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Thought this looked like a reasonable deal and free delivery as the sweetener.
WD 2TB Desktop Hard Drive $116 at DSE or OW Price Beat= $110.20
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GreenPower Technology means it;s a 5400 rpm drive, right?
Can USB 2.0 send data faster than the drive can write?humm that is a harder question to answer than you might expect… the drives have a decent sized buffer - so you can burst a lot (at least 20mb often 40-50mb) at as fast as your interface (usb) can deliver. But usb has a lot of overhead (very small packets) so a lot of the bandwidth is wasted. Overall, in my experience usb often doesn't deliver nearly as much to the drive as the specs would suggest. (firewire was much better even though it has about the same on the spec sheet.) Also the WD green drives aren't really 5400rpm - they spin up and down as required eg slow when idling and up to 7200 when pushed.
It comes down to how you are going to use it - read/write a small file at a time - its faster than usb. Huge files or backing up your whole disk - it's slower. Streaming a video - its fast enough even for bluray bit rates.
Hope that helps anyway
depends on what you are using it for.
I have 2 external drives one a barracuda 7200 with a 64mb cache and the other a seagate 5400 green drive similar to this, both are hooked up to USB3 ports.
For storing data the green drives are fine albeit very slow but for video streaming forget it, i cannot stream a HD file from the green drive to my xbox or media player it does work but is very stutery. for the normal 700mb movie its ok mostly but anything bigger even tv episodes and it stutters and freezes all over the shop.
From my PC or the baracuda external i can stream anything and transfer rates are halfed at least.
One last thing that most ppl will disagree with me on if you plan to have important data on this drive stay away from WD they have one of the highest fail rates around, Hitachi and seagate are quite good and i think officeworks has a seagate 2TB for $117 now and its 7200
Hitachi cant hold a candle to the quality of WD. Seagate also have redonkulous fail rates compared to WD. If you want quality, stick to WD and Samsung 2nd.
on HD failure…
I've had HD's of every brand fail.. I'm a database professional - I make a living out of thrashing storage arrays!
But WD failure rates seem generally as good as or better than other vendors, and they have a great warranty checking/replacement system.but to be clear:
ALL DISKS FAIL. THEY ALL BREAK
no matter what brand, how you treated it, how much you paid for it
IT WILL FAIL - usually on the week that you forget to make a backup
Never, Ever expect the files on one disk will be there tomorrow, because one day, they won't be there.
Make Backups..Often! …Pretty please?
Sorry.. professional rantThe only caveat I would offer with regard to reliability iffer, is that some drive series/models with known HW or FW flaws can skew the results somewhat!
For instance, the infamous Seagate 7200.11 models with the 'click of death' firmware! ;)
Agreed though, backup, backup, backup…cross media too, at least two to three of HDD, tape, optical, online or flash memory!
The "Green" drives have a fixed RPM like any other drive. For marketing reasons, WD avoided stating a specific RPM (5400 had a stigma attached to it) and hid it behind the word 'IntelliPower', and some people wrongly inferred this to mean some sort of dynamic RPM.
I also think you have it backwards re the effect of file size on performance - zillions of small files can slow a copy down so much that USB 2.0 is no longer the limiting factor, while huge files are much less demanding on the drive and host PC, so USB 2.0 will be pushed to the max.
I'm sure one of the review sites indicated it would operate at reduced spindle speeds for low-demand but besides computing latency, spindle speed really isn't that important imho(though lower helps with power and noise levels)
As for big vs small file - there are quite a few benchmarks showing the drive performance with large vs small transfers - and for the drive, its all about the same. (eg http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_2t… or http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-6.ht…)
Its the usual large blocks/streaming good - small writes/files bad - but not so bad for the drive because the whole transfer gets bursted into the cache then written to disk later.
I'd make a guess you are testing under windows - esp vista or win7 which has very poor small file performance by default. (its the os/file system drivers that are the bottle neck not the interface)No idea why Bigsta is having issues streaming from the small drive though - unless maybe its buffer+file system cache is large enough that the little drive spins down between reads? Even at their slowest, these drives are able to provide 50MB/sec sequential read(=stream unless your disk is very badly fragmented)
Guess this points out why I started with "this is a harder questions than you might expect". Results vary drastically depending on operating conditions and usage.
humm didn't intend a technical discussion of all the aspects of disk subsystems!
how about "depends.. mostly it seems to be good enough" and we leave it at that?
