WD is announcing the immediate shipment of its new WD Xe 2.5" 10K SAS hard drive targeting the enterprise market. WD Xe drives are designed for data servers to replace legacy storage that is nearing end-of-life, and with the adapter they won’t require organizations to lose their existing investments’ value by completely turning away from 3.5" form factors. The drives sport up to 67% lower power consumption than 3.5" 15,000 RPM drives while offering up to 50 higher capacity and similar or greater sequential performance. This means that enterprises can save on energy costs, reduce drives’ footprints or cram more data into the same area, and do it all without sacrificing performance.
WD is announcing the immediate shipment of its new WD Xe 2.5" 10K SAS hard drive targeting the enterprise market. WD Xe drives are designed for data servers to replace legacy storage that is nearing end-of-life, and with the adapter they won’t require organizations to lose their existing investments’ value by completely turning away from 3.5" form factors. The drives sport up to 67% lower power consumption than 3.5" 15,000 RPM drives while offering up to 50 higher capacity and similar or greater sequential performance. This means that enterprises can save on energy costs, reduce drives’ footprints or cram more data into the same area, and do it all without sacrificing performance.
The WD Xe drives have a slew of features likely to appeal to IT managers who have existing storage they are planning to replace. To start with, the drives have sequential data rates up to 204MB/s. They also come in a 2.5" form factor mounted in a 3.5" adapter to ensure simple upgrades and cool operating temperatures. Additionally, to get rid of single points of failure and increase reliability and performance, the drives offer dual port, full duplex connectivity.
There are a couple of other features that target common concerns about endurance and reliability. MTBF for the WD Xe is set at 2 million hours, which is as high as any drive in the industry. Coupled with that is WD’s NoTouch ramp load technology that keeps the recording head from ever coming in contact with the disk to reduce wear and tear and increase drive security during movement.
Pricing and Availability
The WD Xe 2.5" SAS enterprise hard drives mounted in 3.5" adapters come with 5 year warranties and in capcacities that range 300 GB to 900 GB with an MSRP set at $230-$600.
