From the Manufacturer

Lots of storage in desktop PCs or external drives and NAS devices.

WD leads the way; pioneering capacity to deliver massive amounts of storage of up to 3 TBs on a single drive.

Reduced power consumption makes it possible to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.

WD GreenPower Technology yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics perfect for ultra-quiet PCs and external drives.

Twice the interface speed with backwards compatibility to legacy SATA standards.

Technology being adopted by WD and other drive manufacturers to continue growing hard drive capacities.

SATA hard drives are now capable of storing up to 3 TB of data on a single hard drive. WD led the way in the industry, providing solutions for implementing 2.19 TB and larger drives.

WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications. (RAID-0 / RAID-1)*

*Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.

Over the years the industry has increased bus bandwidth from PATA through SATA 1.5 Gb/s and SATA 3 Gb/s to keep up with the demand for higher transfer rates. The next evolution of bus bandwidth has now been achieved with the introduction of SATA 6 Gb/s, (SATA 3.0). We've added a SATA 6 Gb/s interface to our award-winning WD Caviar Blue, Green, and Black desktop hard drives in capacities from 250 GB - 3 TB. This transition to a SATA 6 Gb/s interface aligns with the introduction of SATA 6 Gb/s-supporting chip sets and motherboards coming to the market.

Buying a SATA 6 Gb/s drive now is a great way to make sure your hard drive will be compatible with next generation motherboards and chipsets.

And when you buy from WD, the world's leading hard drive supplier by volume, you gain comfort in knowing that the drive has been extensively tested for reliability and compatibility and will be supported by world-class technical support.

Yes, the SATA 6 Gb/s interface uses the same connector as SATA 3 Gb/s and is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 and Mac OS X.

Meeting the technological challenges of 3 TB SATA hard drive implementation.

Once again leading the way in the storage industry, WD now offers 2.5 TB and 3 TB hard drives, the world's largest capacities to date on a single drive. At such high capacities certain compatibility issues arise. There are a number of host bus adapter (HBA) and chipset vendors not currently offering drivers that support drives larger than 2.19 TB. To provide a solution for these types of compatibility issues, WD is bundling WD Caviar® Green™ 2.5 TB and 3 TB drives with an ACHI-compliant HBA that, once installed, allows the operating system to use a known driver to correctly support large capacity drives.

To understand if your system will support a hard drive with greater than 2.19 TB, consult your OS, Motherboard and USB bridge device solution providers from the list below before you attempt to install in your system.

• 3.5-inch internal drive bay
• AHCI-compliant platform with an available PCI-Express slot

Operating System support for drives with greater than 2.19 TB capacity.

WD has partnered with motherboard and system solution providers that now offer system solutions supporting Large Drives. Please consult the solution provider for their solution availability and solution requirements. Refer to links below for details.

• ASUS
• GIGABYTE
• INTEL
• MSI
• SUPERMICRO

USB bridge devices

USB attached storage solution providers have solved many of the issues associated with Large Drives within the USB Bridge firmware. Some present large capacity drives as single drive using larger sector sizes while others present the large capacity drive as more than one or more smaller drives to the host. Please consult the solution provider for their solution availability and implementation details.

• ASMedia Technology
• Freescale Semiconductor
• Fujitsu
• Initio Corporation
• JMicron Technology
• Lucidport Technology
• Silicon Image
• Sunplus Technology
• PLX Technology/Oxford Semiconductor
• Skymedi Corporation
• Symwave
• Texas Instruments
• VIA Technologies