WD's Caviar Black and RE4 2TB drives get benchmarked, one is wicked fast
By Darren Murph 
posted December 11th 2009 7:59PM
posted December 11th 2009 7:59PM
Western Digital plopped itself firmly in the midst of the 2TB HDD battle back in early September, and if you've been holding off on buying your next slab of storage until the benchmarks hit, we're pleased to inform you that the wait is over. The crew over at Hot Hardware slapped both the Caviar Black and RE4 drives into their testing rigs in order to put 'em both through their respective paces. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, both of the 7200RPM drives were mighty quick in real-world use -- not SSD quick, mind you, but pretty darn snappy given the capaciousness. When push came to shove, the Caviar Black managed to pull ahead in terms of raw speed, but given that the RE4 is really an enterprise drive, we doubt you're keeled over in shock. Hit the source link for all the charts and bars, but only if you've got a C-note or three to burn once you get the itch.
I just bought a Caviar Black for $50 on sale. I love this drive! Don't forget they are dual processor. :)
@Schmitty
It was 640GB, sorry.
@Schmitty How many GB was it? Link to the product to buy it?
@werty1432k oh ok
And here I am with my 160GB drive in my MacBook.
@werty1432k rules of engadget:
1. DO NOT talk about your mac on the blog - as u will get down ranked
2. DO NOT talk about your mac on the blog - as u will get down ranked
Im not gonna down rank you. Because i own one. (And yes i have W7 on it)
ON TOPIC: Me too, im tired of my 160GB in it. Gonna upgrade to 320 or 500GB ASAP
@IvanP91
1. DO NOT tell others how to post - it will get you down ranked
2. DO NOT tell others how to post - it will get you down ranked
I won't down rank you because you have a mac
ON TOPIC: I would love to upgrade the storage but a RAM upgrade comes first (from 2GB DDR3 to 4GB DDR3) and then I guess the HDD.
@werty1432k
hahahahahaha
@(Unverified) lol
@werty1432k
Multiple downrank FAIL!
Just look at how beefy the internals of that hard drive is, oh why can't I have four of them in two RAID1 arrays
@fischju NICE
@fischju No idea, if you mean because they don't support raid then all you have to do is run the TLER utility and turn TLER on, (instant raid edition). If it's money that is holding you back, sorry can't help with that, I am just as broke as you...
I don't get it. These drives are 7200RPM 2TB drives, but they cost $299 on Newegg. And yet, 2 1.5TB 7200RPM Seagate drives will cost you $240, you've got 1TB more space, and $60 more in your wallet!
Yeah, yeah, I know 1 drive is better, but it's not cost effective right now!
@Jeff Kibuule How is 1 drive better, I prefer mulitple drives, once you go raid you never go back.
@Jeff Kibuule They had the 2TB Hitachis on slickdeals two weeks ago for $115.
Sure its a five platter, but $300 for a 2TB is BS.
@Jeff Kibuule Well actually if one of them stops working you still have the other one and know that you should backup the data pretty soon... thats kind of an advantage.
You can never have too much storage. You can fill up a 1TB drive with HD footage fast...
What the heck is "enterprise drive" supposed to mean? More reliability? Does it boldly go where no drive has gone before?
why does it have resident evil 4 in the name/
I viewed the benchmarks on hardware.com. I can't really see how the minuscule speed increase is justified by it's higher price over the Seagate. I understand it's faster but come on ... 5.65ms vs 6.02 in a full stroke access test, who's going to see that difference with out some type of synthetic benchmark? Doesn't justify it's increased price.
@ChrisGray
7.4MB/sec faster read speed.
@ChrisGray
Seagates have had absolutely dismal reliability the past couple of years/iterations. At this point I wouldn't trust my data to a Seagate drive regardless of the price.
@(Unverified) It's actually 8.6Mb/s faster, which works out to slightly less than an 8% increase over the Seagate. 118.8 vs 110.2, my point earlier was does this small speed increase justify it's price tag? In my opinion the drive should have a retail price of around $170 - 190, not $299.
@MeanSpyvie And before that Western Digital fell into the same category, they were the budget brand of HD makers with very bad reliability; my point is that the drive costs too much for it's additional speed.
if they're not sata 6...who cares?
@AM321CAN
I mean why hunk down 300 bones for a 2TB sata 3 when the seagate sata 6 (obviously backwards compatible with sata 3) is the same price...
@AM321CAN
Because Seagate right now is not the drive to get, based on overall reliability. Maybe next year...
@AM321CAN
It's SATA 2 (3Gbps) and SATA 3 (6Gbps)... stop calling them SATA 3 and SATA 6 !!
Wow... 2010 is here and we are still in the 2TB limit. Guess the peak has been reached for at least the next 5 years.
@(Unverified)
And actually these drives were first reviewed back in EARLY SEPTEMBER!
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=775
Geez! they were comparing WD's latest 2TB (@500GB/disc) to last generation Seagate 1.5TB (@375GB/disc) It's not even apple-to-apple comparison. They should have used a Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB at same 500GB/disc, released same time 2 months ago.
@Warren Young
Benchmarks have been out for months now.
Anandtech compared the XT and 2TB Black here http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3668&p=2
and even on a SATA 6 Gbps controller WD Black was faster.
not a wd fanboy or anything, but all the benchmarks are clear regarding Seagate XT. the SATA 6 Gbps interface is purely marketing.
what we need is SSD on SATA 6Gbps!
@AlexQ5
Thanks for the link! ... agree that current hard drives aren't saturating SATA II, 3Gbps, quite yet but it's nice to see they are getting 6Gbps interface ready now.
Very interested to see a SSD, for sure. To design in the NAND parallelism necessary to meet 6Gbps will translate to $$$$ that I can't afford. All SSD today also use RAM caching scheme to boost burst rate, their real sustain rate is only good but not great....
You know what? I think what we really need is a Prius - a hybrid drive.
No one uses full 2TB at a time. It's always just a working set of sectors that we access for a period of time. One only needs enough Flash in a hard drive to get similar performance of a SSD but at a much lower cost. I will go for a 2TB w/ 16GB flash for say $50 more if it have the SSD goodness at a heartbeat.
@Warren Young Have you guys seen this? The first SATA 6G SSD was tested and blows this stuff away! http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=832
I'm a WD fanboy. I have Black. Have had Raptors, but for me it was simple economics.
4 x 1.5 TB Barracuda's for $90 bucks each vs 3, 2 TB's @ $289 each.
@(Unverified) Or the Hitachi 5-platter 2TB drives for $115 each.
Although the abundance of streaming porn online is making me question the point of my bulk purchase. =p
They really should have compared these to the last (7200.12) generation of Seagate drives. I don't think it's fair to compare them to a more than 2 years old (7200.11) drive.
I would have preferred them comparing the drive to other 2TB drives as well, like HITACHI HD32000 and Seagate Barracuda XT.
Not as fast as Samsung HD103SJ.
I never quite got why they use caviar as name, that doesn't sound appetizing or speedy or reliable or flashy or cool in relationship to a HD in any way, strange choice.
@Wwhat
Sure it does! Caviar and a nice wine.... you are making me hungry!
nice