Reports have suggested that Western Digital could start selling 3.5-inch 3TB hard disk drives (HDDs) as early as this month. The existing family of its HDD products--namely the Caviar Black, Caviar Blue and Caviar Green--will be upgraded to include the new capacity model. At the moment, the only vendor that sells HDD of 3TB capacity is Seagate, who only sells them as an external drive or as part of its NAS desktop product at the moment.

The release of higher capacity 3.5-inch HDD will probably show the greatest impact at the NAS level, which typically supports between two to 10 disk drives.  As you can imagine, a 10-drive NAS fully decked out with the new 3TB disks will see a substantial increase in its storage capacity. And even as many users are switching to solid-state drives for its superior performance, the continued improvements in HDD capacity are establishing HDD as the medium of choice for organizations with a thirst for cheap, plentiful storage.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Register
- check out this article at The Inquirer

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