On Tuesday, Western Digital announced the first 2 terabyte (TB) hard disk drive, a new addition to its Caviar Green product line.

It's the highest capacity single HDD in the universe, dubbed the 2TB Caviar Green. The 3.5-inch platform drive includes 32MB of cache and is based on WD's 500GB per platter technology with 400 GB/in2 areal density.

With the launch of the new Caviar Green 2TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacities needed to operate today's highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files, Western Digital senior vice president Jim Morris said.

The WD managed to hold its own against the Spinpoint F1 and Barracuda 7200.11. Overall, however, the new 2 TB drive's specialty is storage, not speed. With this 2TB drive, Western Digital is obviously eyeing the tape replacement and PVR users who crave for high capacity.

The newly released drives also claim to be efficient and power saving, it uses less power than typical drives with similar speeds and capacities, Morris said.

The drive comes only a few weeks after Seagate launched its 1.5TB hard disk drive and promised a 2TB version for soon.

The new 3.5-inch Caviar Green 2TB WD20EADS hard drive costs $299 and will be available from the end of January.