 Thailand floods. Since Thailand accounts for about 40 to 50 per cent of all hard drive production worldwide the floods had a significant impact on this industry.
One of the worst hit hard drive manufacturers was Western Digital and on October 21st 2011 they suspended operation from their Thailand Plant. As a result pricing of not just WD drives but all hard drives increased significantly and only now is pricing beginning to return to pre-flooded levels. With supply returning to normal levels and pricing stabilizing, we are starting to see (pardon the pun) a flood of new hard drives, particularly from Western Digital. Recently we have seen the introduction of new RE Enterprise drives, a new ultra-fast VelociRaptor drive and an entirely new ‘Red’ series designed exclusively for use in NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices. Even more recently Western Digital expanded their ‘Black Edition’ hard drive series when they announced the introduction of a four terabyte model on November 20th 2012. The Black series is considered Western Digital’s flagship desktop series and despite offering faster drives, the Black series is meant to deliver the perfect balance of performance, price and capacity. The WD Black 4TB has an MSRP of $339, though we are yet to see drives hit that price with most retailers targeting between $350 - $400. Still even at $350 this means a WD Black 4TB hard drive is marginally cheaper than a pair of WD Black 2TB drives. This makes the WD Black 4TB considerably cheaper than the previously released WD RE 4TB, which currently retails for $480. |
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