:DIt's VERY good info, I just hope people actually read it! :)
very good price considering the bare drive is $100
yep… great price!!
i bought the WD 2Tb green (internal) about 2 weeks ago for $96 from MSY.
as an external drive for $20 more? bargain! plus vote.Is it better than HP 2TB SimpleSave External Hard Drive ($108) or Seagate 2TB Freeagent GoFlex External ($139)??
the Seagate is better not sure about the HP it may have a Hitachi drive in it as alot of their laptops use Hitachi drives and they are quite good find out the speeds of the drives though, higher the better
I've had my 1TB HP Simplesave for almost 2 years now; constantly storing movies/tv shows etc on it and it's still going strong. Just get rid of the crapware it comes loaded with and it's a decent HDD
Some office works still have this at 117, if you go and price beat you'll get it for around 110, just picked up two in Geelong for 110.20
Forgot to mention, the shelf will most likely say 116, ask someone to scan it with the price checker and it will give the real price (117)
great price but im WDist… ;-)
Guys will this work with my XBOX 360 & PS3? I know I will have to format it to FAT32 but how do I do that to a 2TB Drive?
Also will this - Turns on and off with your computer. Enters idle mode when not in use. Utilises a WD drive with power-saving WD GreenPower Technology and an EnergyStar compliant power supply
Work on the XBOX 350 / PS3?
I just wanna put loads of movies on there so I can watch from my 360
Xbox 350? I want that (:
Fat32 will format a 2TB drive (but thats the max)
Be aware it also has a 4gb limit on file size - might be a problem with movie files
(I often forget and try to copy a dvd iso to fat32 formatted drive)
OW has raised the price to $117 so price beat=$110.20 :)
http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Technology/Dat…
I've had one of these for a year or so, it's been rock-solid reliable, and it's smart enough to power down when not in use, and quick to spin up when it's needed.
Highly recommended! :)
Will this work in another country with just a plug adapter? Or would you need a step down transformer?
The switchmode PSU on mine is rated 110~220v AC, that should cover most reasonably developed countries! ;)
This would be perfect except for the fact that USB 2.0 struggles with compressed 1080P MKVs it seems.
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=4868
Even if your motherboard doesn't support USB 3.0 right now, I see no reason to not buy a forward compatible one when you're looking at a $10-15 premium (for a Samsung one):
http://staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=USB+3.0+2TB&spo…
Very old post, and it doesn't even mention this USB drive. The controller chips since 2008 for USB control has matured since then, the OP is also talking about connecting it to a network media tank, not directly to the computer. I play 1080p fine from all my USB drives
Yeah, I think you're right it's more of an issue with underpowered video playback devices not being able to handle the decompression.
Still, even taking that into account, I think for a large drive and the time it would take to fill it up, you're better of pre-empetively paying that extra $15.
Been looking for a new HD ever since my last one passed away, thanks OP! :)
how would this compare to the $98 samsung story station 2tb hdd?
http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/43026
Please advice!The drives inside are much of a muchness. The Samsung has a more thoughtful case design IMHO. Power switch conveniently located on the front in the form of a knob, which doubles as a control to dim the power/activity LED. If I recall correctly, the Elements doesn't even have a power switch and its power/activity light is at the back. The accessible screws also make it easier to get to the HD in the Samsung if needed, whereas the WD has hidden plastic tabs that are the bane of anyone who disassembles things.
The lack of a switch on the WD is the plus, it pretty much turns itself off (granted it needs to be a little bit on to detect when to turn on fully), they also don't generate much heat, which makes them perfect for media drives, haven't had any issues streaming from it, though its a little slow to copy a few hundred gigs on to.
Both models will spin down after a period of inactivity - the presence of a switch on an external drive does not imply a lack of sleep mode support.
Actually it does imply it, though granted it doesn't mean that it does, just leads one to believe that it doesn't auto sleep.
Hows its heat production , and i presume that the dimmer switch for the light can turn the light off as well, i like how the WD has the light at the back so its not visible.
Is the samsung one a better bargain than this given it's 2TB and $98?
Or does this WD has a better and faster drive?
lauthor, there's practically no difference speed wise. They're both 5400 RPM "green" drives and both enclosures limit them to the slower speed of USB 2.0, so it's a double moot point. Just get whichever you think will look nicer on your desk or is the most convenient to buy if you don't care about any of the little differences I mentioned.
officeworks has it as well for same price.