RE series drives have historically been sold at a premium price point, as they are constructed to higher tolerances and contain advanced features not available in the consumer level drives. Despite this, the new units have an MSRP of only $329.00, which is only 10% above what the consumer drives are currently selling for, which is a good deal considering you get a 5-year warranty.
WD claim the cache and processors increase performance 25% over the previous generation. Once we obtain a review unit, we will see how this model stacks up against the 2TB Caviar GP model.
Exclusive Intelligent Drive Technology:
WD RE4-GP hard drives with GreenPower technology deliver exceptional power conservation, run ultra-cool and quiet, while providing solid performance. Following are several technologies responsible for the performance enhancements:
Faster — 64 MB cache, dual processors, and increased areal density yield twice the processing power resulting in as much as a 25 percent performance improvement over the previous generation.
Greener — Improvements in our power-conserving technologies — IntelliSeek™, IntelliPark™, and IntelliPower™ — deliver up to an average 25 percent reduction in power consumption over our previous generation of WD RE-GP drive.
Improved Rotary Vibration Tolerance — Advanced mechanical and servo control optimization along with system characterization and validation enable rock solid performance under extreme vibration conditions, with negligible impact to performance, substantially more robust than the previous generation, making this drive ideal for the most industrial IT applications.
Active Power Management — WD drives with GreenPower technology monitor work load and automatically invoke idle mode whenever possible to further reduce unnecessary power consumption by up to an additional 40 percent. Drive recovery time from idle mode is less than one second, providing seamless power management between the drive and the host controller.
StableTrac™ — Secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
RAID-specific Time-limited Error Recovery (TLER) — Pioneered by WD, this feature prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.
Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF™) — This second generation WD RE-GP model increased rotational frequencies up to 1500 Hz, therefore optimizing operation and performance when the drives are used in vibration-prone multi-drive systems such as rack mounted servers or in systems deployed at industrial type locations.
Availability and Pricing:
The WD RE4-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD2002FYPS) is available from select e-tailers and distributors. MSRP is $329.00 (U.S.).
