Here come the Caviar 1 TB drives

As more manufacturers aim for the 1 TB storage high-water mark, Western Digital pushed the pace further today with the announcement of its new 7200 rpm 3.5-inch SATA Caviar hard drives, in 750 GB and 1 TB capacities.

The new line of 3.5-inch Caviars, which will ship next week, features 7200 rpm spin speed, 32 MB cache, SATA 3 GB/s interface.

Although WD is promoting these new Caviars as the fastest available in their form factor, the company did not offer any independent benchmarks, and the major enthusiast sites have yet to get their hands on one. However, the dual processor and 32 MB of cache is expected to be a step above similar HDDs that feature just one processor and only 16 MB of cache.

The new models will feature the company's StableTrac technology, introduced last year. Rather than attach motor mounts to the bottom only, WD's motor shafts are now secured at both ends, helping to increase read and write operation tracking. Internal lab testing also led WD to create a new "NoTouch ramp load technology" where the recording head in the HDD does not touch the disk media, and that helps limit the wear to the recording head.

One terabyte is the new standard these days, with Seagate, Hitachi, and Samsung also promoting 1 TB 7200 rpm HDDs to their product lines in recent months. The new WD Caviar HDDs will be available next week, with a $200 price tag for the 750 GB HDD, and $250 price tag for the 1 TB model.