Western Digital's Caviar Green 3TB hard drive
@ 2010/11/04There are two kinds of data in this world: that which we need to access quickly and that which mostly just needs to be stored. In the PC world, the former is typically made up of files associated with one's applications, games, and operating system. You want that data on the fastest drive possible—ideally, a solid-state disk better equipped than mechanical storage to handle the random access patterns commonly associated with OS and application files.
If SSDs were cheap, we'd be using them to store everything. However, flash memory remains an exceedingly expensive proposition next to capacious platters that cost a couple of orders of magnitude less per gigabyte. When you need a lot of capacity for data that mostly just needs to be stored, be it gigabytes of RAW family photos, an MP3 collection fueled by years of rampant piracy, or the complete collection of Sex and the City episodes you ostensibly downloaded for your better half but have yet to delete, only a mechanical hard drive will do. Folks who have already upgraded to an SSD for their OS and application files will want to seek out one of a new breed of low-power hard drives spawned by Western Digital's Caviar GP, which went on to become the Caviar Green.
If SSDs were cheap, we'd be using them to store everything. However, flash memory remains an exceedingly expensive proposition next to capacious platters that cost a couple of orders of magnitude less per gigabyte. When you need a lot of capacity for data that mostly just needs to be stored, be it gigabytes of RAW family photos, an MP3 collection fueled by years of rampant piracy, or the complete collection of Sex and the City episodes you ostensibly downloaded for your better half but have yet to delete, only a mechanical hard drive will do. Folks who have already upgraded to an SSD for their OS and application files will want to seek out one of a new breed of low-power hard drives spawned by Western Digital's Caviar GP, which went on to become the Caviar Green.