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.
Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB Hard Drive Review Comment Thread
- Thread starter SKYMTL
- Start date
aristhrottle
Well-known member
Are they going to be using this technology on the new Raptors?
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.
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.
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Joekerh
Member
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.
I appreciate the inclusion of as many drives during comparison runs as is practical, but one must admit when it is grossly unfair to pit 7200 rpm drives against Veliciraptors and SSD models. So it is wise overall to keep them separate. We are, after all, talking three distinctly different classes of devices here, and, barring a screwup of biblical proportions, the test results will show which class a drive belongs to/in. That is where the special little finer points of seek time, access time, STR, burst, and so on become so important. Even more so the cache and its control algo. More so than most people believe. For some a review that goes into that kind of depth would be more confusing than helpful. For others, "normal" reviews hold relatively little value. Striking that happy medium is the challenge, and that is a gargantuan one given that no one has managed to do it to the satisfaction of everyone yet. The HD reviews at storagereview.com come closer than any to meeting the later needs, but are perhaps a bit overboard for the former. Some day the magical balance will arrive, and perhaps SSD will bring it, as it eliminates some of the physical characteristics of electromechanical drives that cause these problems for reviewers. But the day that will happen in terms of legitimate standards is still about 2 years away. Until that day arrives, it will not be possible to perform anything approaching an unbiased review.
odis172
Well-known member
Well I can see a new raptor revision coming out in the near future with this technology 
Rommel
Banned
WOW
As soon as I get enough cash saved up I will purchase two of these drives!
Amazing!
They will replace my 2 1TB Samsungs that I use for my bulk storage.
As soon as I get enough cash saved up I will purchase two of these drives!
Amazing!
They will replace my 2 1TB Samsungs that I use for my bulk storage.
CTA
Well-known member
very impressive and resonable review...
but 2 tb is too big for one c:\ (system) ... have to partion it... does it affect on the preformance...? :\
but 2 tb is too big for one c:\ (system) ... have to partion it... does it affect on the preformance...? :\
YES, on both questions. The whole drive in one partition is FAR FAR to large for an OS drive. Partitioning a drive that large WILL slow overall performance simply because every time the head stack has to move from one logical drive to the next, it is forced to travel at least as far as it takes to reach the logigal drive containing the last file to be accessed. That often means crossing great expanses of empty drive space. I NEVER recommend doing it on a OS drive in particular for that exact reason. People have a tendency to go absolutely nuts with some of the wildest partitioning schemes I've ever seen in my life when it is absolutely NOT necessary, and very often counter productive and degrades performance. Concentrate instead on learning how to create a custom directory (folder) structure that best meets your needs. NOT using horrendous numbers of partitions saves a lot of wear and tear on such large drives as well.
Now, one last recommendation. If you are going to have two physical drives, one of which isn't accessed all that often, then set windodz to put a page file on each drive. Thusly, when windows needs to page to disk, it will page to whichever is the least busy at the time, which CAN be beneficial to performance and is infinitely wiser than making a special partition on any ONE drive just for it. Set the page file size to about 150% of the total amount of memory installed, and the more the merrier because it reduced paging needs. Setting the page file size to a fixed size reduces/eliminates page file fragmentation.
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