Posted 07/17/2008 at 10:13:00am

I'm glad to see what is probably the first review of this interesting Caviar Black drive (which btw you should note is Model WD1001FALS).  But you did miss all of the above points.  I/O - Multitasking is especially important for things like multiple PARs and RARs.  And one of the criticisms of the high-performance Deskstars is their heat.

Your test suite does show up a couple of strange, large differences in the Random Access numbers (Max. Random Access--Reads and Min. Random Access--Writes). Do these mean anything in reality?

It's also strange that this Caviar Black drive was announced, and a few shipped - and then it disappeared for a month.  And it still has not been thoroughly reviewed.

I have been looking forward to this drive and hope it turns out to be great.  But I have read that Hitachi will be releasing a new Deskstar with greatly reduced power consumption, and maybe that will be the better choice after all.

Arbie