Western Digital to Unveil 5TB Hard Drives in Late 2013

From X-bit Labs: Although technologies that enable large-capacity hard disk drives already exist at Western Digital, the company will only release its HDDs with 5TB capacity late in 2013. As it appears, the progress on the market of hard drives slowed down in the recent years as the amount of HDD makers declined.

According to a slide, which presumably comes from WD roadmap, Western Digital will introduce WD Green 4TB (WD40EZRX) and WD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) drives in the third quarter of 2013, whereas WD Green 5TB (WD50EZRX) and WD Red 5TB (WD50EFRX) will be released in Q4 2013, reports Always More Digital web-site.

Both WD Green and WD Red hard disk drives feature variable spindle speed between 5400rpm and 5900rpm and are optimized for large capacities, low power consumption and operation in RAID mode, but not maximum possible performance.

What remains to be seen is whether the 5TB hard drives from Western Digital will utilize four 1.25TB platters, or five latest-generation 1TB platters. Thanks to acquisition of Hitachi GST company, WD has access to five-platter hard drive technology and theoretically unveil 5TB drives even now.

Makers of hard drives initiated shipments of 4TB 3.5” desktop hard disk drives back in Q4 2011. As it appears, it will take companies around two years to come out with next – 5TB – capacity point. The reasons behind such slow progress are understandable: there are now fewer hard drive makers on the market and the competition is not intense; the manufacturers had to solve issues associated with drown production capacities in last year’s flooding in Thailand.

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