Need More Hard Drive Storage? Western Digital’s Got You

March 8, 2016

By Laura Brauer

As media card capacities increase, photographers are faced with the decision of whether to use a single high capacity card or multiple smaller capacity cards for a shoot. The old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” might apply here, but when it comes to hard drive storage we think bigger is always better, especially given the high resolution of cameras and super-sized HD and UHD 4K video files.

To that end, we’re excited to hear that Western Digital has recently announced a slew of updated external and internal hard drives with capacities up to 8TB (16TB in RAID configurations).

wdfMyCloud_G2

But these drives are not just about capacity. They’re also helium filled and thanks to HelioSeal technology, hermetically sealed. You can read more about HelioSeal technology, but beyond the ability to produce high capacity hard drives the benefits are fairly clear cut: Since Helium is much lighter than air, there’s less friction or internal resistance, which results in better and more accurate performance. Western Digital also promises that the drives are built with optimized power consumption.

Western Digital Expands Its Hard Drives And External Storage Solutions To 8 TB (PRNewsFoto/Western Digital Corp.)

Western Digital expands its hard drives and external storage solutions to 8TB. Photo © PRNewsFoto/Western Digital Corp.

The 8TB external hard drives are available now and include My Book, My Book for Mac and My Cloud for a MSRP of $300. The 8TB helium platform drives are due to ship in April, but can be pre-ordered here. The 8TB Western Digital Red NAS has a MSRP of $345; the 16TB My Book Pro RAID has an MSRP of $1,100; the 16TB My Cloud Mirror has a MSRP $900; and the 16TB My Book Duo RAID has a MSRP of $550.