WD intros 'world's first' 2TB portable HDD

WD has outed what it claims is the world's first portable hard drive with a 2TB capacity. The drive is part of WD's My Passport line, and sports a redesigned shell - available in a choice of five colours - and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity. WD My Passport 2TB Bundled software allows you to password-protect the drive's …

[Monty Burns]

So what are all those 3tb ones then?

I'm assuming they mean 2.5"? 'cause there are plenty of 3.5" ones around and they are very portable.... I know, I have one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So what are all those 3tb ones then?

No shit sherlock.

3.5 inch drives are referred to as 'external' with portable being 2.5 inch (even though both are external and portable).

[Al 24]

Re: So what are all those 3tb ones then?

Only about as portable as the mains power supply you need to spin the platters in a 3.5" drive.

Unless you carry 250 miles of extension cable with you? :)

[TonyHoyle]

The 2TB HDD is about £90 inc. VAT now.. So £150 for a USB caddy and software? Even with the convenience markup that seems a bit high.

[BristolBachelor]

You forgot the WD My Passport badge on the outside.

</joke>

(Although in my opinion that should make the drive practically worthless. Any drive that pretends that it doesn't exist at all for several minutes if it encounters a CRC error reading from the disk is bad in my book. It is fine if they want the drive to try to re-read the sectors to see if the error is recoverable, but for the whole disk to go unservicable for an unlimited number of minutes while it does it is not acceptable)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take 100

If you can get a 2TB portable (that's 2.5 inch) hard drive for £90 I will take 100 of them - I'll even give you £100 each.

I expect you didn't read (or understand) the article.

[TonyHoyle]

Re: I'll take 100

It's external. 1 inch smaller isn't going to make the tiniest bit of difference.

You want to pay 3 times the going rate for it? Go ahead.

[Al 24]

Re: I'll take 100

>It's external. 1 inch smaller isn't going to make the tiniest bit of difference.

>You want to pay 3 times the going rate for it? Go ahead

Dude, you've obviously never seen a 2.5" hard drive, there is a substantial size difference between 'desktop' drives (3.5") and 'laptop' drives (2.5"), a couple of the other differences between 2.5"/3.5" drives include:

- Power consumption - 2.5" drives can be powered from a USB bus, 3.5" external drives require mains power.

- Reliability - laptop drives are designed to be external/portable 3.5" drives are not, the 2.5" drives move the read/write heads off the platters when not actively using them, which means the drive is much less likely to survive being dropped moved

- Generally quieter and run cooler

[Snapper]

Difference

This might come as a shock, but reading the article as well as knowing what you are talking about is a good start to writing a comment.

[b166er]

Bought a WD Passport the other day. A USB3 one.

Same speed as a USB2 one.

They're still the best bus-powered drives though IMO

[RogerWilco]

Wow

It takes literally two clicks from this article to get to the specs page where you can see the physical size.

It's a 2.5" drive. If you can get those for £90 right now then hats off to you as you're obviously making a fortune selling them on for profit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice

Been waiting for these. However I'll wait until they come down from their flood inflated price which should be nearer £130 me thinks.

I purchased a 1TB 2.5 inch drive for £53 just before the floods.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to write full drive?

One detail I would like to see in all such product reviews is: how long does it take to write the entire drive sequentially? Size is potentially useful, but not if it takes days to read or write.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE>Time to write full drive

Consumer 2.5" drives mostly come in 5200 or 7200rmp. There are plenty of benchmark results out there of each brand and flavour for you to explore.

Whilst not as fast as 3.5" drives, even a 2.5" 5200rpm 2TB drive is going to have a sustained average(AVERAGE across writing the whole 2TB) write speed of around 40-45MB/s. Which when compared to say a Eco/Green edition desktop 5200rpm drive which has around 50-60MB/s, isn't too bad at all.

I'll let you do the math, but to say "days" is ludicrous. Well under 8 hours is realistic.

So what determines drive speeds?

Spindle size (Outer rim of a 2.5" platter spins slower than that of a 3.5", more data passes the head in same time on 3.5")

Spindle rotation speed (self explanitory)

Head seek time (mechanics of moving the head into position to read/write)

Cache ram on the drive(for bursts of predicted data reads/read-ahead reads and writes)

I know these are advertised as external USB units but as for "the bare drive inside":

Personally, 4 of these in a 5.25" 4-drive hot-swap unit, raid 5, even if they were only 5200rpm is a nice prospect, just need them to drop in price a little. You can get one for about £60 if that appeals to you too, which takes 4x 9.5-15mm high 2.5" drives.

Now if you want something with a bigger bang get yourself a 10000rmp SAS drive but dont expect to run if off of your usb unpowered!