An Australia-based online store has begun to ship 2TB (2000GB) hard disk drives (HDDs) from Western Digital. This is the first time in many years when usually cautious WD is the first to company to ship the world’s largest hard drive to date.

WD’s first 2TB drive belongs to WD Caviar Green series, thus, trades performance for power efficiency. The model WD20EADS sports 32MB cache, 7200rpm spindle speed, Serial ATA-300 interface and is available from Mwave.com.au for $251 (AUD $377.8).

Usually WD Caviar Green family of hard drives sport 5400rpm spindle speed in order to remain quiet as well as consume less power, however, with the 2TB model the company decided to boost performance of the unit by installing higher-speed motor. Potentially, this may indicate that WD is preparing a new Green line with enhanced performance.

Typically WD is relatively conservative about introduction of world’s top capacity hard drives that feature higher amount of platters or platters with leading-edge areal density, which reduces reliability; thus, Hitachi GST and Seagate are usually the first to introduce “milestone” HDDs. However, with 2TB, it seems that WD is the first company to start commercial shipments.

Western Digital officials did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: WD