Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB Hard Drive Review

Conclusion

What can we really say? Western Digital 2TB Black is the epitome of excess from every perspective: its size makes nearly every other drive look inadequate, its performance is simply off the wall and it costs a fortune compared to less worthy drives. To say we like it a lot would be putting it mildly.

When we first heard about the “dual actuator technology” it seemed like nothing more than some new marketing spin and was just a mere marketing phrase added in to help this Black Edition drive stand out in a highly competitive market. After seeing it in action, we’re happily converted to the dark side and can say for a fact that this is not just PR fluff, but something that actually helps performance while lowering vibrations and noise. This drive is still not what you would call “silent” as it does rumble and grumble during high loads, but its acoustical footprint is much smaller than that of the VelociRaptor (which we find has an annoying whine to it even during idle times) and to our admittedly untrained ears it is not as loud as the 1TB Black.

To our way of thinking, any drive which can not only beat the VelociRaptor in speed, noise and value has to be one heck of a product. Now that is not the same thing as saying it’s a great value as the Black Edition drives are known for pushing high price points. However, with time and even more competition from the likes of Seagate and SSDs, we are sure this only real weakness will be alleviated. Actually, the other weakness this drive has it is simply too good to be relegated to storage. Inside the 2TB Black beats the heart of a main boot drive and it is almost a crying shame to use it as only a data storage device. With that being said, it does make an awesome storage device as it is as massive as it is fast….but it still is a crying shame to only have it as a “D drive”.

After working with a lot of SSDs we can honestly say this is the first Hard Disk Drive that we would even entertain the thought of using as our main drive. We’re an elitist lot aren’t we? In fact, if you portioned off the first 200GB or so of the Black 2TB the resulting “C Drive” would be a force to be reckoned with even against SSDs.

We can go on and on about how good this pricey drive is, but in the end we think that the best thing we can say about is we have never loved a hard drive as much. If you are looking at the VelociRaptor and can justify $300 for a hard disk drive, yet don’t want to leap onto the SSD bandwagon until it proves itself a bit more, THIS is the drive you want. Seriously, forget about the VelociRaptor line and spend your hard earned dollars on the Western Digital 2TB Black. We’re still pulling our jaws off the floor at its performance. For that and so many other reasons, it receives out Dam Good Award.


Pros:

- Best in class performance
- HUGE 2TB size
- Beats even the VelociRaptor in most performance tests
- Improved Latency

Cons:

- Louder than most non Black drives
- Price
- Will make you regret previously spending the coin on a VelociRaptor (like we did)