Western Digital AV-GP Drives

Western Digital divides their internal hard drives into four distinct families :

• the WD Caviar Blue for their basic models,
• the WD Caviar Green for their quieter, cooler hard drives,
• the WD Caviar Black for their performance-grade hard drives, and finally,
• the WD AV for their CE (consumer electronics) model.

At press time, Western Digital has three AV drive families. The older WD AV drives run at full 7,200 RPM but have a maximum storage capacity of 500 GB. They also have a 2.5" line of AV drives called the WD AV-25, which offer also capacities up to 500 GB.

Western Digital's key hard disk drive family for AV applications is their AV-GP drives, which are based on the award-winning WD Caviar Green drives. The Western Digital AV-GP drives are targeted at consumer electronics (CE) applications, such as PVRs, DVRs and CCTV systems. Hence, they have a feature set that focuses on this segment :

• 24x7 Reliability - These drives are designed to last in high temperature always-on streaming digital audio/video environments such as PVR/DVR, IPTV, and video surveillance systems.

• Quiet - Noise levels have been minimized to less than one sone* - virtually below the threshold of human hearing.

• Reduced Power Consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to competitors' drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek, IntelliPark, and IntelliPower technologies. Lower power means less heat and greater reliability.

• Compatible -Tested for compatibility in a broad range of AV products including set top boxes, DVR/PVR, and mainstream video surveillance systems. For drives with greater than 2.19 TB capacity, compatibility is selective to PVRs and surveillance systems that are compatible with hard drives exceeding 2.19 TB.

• SilkStream - Optimized for smooth, continuous digital video playback of up to twelve simultaneous HD streams. SilkStream is compatible with the ATA streaming command set so CE customers can use standard streaming management and error recovery options.

• IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.

• IntelliPower -A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.

• IntelliPark -Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in mproved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.

• Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) - The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications.

Today, we will look at Western Digital's largest capacity AV-GP hard disk drive - the WD30EURS. This hard disk drive is not only quieter and cooler than regular hard disk drive, it also packs a whooping storage capacity of 3 terabytes! Let's take a look!

Packaging

At first, we thought that Western Digital would be offering the WD30EURS either as a single drive, or as a kit with a HighPoint Rocket 620 SATA controller, as we saw in our Western Digital WD30EZRSDTL review.

The HighPoint Rocket 620 supports Long LBA addressing which is necessary to access all 3 TB of storage capacity. Without this controller, or a newer UEFI-based motherboard, you will be restricted to the first 2.1 TB.

However, Western Digital informed us that the WD30EURS will only be available as a single drive. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you only buy this 3 TB hard disk drive if you are already using a UEFI-based motherboard.

You can still use the drive with some newer non-UEFI motherboards or motherboards with upgraded BIOSes - they will allow you to access the storage capacity above 2.1 TB. However, you will need to partition them into two drives. You will not be able to create a single 3 TB partition.

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