RoHS Comes To Data Storage: Western Digital Caviar GP

[PGHammer]

Western Digital has a new lineup of power-saving drives under the GP (Green Power) nomenclature. The internal drives are branded Caviar GP and based on the already-stellar Caviar SE16 SATA family, with capacities of 500 GB, 750 GB, and a scary 1 TB. They have the same performance numbers as the same-size Caviar SE16 SATA drives, but use less power than their Caviar SE16 counterparts. The upshot is you can now build a complete system using nothing but RoHS components! As far as I know, the 1 GB model is the largest RoHS internal hard drive available; unfortunately, NewEgg and most retailers haven't started stocking this monster yet.

[wasserkool]

Its good to see that more manufacturers are jumping onto the ROHS wagon. Lets hope the momentum stays and eventually get rid of the E-waste problems. It saddens me to see some 8 year old kid in a third world country plummaging through our old computers to salavage precious metals.

[unhappy_mage]

The upshot is you can now build a complete system using nothing but RoHS components!
This has been true since 2006 (http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagate.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2592&p_created=1130261815&p_sid=lmARPYKi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ 9MSZwX3Byb2RzPTAmcF9jYXRzPTAmcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHl wZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXJ vaHM*&p_li=&p_topview=1), at the latest. I bought three drives from Maxtor in 2005 that were RoHS-compliant.
As far as I know, the 1 GB model is the largest RoHS internal hard drive available; unfortunately, NewEgg and most retailers haven't started stocking this monster yet.
That's "1TB". And Hitachi's 7K1000 (http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.8027a91c954924ae4bda9f30eac4f0a0/) is available and RoHS compliant (see datasheet (http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/67A68C59B27368FC862572570080FC70/$file/Deskstar7K1000_010307_final.pdf)).