HD Tach 3.0.4.0

Short Test

Long Test

Here is were it is getting very interesting.  HD Tach shows an return read scoring of 90 MB/s, early we saw write speeds of similar scores.  Fast is the word of today here and the burst speeds with a phenomenal rate of nearly 235MB/s.   Nearly as fast as the VelociRaptor.  Yes fast indeed.   What also must be noted is the actual usage of the CPU which is negligible and the random access time winging its way in at 12ms.

HD Tune Pro Ver 3.0

Conclusions.

The Caviar Black has most certainly lived up to its claims and Western Digital must be extremely pleased that a hard disc as versatile as this has produced such good results.   It most certainly caught us on the hop here with its raw performance.   This in turn means that many end users from all walks of life can utilise this disc in just about any scenario that springs to mind.  Here it has safely taken up sanctuary of the test system for things to come; many should be looking at this currently being their upgrade choice of disc as a slave drive.  We most certainly have taken this decision.

What of the Tier Ones, S.I.’s and OEM’s alike, well, for those trying to move forward the ultimate system this has to be currently the slave hard disc of choice for the performance systems. For the ones who feel the need for bigger is better; then what the heck as the 1TB Caviar Black does it exceedingly well with its 3 platters and 6 heads. We have consistently demonstrated throughout this article the Caviar Black has whipped into shape an already fast system into an extremely fast scorching unit.

Installation of Windows XP Professional  took exactly 24 minutes from the OS Disc going in; to desktop finally appearing, this is one of the fastest installs from this operating system we have seen at this level.  So the actual write performance from a disc of this magnitude is very good indeed in real-time environments.  For the eagle eyes, yes the disc was formatted in its fullest with no partitions for complete optimal performance.   On a side note and not shown, we took a 3GB test file and transferred it within the disc taking a merge 44 seconds to complete.   Normally this is the time to be found to complete a 1GB test file on an average 3 ½” disc.

We have consistently seen read speeds within the regions of 90 MB/s this is a remarkable set of figures.  Hard disc of this nature normally struggle to reach 80 - 85 MB/s.  Western Digital has done their homework well within the logic of the disc in all sectors.  What we did importantly find was that utilising the Caviar Black at performance level found the Disc to have hardly any hit on the CPU usage which is good news for those fast intensive I/O renders.  Therefore, we have no worries on that department.    The thoughts of what the actual Raid 5 performance would be must be simultaneously ricocheting throughout many minds just now.

Temperatures of the Disc as seen within the article are respectable for a unit of this nature surrounded by a very tight condensed area of the test system.  Test systems here are fully enclosed within the chassis to get the true ambient system temperatures, not that of a system lying on a workbench.   What must be dually noted and taken into consideration is that the temperatures seen within the HD Tune Pro benchmark were recorded at the end of the working set of benchmarks and results.  So these are very respectable temperatures from a working system of this calibre.   As a point of note ambient average room temps were approximately 25.5C

Another important factor is the price of this beastie romping home at today’s rate of just under $300 US dollars this is a respectable price for a high performance disc of this magnitude and of course not forgetting a 5 Warranty.

Although this is a short review, it has been very factual and hard hitting proving unequivocally that Western Digital have done their sums right with this spectacular muscular 3 ½” Disc.

www.3dprofessor.org award for Western Digitals CAVIAR BLACK 1TB Hard Drive

EDITORS CHOICE – For High Performance Mass Storage Desktop Hard Drive