Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Hard Drive Review

XP Start Up

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. For our tests the clock starts as soon as the system "beeps!" and stops when our Anti-Virus splash screen disappears. While all the other tests were run with a streamlined XP image this particular image is the test bed's "day to day" OS and it has accumulated a lot of crud over the months from installs and removals. We chose the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line as it is the last program to be loaded on start up.


OK, let’s face it, darn near ANY 7200RPM drive is going to be outclassed in this test by the SSD ilk, but the Black Edition 1TB still inches past its little brother; though we are more inclined to call this one a draw as it is well within our margin of error. In any case, this drive does not post terrible numbers, rather it’s up against the best of the best and thus small differences do make a big difference.

ADOBE CS3 LOAD TIME

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, but when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the Adobe crucible!


In the Adobe tests the WD 1TB Black does get awfully close to the VRpator’s performance level and once again it does inch past the 640GB version (though we are going to call it a draw once again). Honestly, it’s getting harder and harder to justify the added expense of the VRaptor when Western Digital's own “normal” enthusiast drives come so close to its performance.