Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
Posted 02/06/09 at 01:30:19 PM by Nathan Edwards
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Editorial Correction: This review initially stated that the WD Caviar Green 2TB has a variable rotation speed between 5400rpm and 7200rpm. WD has since clarified that Caviar Green drives have steady spindle speeds, but they don't disclose the exact speeds, except that they are somewhere between 5400 and 7200rpm.
Western Digital just upped the capacity ante with a mind-blowing two-terabye internal hard drive. It doesn’t break any land speed records, but the 2TB Caviar Green is unmatched for capacity—at least for now.
The Caviar Green 2TB packs a full 500GB more onto its four platters than our previous capacity champion, Seagate’s 1.5TB 7200.11 Barracuda, which has suffered from firmware-related hitches and freezing. The Barracuda (when it works) marries speedy performance with high capacity, while the Caviar Green, like the rest of Western Digital’s Green line, focuses on quiet performance and lower power consumption. The 2TB Caviar Green has four 500GB platters spinning a rate somewhere between 5,400 and 7,200rpm, with a 32MB cache, and an areal density per platter of 400Gb/square inch.
This isn’t the drive for speed freaks—it can’t match the read or write speeds of this generation’s terabyte drives, much less the 1.5TB Barracuda or the WD Velociraptor, but what it lacks in raw performance it makes up in capacity. The Caviar Green offers sustained read speeds in h2benchw of 76MB/s, around 25% slower than the Barracuda, while its write speeds are more competitive: 76.5MB/s versus the Barracuda’s 85.7MB/s. Real-world, that means writing a 4GB file to the Caviar Green takes about five seconds longer than the Seagate drive—52 seconds to 47. Its burst read speed, though, beats the Barracuda’s, clocking in at 218MB/s to the Seagate’s 209MB/s. The Caviar Green’s PCMark Vantage score is about 15% lower than the Barracuda’s. Random-access read times for both drives are around 12ms, while the Caviar’s random write latency is around 6.7ms, 1.4ms slower than the Barracuda’s.
Western Digital’s 2TB Caviar Green is available now for $300. It still doesn’t beat the 1.5TB Barracuda’s on price or performance. We love its massive capacity and quiet performance, but are less impressed with its midrange speeds and modest power savings. The 2TB Caviar Green could make a great storage drive to complement a speedy SSD or Velociraptor, and right now it's is the only alternative for users who need more than 1TB of storage but are wary of entrusting their data to the Barracuda and its frisky firmware.
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
Green Card
Highest-capacity consumer drive on the market. Low power consumption. Quiet.
Greenland
Not particularly fast; the extra 500GB costs more than $100.
Benchmarks
| WD Caviar Green 2TB | Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB | |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 2TB | 1.5TB |
| H2benchw Average Sustained Transfer Rate Read (MB/s) | 76.25 | 98.2 |
| H2benchw Average Sustained Transfer Rate Write(MB/s) | 76.46 | 85.7 |
| H2benchw Random Access Read (ms) | 12.9 | 12.5 |
| H2benchw Random Access Write (ms) | 6.7 | 5.3 |
| HDTach Burst Read (MB/s) | 218 | 209.3 |
| PCMark Vantage Overall | 4,529 | 5, 241 |
Best scores are bolded. All HD Tach scores use HD Tach 3.0.1.0. All h2benchw scores use h2benchw 3.12.
Seagate used to be good...
Submitted by bcaskey on Mon, 02/09/2009 - 10:43am
I've already had (2) 1.5TB Seagate hard drives fail. My uncle has had worse luck with 3 of his 500GB Seagate hard drives failing. Seagate used to have wonderful hard drives before they off-shored their manufacturing. The quality is just horrible. They lost me as a customer. WesternDigital from now on.
were they in a raid array of
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/09/2009 - 12:05pm
were they in a raid array of some sort or just single drives and were they dead on arrival or did they die gradually?
As with all important data stored on HDD's I always back up my data to seperate HDD's and DVD's. HDD's are sensitive creatures and are suseptible to vibration, heat, humidity, electromagnetic fields of significant strength all kinds of other stuff.
