Just a few weeks after the Raspberry Pi 3 was released there’s a new 314GB hard drive on the market for it for around €40.
Western Digital has decided to up the Raspberry Pi 3’s already impressive performance capabilities by adding an awful lot of storage behind the biscuit-sized computer.
Based on the company’s Blue range, the PiDrive means you can soup up your computing catalogue with relative ease. Shifted towards a USB connection, the device is compatible with all WD PiDrive cables, cable kits and WD PiDrive enclosures.
Addressing barriers
BerryBoot is the software included, too. Raspberry Pi has sold around 8m units so far, according to WDLabs’ David Chew, meaning storage solutions were only a matter of time.
Thus the PiDrive is now “addressing barriers” to hard drive adoption: namely, price and power.
“In addition, we’ve maintained the key strengths of hard drive technology, including mass-storage value, high data integrity and reliability.”
Live and let Pi
The Pi 3 is a marked upgrade from its predecessors, so added storage is key. Pi 3 has a more powerful processor, specifically a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, which is around 10-times the power of the first Raspberry Pi board.
This is a major bump up from the Raspberry Pi’s 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU complex, which marks a 33pc increase in clock speed and 50-60pc increase in performance in 32-bit mode.
It’s also made major improvements in terms of connectivity, with an integrated 802.11n wireless LAN, as well as Bluetooth 4.1 compatibility.
Main image via John Biehler
