Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Hard Drive Review Comment Thread

[AkG]

While SSD may be grabbing all the attention right now, you shouldn't count out the tried and true platter drives just yet! One of the best examples of what is not only a great bang for your buck but also one kick arse drive is the Western Digital Black series of enthusiast class hard drives.

Recently we took a long hard look at the WD 1TB Black and walked away very, very impressed. Great performance, great size, great price and a great (now) industry leading warranty...what more could you ask for from a drive.

You can read our review here: WD 1TB Black

Hope you enjoy it,
AkG

[bojangles]

I loved it! Great hard drive for the price and performance. I personally bought the 640 GB version, which will be RAID 0'd or RAID 5'd (depending if I feel like redundancy), and so far that drive has proven that my Raptor 150 GB needs to be replaced sometime soon.

Very informative. Great work AkG!

[MpG]

Nice review. Still unable to wrap my head around the idea of actually needing that much storage space, but it's nice that those who do, don't have to give up too much in performance.

Interestingly enough, I'm presently having the chance to compare a pair of WD's 640's with a pair of WD 500's, and I suspect that the dual anchoring of the spindle, may be doing a lot to reduce rotational vibrations, since the 640's are noticeably quieter/smoother. Not just snake-oil in this case.

[Chilly]

I <3 my WD 1TB Black drive, I haven't used it in months(having no desktop), but I still love it, works great.

[netforce]

I ordered 3x WD Black 640gb last week. Can't wait for them to come.
There's going to be some serious slicing and raiding!

[ipaine]

I just picked up one of these drives a couple weeks ago. I am pleased with it but I am not getting the same speeds as you did in your review.

For example in CrystalDiskMark my scores where as follows:


And results from HD Tune Pro 3.5:


As you can see they are across the board lower than your results. Do you have any ideas why? I do believe that I should be getting better speeds from this drive but for the life of me can't figure it out. What kind of bios settings do you have for that drive?

[belgolas]

I have one too but I am thinking of getting an SSD for windows but I spent too much already so thats gotta wait.

[Chilly]

Originally Posted by ipaine

I just picked up one of these drives a couple weeks ago. I am pleased with it but I am not getting the same speeds as you did in your review.

For example in CrystalDiskMark my scores where as follows:


And results from HD Tune Pro 3.5:


As you can see they are across the board lower than your results. Do you have any ideas why? I do believe that I should be getting better speeds from this drive but for the life of me can't figure it out. What kind of bios settings do you have for that drive?

Are you using it as your Windows/OS or App drive? That will slow down any and ALL benchmarks, as the benchmark will be interrupted everything your OS/App needs to do something.

[random_2]

Great review AkG. Very informative. Only one small thing to mention, and I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned already. Doesn't PMR stand for Perpendicular Magnetic Recording?

"The same goes for PMR or Parallel Magnetic Recording. All new drives have this technology and its what is allowing for such large drives with “only” 3 platters that still meet the 3.5" HDD standard size specification."

Anyhow, thanks again. If we ever do see the WD 2TB Black, I'd really like to see your review on that bad boy....

Keep your stick on the ice

Randy

There is no God, so take a deep breath and try to relax

[AkG]

LOL. Good Catch! I read that as "perpendicular" about a million times....don't ask me how! Funny how what you type and what you read can be 2 dif things! :)