Seagate today introduced its Constellation(TM) family of new enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice(TM) from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.

"The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points."

Today, CDRLabs brings you an in depth look at Sony's new 8x Blu-ray Disc writer, the BWU-300S. Offering some of the fastest BD reading and writing speeds available, the BWU-300S is capable of 8x BD-R, 8x BD-R DL and 2x BD-RE writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 8x. The drive also sports an 8MB buffer and is backwards compatible with all major CD and DVD formats, including DVD-RAM.

Western Digital sent out a press release this morning, announcing the launch of its new WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drive. Based on WD's 500 GB/platter technology, this new drive feature a 32MB cache as well as a number of advanced technologies such as StableTrac, IntelliPower and IntelliSeek.

WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard drive - the world's highest capacity drive and the latest addition to WD's popular, environmentally friendly, cool and quiet, WD® Caviar® Green™ hard drive family. This new 3.5-inch platform is based on WD's industry-leading 500 GB/platter technology (with 400 Gb/in2 areal density) with 32 MB cache, producing drives with capacities of up to 2 TB.

"While some in the industry wondered if the end consumer would buy a 1 TB drive, already some 10 percent of 3.5-inch hard drive sales are at the 1 TB level or higher, serving demand from video applications and expanding consumer media libraries," said Mark Geenen, President of Trend Focus. "The 2 TB hard drives will continue to satisfy end user's insatiable desire to store more data on ever larger hard drives."

Optical and hard disk solutions manufacturer Plextor announces a new range of wireless Networked Attached Storage (NAS) drives and media players. The company is responding to the ever-growing demand for wireless products from both professionals and consumers based on their need for more installation flexibility.

Capitalising on the success of its previous range, Plextor has re-engineered its popular single NAS drives to give them wireless capability. These new drives present the perfect solution for more storage capacity by making it easier to store, share and back-up data over a network.

The wireless PX-WNAS500L (500GB) and PX-WNAS1000L (1TB) models are designed for competent small office business users.