Western Digital – Introduction
After making its debut in 1970, Western Digital secured its place among the leading hardware manufacturers in the world. Western Digital is known for creating solutions that allow you to create and secure your digital identity across a multitude of storage mediums from internal or external HDDs to SSDs as per your feasibility. Western Digital gives you immense control and efficiency to store what’s crucial for you most in a single trusted storage unit.
SSD vs HDD – Comparative Analysis
Solid-State Drives (SSDs) offer higher transfer speeds and longevity. SSD’s possess NAND to flash memory instead of mechanical discs and platters, the reason why they show better performance than their Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) counterparts. But this physically static infrastructure comes amidst some limitations in terms of capacity. You can’t store heavy amounts of data and information in SSDs compared to HDDs. Apart from that, they cost higher per gigabyte of storage than HDDs. On the contrary, HDDs can sustain enormous amounts of data due to their huge storage capacity. For instance, as of February 2021, the largest hard disk drive features 18 TB of storage.
If high enormous storage capacity is not your cup of tea, you can go for relatively faster SSDs. But if you want to store heavy amounts of data, opt for HDDs.
Western Digital Desktop Hard Disk Drives
The Western Digital desktop hard drive features an extensive storage capacity ranging from 2TB to 18TB. Western Digital is famous for manufacturing hard drives that are extremely durable and are compatible with a range of devices like desktops PCs, and laptops.
Western Digital expects its state-of-the-art 18TB hard drives to be used for storing video recordings filmed by 4K surveillance cameras, which can produce around 28TB of data over a period of 6 months.
Western Digital’s latest hard drive offers 10,000 RPM rotational speed with decent storage density and it well suits the workloads that demand frequent read and write operations.
The technology introduced by Western Digital is reliable and affordable compared to its competitors. All Hard drives are linked to a motherboard via the latest SATA (Serial ATA) interface without needing a special software utility to work properly.
Read More: 0x0 0x0
Difference between IDE and SATA HHDs
Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is a connectivity interface introduced in the mid-1980s. It was used to establish connections between motherboard and Hard Disk Drives (HDD) or Solid-State Drives (SSD).
IDE interface provides data transfer speeds up to 130MB/s and possesses a parallel connector being a conventional connectivity interface which makes data transfer a time-consuming process. It does not feature hot plugging.
On the contrary, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment abbreviated as SATA is a relatively newer connectivity interface that made its debut in the early 2000s. Just like an IDE, it serves the same purpose of coupling hard disk drives – HDDs, Solid State Drives – SSDs, and CD/DVD ROMs with the motherboard.
SATA interface features high data transfer speeds from 150 MB/s (for SATA I) to 300MB/s for (SATA II). Being a serial interface, it offers a better transfer rate and supports hot plugging in its server modules (You can unplug the drive while the server is running and add another one). SATA interfaces are advanced connectivity standards that are preferred over their conventional IDE counterparts due to faster transfer speeds.
Difference between Internal and External Hard Drive
As far as general mechanism and use are concerned, internal and external hard drives are similar in many aspects, there are some primary benefits to acquire one over another. Depending on your certain objective, one may address your needs better than the other. First, let’s discuss some significant and cutting-edge benefits of internal HDDs.
- Internal hard drives can offer high storage capacity for enormous amounts of data.
- Internal HDDs remain intact with your PC all the time.
- Internal HDDs are very budget-friendly compared to other storage mediums.
- Internal HDDs can easily be substituted, removed or added to keep your storage needs sustained.
While internal HDDs offer some perks, they also have a downside. For instance, they are not portable and remain fixed inside your PC, unlike an external HDD.
As far as External HDDs are concerned, they offer different benefits, such as:
- The portability of eternal HDDs makes them a great choice for travelers as they can be easily transported and are very delicate.
- External HDDs can be linked to different computers anytime. As they offer mobility, you can carry your device from home to office or vice-versa.
- External HDDs feature plug n play feature. Individuals who are familiar with any configuration or boot methods can easily add or remove their internal HDD.
Rotational Speed of
In HDDs, the speed of read/write operations is determined by a disc’s rotational speed, which is the measure in RPM (Rotations per minute). For now, the most easily available and commonly used hard disk devices offer rotational speeds that range from 5400 to 7200 RPM, although there are some high-speed (but a bit noisy) and faster HDDs that can acquire the rotational speed up to 10000 RPM.
For a desktop computer, if you want fast read/write operations and memory access, 7200RPM HDD can best serve the purpose. In the case of laptops, the rotational speed is only limited to 7200RPM because of the compromised size of 2.5-inches.
How does a Desktop Hard Drive work?
As it was mentioned earlier, HDDs possess mechanical phenomena centric around rotating disks and an overhead read/write head. whenever the operating system wants to load or access any particular piece of data, the HDD searches the certain disk and tracks with the required file or piece of data, and moves the read/write head over it.
Data write operations are carried out by means of electric pulses manipulated by a component present in the magnetic head. At the end of each write operation, the head moves to another location to repeat the same cycle again.
Renowned Western Digital Internal HDD
To scale up your desktop hard drive with a faster and decent capacity HDD, Western Digital offers a range of products that support the SATA interface with a 3GB/s transfer rate such as WD1001FALS. The said product features 1TB of storage space. WD1001FALS  features a 3.5-inch size, SATA connectivity, and rotational speed of 7200 RPM. All these features make Western Digital’s WD1001FALS SATA-HDD one of the best hard drives available in the market.
End Words
Western Digital is one of the top tech companies that produce storage devices, both flash and disk. With one of its best-selling products like WD1001FALS SATA-HDD, you can experience a noteworthy boost in your storage performance and secure massive amounts of data without any second thought.