I'm not defending Seagate I'm just saying that I'm not going to be jumping to conclusions here and hating on Seagate.
I run 2 7200.11 hdd's with no problems. One of my Seagate drives is a year old. I don't leave my computer running all the time. I use my PC and then I shut it off. Perhaps that is the problem. Running non stop Friction in the barring causes heat and death to the drive but I don't know.
Submitted by Kuchinator_7 on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 2:40pm
I had one of the effected Seagate 1TB hard drives. Everything seemed fine, then after one resart my bios began hanging and the hard drive could not be accessed. Luckily I had a product replacement plan, and most of my data was backed up, but it was inconveniant. Not all of the dirves are affected by the firmware issue. You can check the serial number seagate's website.
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
Submitted by slim186 on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 8:23pm
I read somewhere (that escapes me at the moment) that the "green power" drives, though spec'd at 5400-7200 RPM (implying variable) were actually fixed at one or the other. It would seem that this drive is a 5400 - that would account for the 25% read-speed deficit.
WD Green Caviar and 5400RPM
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Sat, 02/07/2009 - 4:13pm
Take a look at our original posting on this drive http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/western_digital_break_2tb_drive_barrier_this_week to find a link to a performance analysis noting the slower speed's being commonly used on these drives.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Submitted by fspikec on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 2:12pm
I'm surprised you got the Barracuda to work long enough to test it's speed.
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 10:46pm
I run two Seagate 7200.11 Baracuda HDD's. One is the 500gig and the other is the 1.5TB HDD. Both have 32Mb of cache and both are reliable. I have had no problems at all with either of my seagate drives. And I have not touched the firmware at all. Both have factory firmware.
Submitted by jwoelich on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 11:00am
Well, you *should* worry, since the entire 7200.11 line has been plagued with firmware issues. You won't have warning indicators; the drive will simply not work one day. Vanish, unable to be seen by the system. Don't think people are just 'hating' on Seagate, go to their support page and check to see if your drives are in the affected batch, or read their forums...assuming Seagate isn't still deleting the threads. Only way to prevent future problems is to be proactive and update the firmware if it's applicable.
We haven't actually seen any
Submitted by nedwards on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 2:23pm
We haven't actually seen any problems with either our review units or the several Barracudas our editors use at home. Nevertheless, until Seagate really offers a complete fix or the defective production runs are removed from the market people will probably be fairly wary.
Submitted by kookykrazee on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 5:35pm
I have two of these drives and have had no problems with them. One was an internal and the other was an external that I took out of the case. They get regular use and though I have seen a lot of people have issues, they have been great. Speedy, high capacity and I got both combined for about $200.
HTPC
Submitted by cappomutato on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 1:27pm
this could make a great storage drive to complement a speedy SSD or Velociraptor.
Better yet, it sounds perfect for a low profile HTPC. With the (somewhat) impending DTV switch coming, it would be nice to have a renewed focus on HTPCs. My parents, for instance, have a HDTV but they still love their VCR. That VCR love is starting to evaporate because they've added a stand alone digital tuner between it and the antenna. So, to tape Dancing with the Stars or Murder She Wrote or whatever, they have to set the VCR to record channel 3 at the proper date and time and remember to change the stand alone tuner to the proper channel and leave it on. All this for poor quality that is in stark contrast to the picture they could have gotten by watching the show live. An HTPC could solve all of their woes, but an improper build out can cause just as many, the over-priced pre-built ones aren't worth it, and just grabbing any old "Media Center" PC off the shelf could leave them with a loud heater that takes up too much space.
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 3:12pm
If you're considering building an HTPC for your folks, you may be interested in my newest book, Unleashing Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center. In addition to covering how to equip a HTPC, how to configure and set up WVMC, how to integrate it with home theater and HDTV, and how to use every feature of WVMC, it also has a chapter on finding and using useful third-party apps for removing commercials from recorded TV, converting recordings to other formats, scheduling recordings remotely, and much more.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 10:59pm
Good work.. I'm impressed. To tell you the truth though, I didn't realize that Vista media center could take up 500pages.. LOL.. But that's just me.... I love books and my 3year old daughter Jessica loves books. She worships my classical book collection.
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