Users have carried out all kinds of experiments with their Raspberry Pi, including developing strange methods to connect other hardware components, led by hard drives. There are various solutions on the market aimed at bridging the Raspberry Pi and traditional mass storage, but now Western Digital is stepping in with a 314GB hard drive specially prepared in terms of physical size and power consumption.
More than once I've imagined a Raspberry Pi converted into a BitTorrent box. The idea isn't bad, but there's a stumbling block: storage. While anyone can get an external enclosure for a hard drive and connect it to the Pi via USB, that's not what you'd call an elegant solution, not to mention it needs an additional power supply. Add other use cases, such as emulation. A Super Nintendo ROM doesn't take up much space, but an ISO image of a PlayStation 1 game is almost 700MB per title, and microSD cards fill up pretty quickly. So the Raspberry Pi often requires a conventional hard drive, yet dedicated alternatives are scarce.
That is about to change with the new WD3140LMCW hard drive from Western Digital. The company already offers a kit to install a 1TB drive in the Pi, but besides costing $80, it's quite awkward to use. Instead, this new 314GB drive tackles critical points like the interface (no SATA ports on the drive, but USB), size (just seven millimeters thick), and power consumption, low enough to connect the drive directly to the Pi without external sources.
As an additional detail, the WD3140LMCW comes preloaded with the BerryBoot bootloader, a great ally for running multiple operating systems on a Raspberry Pi. The drive is now available at the official Western Digital store for $31.42. If the price sounds a bit odd, it's because it's an inside joke: Yesterday was Pi Day in the United States (3/14 in their format), the price is $31.42, and the capacity is 314GB.
