Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Hard Drive Review

Conclusion

We all know by now that SSDs seem to be the way of the future but for most of us, they are just not to the maturity level where they would be considered a viable alternative to a standard hard drive. Their prices are high and the storage capacity many of the less expensive SSDs offer pales in comparison to even the most basic spindle-based drives. Then there are those few standard HDDs on the market that make us want to forget the SSD phenomenon altogether and the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB is one of those drives.

There is a heck of a lot to like about this drive and very little to not like. As is customary lets do “good news / bad news”. When the tests were all run and the dust had settled we walked away very impressed with the power shown by the Caviar Black 1TB. As we said earlier in this review it is becoming harder and harder to justify the added expense of the VelociRaptor when WD is producing kick ass drives like this one. It’s very fast, very powerful and has a massive amount of room for your…ahem…video and picture collections.

To really get the absolutle best from this drive we would partition off 100GB to 150GB or so for our OS drive and leave the rest as a “D” drive (or use a really good defrag program often...and make sure our OS footprint was low via nLite/vLite). This would accentuate the already good performance of this drive and REALLY give higher end drives like the VelociRaptor a run for their money!

Unfortunately, the WD 1TB is a hot running drive, there is no other way of putting it other than to say that it also gives the VRaptor a run for its money in this area. For this reason we would have a hard time recommending it as an external drive…but with Western Digital’s Green line out there, there is really no reason to use the Black in that kind of application. Some people have stated that they found the WD Black series to be loud on idle and seek. We can honestly say that on our open bench setup with the drive less than a foot away from us, it was silent on idle but did produce a very nice rumbling growl when seeking. To us this is not bad as it is not as loud as any Raptor and if you place the Black in a good case it’s not going to be that big a deal. In fact, unless you are a real silent enthusiast this drive would be a better choice (from a noise envelope point of view) than the VRaptor. Just remember, the trick to keep any drive as quiet as possible is adequate vibration dampening as the enclosure / case is where most drive noise usually comes from.

If we had to summarize this drive in only one phrase that phrase would be “jack of all trades”. It’s not the best choice for every occasion but it certainly is right up there in darn near every category. If you need a fast, large drive and you do not care about heat output or a bit more noise than normal, the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB really should be at the top of your list. Proving that being the fastest isn't the only way to get to the front of the pack, we are proud to award this drive our Dam Good Value award. Congratulations, Western Digital!


Pros:
- Very good performance
- Large 1TB size
- Very reasonable price
- Great Jack of All Trades drive


Cons:
- A little loud on seeks (though not an overly annoying sound by any means)
- Latency