DCC launches WD’s largest capacity 3 TB SATA hard drives for AV

Distributor Drive Control Corporation has launched Western Digital’s addition of the 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions to its family of WD AV-GP SATA hard drives, serving the audio-video (AV) market. Shipping immediately, the 2.5 TB and 3 TB capacity, 3.5-inch, WD AV-GP hard drives offer 24X7 reliability, low power consumption and unrivalled storage capacity for storage-intensive AV applications such as digital video recorders, video surveillance, single-drive media servers and external multimedia storage.

“Designed to go the distance in high-temperature, always-on streaming digital AV environments, WD AV-GP drives store more hi-def audio and video than ever before with our new 2.5 TB and 3 TB versions,” says Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and CE business units. “Combine unsurpassed capacity, power-saving WD GreenPower Technology, and performance capabilities to capture up to 12 simultaneous HD video streams with SilkStream technology and the drive choice is made clear in optimising AV applications like PVR/DVR, IPTV and video surveillance.”

Says Linsay Narayanan, WD Product Specialist at DCC, “This latest addition to the WD range of products will allow our resellers to meet the demands of AV environments such as casino’s and corporates that employ security cameras. In addition, these products are energy efficient which also meets the requirement to reduce energy consumption which is high on the agenda of most businesses today.”

The WD AV-GP family of drives delivers 24X7 reliability along with power-saving WD GreenPower Technology. The WD AV-GP drives are field tested to have a 1.0 million hour MTBF rating. Drives with capacities in excess of 2.19 TB currently present barriers for certain PC hardware, firmware and software. For example, drives larger than 2.19 TB are not supported by systems running Windows XP; and systems with 32-bit versions of Windows Vista or Windows 7 relegate drives larger than 2.19 TB to be used as secondary drives. Thus, it is important to review existing PC specifications prior to installation of either the 2.5 TB or 3 TB WD AV-GP drives.