Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB Hard Drive Review Comment Thread

[SKYMTL]

These days we have been reviewing SSD after SSD for the simple reason that those high-end drives are literally saturating the market. Meanwhile, standard hard drives have taken a back seat but it seems Western Digital isn’t willing to let their drives go unnoticed. Their new Black Series 2TB drive promises high performance, massive amounts of storage space and a price that is lower than most SSDs. What isn’t to like?

You can read the review of this beast here: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB Hard Drive Review


Please use this thread to post your questions and comments.

[r0bc]

Really nice drive but $350 wasn't expecting that

[MonsterSound]

WoW! What a nice piece of Tech /improvements.
I hope this tech will spur on the competition and we will continue to see speeds increase, capacity increase and prices drop.
ThX AkG for a most excellent (and surprsing) review.

[miggs78]

Yeah expensive.. but bloody nice drive, blazing fast and excellent performance.. Velocirpator finally bows down..

AkG you said a WD 2TB review coming up in the future (that was like 2 or 3 days ago), wish you told me it was in a couple days :p..

[encorp]

I remember when the 750's and 640's Blacks first came out and everyone and their dog made fun of me for spending the extra coin on them.


HAAA

TOLD YA SO!!!

Hahahahaha

J/k

Damn nice hdd' think I'll try and pick one up!

[bojangles]

Wow...let me clean up the mess I just made...:P

Very nice drive. I just wish they take that performance and put it into a smaller drive (1 TB).

[AkG]

This is just a guess but it would not surprise me if this tech starts to filter down to the lower sizes soon. In typical WD fashion be on the look out for 1TBs w/ slightly different alphabet soup model codes.
Probably 1tb FASS instead of FALS OR it could happen like it did with the 320GB single platter came out and replaced the dual platter (which was WD3200AAKS-00B3A0 instead of WD3200AAKS-00VYA0) ;)

[ipaine]

I do have to say that the performance is just incredible. I am looking into another drive, but only for storage. Although if I had the money I think I would get one of these and use at least part of it for my boot drive.

[grinder]

very good review Akg

[chriskwarren]

$337 at Canada Computers (ouch). Still, it is a leading contender to be paired up with my SSD and become my storage drive.

This review came just in time for me; a guy I know is putting together a new high-end rig (lots of Photoshop work), and balked at the SSD prices and available space. This looks to be an excellent solution for him.

[lowfat]

For storage it is just way too expensive. Almost twice as much $/GB as the Seagate 1.5TB drives. Hopefully they make a 500GB single plattered 'Black'. Would be a much smarter purchase.

[aristhrottle]

Are they going to be using this technology on the new Raptors?

[bwm]

I do not agree with the downplaying of seek and/or access time evident in this review, or overplaying sequential read and write speeds either for that matter, which seems to be THE focal point of SSD reviews. What truly separates drives in specific classes from one another these days is the cache, more specifically, the firmware algo than controls it, which is on the drive itself. NO other single factor defines the feel or personality of a drive more than it does.

The 2TB drive barely competes with IBM's ill-fated 75GPX line of years past in terms of access time, but it is nice to see it returning to what should have been normal times for 7200 rpm drives all along. Performance all-round is better though, and everyone likes that. I'd certainly prefer it to huge drives with 13 ms and worse access times, but until SSD is here, legitimized by being standardized and formalized, I'll stick with my Velociraptors.

[Joekerh]

I appreciate the inclusion of SSD benchmarks in HDD reviews but would also like to see benchmarks for similar drives from OTHER companies. I'm a fan of WD but not so much that I disregard their competitors. Benches for the Seagate 7200.12 and Samsung Spinpoint F2/F3 drives would be VERY helpful when researching/shopping for a 500GB platter drive.

[SKYMTL]

We understand. However, other companies have not been willing to send their drives. That should change soon though.