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Western Digital Caviar® SE 250GB SATA Review

SPECviewperf® 9.0.3 and Conclusions

SPECviewperf® 9.0.3

Conclusions

Where costings are prohibitive to the budget minded reader for X amount of Pounds/Euros/Dollars, this drive is an excellent addition or upgrade to the system.   There are bountiful choices in hard drive capacities from this range and taking into account todays cost per MB it they really are great value for money.   It has the performance to match in both Raid configurations and importantly quiet and cool to touch even after a full Radiosity run.

What we have to consider and think about as the cost performance ratio of the drives is so good and backup in a workstation is completed very frequently today - is there now a need for Raid 1 configurations at the low end budget?    There are those of you out there who will say yes - but others no! The need for speed in completing work in render outputs is most certainly there for these drives.

Most certainly in a server scenario Raid 1 or 5 is of a paramont and the cost of 3 or 4 of these drives is nothing in comparison to say 5 years ago.   There should be no excuses in delays if the array goes down.   A new drive popped in and rebuild completed on the fly will get most people up and running without even noticing that something has gone down.

The results from HD Tach and Sandra 2007 SP1 have shown some very interesting scores which must not be dismissed. Cross comparisons may be found further back in our review of the MSI 965 with the 16MB Cache drive variant and this will give you an idea on how much extra performance can be gained.

What of the future?   Drives are becoming much bigger with the 1TB monsters about and 32MB Cache is being muttered about being brought into play in the lower capacity drives with large platters, will this increase performance or hinder it?   Time will tell.

For now, this hard drive from Western Digital with its 8MB Cache in a good entry level performance system will keep many a user happy with the right peripherals.   Finally you ask - what Raid choice is to be made?   This ultimately lays with the reader but hopefully some of the results shown today will help you make that final coice.

www.3dprofessor.org Award for Western Digital Caviar® SE 250GB Hard Drive

5 out of 5 - Editors Recommendation for Entry Level Hard Disc

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - PCMark 2005 Advanced with build 1.2.0 and Sandra 2007 SP1
Page 3 - HD Tach 3.0.1.0
Page 4 - Autodesk 3D Studio Max 9 & Cinebench 9.5
Page 5 - SPECviewperf® 9.0.3 and Conclusions

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