Hardware Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green

Performance is Dissapointing. I want a 2tb drive that's quiet, and fast. Like the 1tb samsung in 2tb form. Just because it has more storage doesn't give it the excuse to be slow.

I'm not interested in saving a couple dollars a year on best case figures.

 

I also concur with Nexxo & Iwod.

You've subjected this drive to a benchmark suite aimed entirely at determining performance. It's got 4 500GB platters, it's going to be slow! It's rated at 5400-7200 rpm...it's going to be slow, It's integrated power saving...surprise (it's going to be slow).

The battery of tests indicates the very reason for the drive being manufactured in the first place. Yet whats shocking is that you fail to see this.

It's not built for perfomance guys. Super quiet, super larger and efficient. Yes you can buy two 1.5TB drives for the same price but they consume more power, make more noise and are not energy efficient.

I think you should apologise to WD because the review is way off the mark!

 

Except the spinpoint is probably not perceptibly louder and only consumes a few more watts so in fact its just a big slow drive, if big is the be all for you then this is great but its nearly twice the per gb price and has low performance.

If quiet is where your at surely the silent ssd should be the focus couple that with a gb network card to your server else where and it would still be cheaper.

 

Exactly my point. The samsung won't be noticeably louder, probably just as cool, and only consume a few watts more... Why can't they just make a better product that has better performance, yet is still cool and consumes a reasonable amount of power. Just because they stick greenpower on it and have it consume only a few dollars worth of electricity less a year doesn't give it the excuse to be slow.

Nothing wrong with comparing the drive to other consumer drives. Reviews fine IMO.

 

Four 500GB platters should be FAST. It's got ultra high density and can potentially read from eight faces at once.

There's little point in it being manufacturered if the power saved is negligible and the applications it should be used for are extremely niche. It's perfect for some things - storage with limited physical space and HTPCs but that's about it. I would absolutely buy the 1TB option for the previous two, but ignore it for everything else.

Don't be bought by green marketing.

 

OK this is getting frustrating - energy efficiency in this case doesn't mean SQUAT. 4W is a laughable saving on your home energy bill. As far as hard disks go, the difference between an "energy efficient" HD and a run of the mill one is tiny - as we wrote about in the review and have referenced in this thread multiple times now.

500 GB platters should mean it is FAST, not slow
7,200 RPM should mean it is FAST, not slow
Integrated power saving shouldn't impact on performance AT ALL.

Yes, this drive is pitched at "environmental PC's" <shudder> and external storage solutions but I'm not going to go easy on it just because it's a signed up member of green peace and pre-sorts it's recycling for the bin men. We test every hard disk on performance and value and as is very clear, this drive delivers neither!

Honestly, just because it's got "green" in the title doesn't mean it's worthy of defending for its "environmental" qualities - even if we take WD's best case scenario the money and carbon saved is so minimal as to be almost comic. The Samsung is Fast, Quiet and Cool. This is loads slower, a little quieter and a little cooler - hardly worth the extra £190 while the Western Digital Green 1TB is just as cool, just as quiet and less than 1/3rd of the price!

Yes, if you want 2TB in a single drive it's your only option, but in comparison to every other large capacity mechanical hard disk out there it falls way short.

 

I agree with Bindi, 4watts less of power is nothing. The drive is big, but speed and price kill it's appeal.

 

I agree with energy efficiency not meaning much with caviar Blacks running at just 10-15 watts, hardly the most power hungry thing in your system. I'm just wondering when the Black 2TB edition will be released? Probably when other companies have competing 2TB drives huh?

Off topic a bit but I just bought a 1TB Caviar Black over the Samsung Spinpoint F1 do to hearing about its higher than average failure rate. I was wondering what you guys at bit-tech think about Samsungs failure rate? Especially since you guys said you bought half a dozen of them.

 

I don't take much notice of 4 platter drives.
They are mostly just there to set capacity benchmarks.
For most people, either buying a 1.5TB drive now or waiting for a 3 platter 3x666GB model that will cost less and perform better makes far more sense.

 

It's true... Seems the answer is it's too slow to be a system drive and too expensive to be a storage drive.

The only place it can hold it's own is why I'm reading the review... The server under the stairs here has 13 drives to total a relatively small 4TB capacity (once you remove those drives sitting around in the RAID arrays as spares and a backup). This is the absolute maximum for the case and probably too much heat when you add the twin processors. A drop of 4 watts by 13 is a good amount, also only 3 drives minimum (although would use 7 for backup) to reach the same capacity - so the removal of drives will cut about 100watts and a cooler/quieter environment.

That being said, I won't be purchasing that many for the same conclusion as the review... Too slow for system files, too expensive for storage.

When another company or two bring out 2TB drives the prices will fall to be reasonable, that's the time to consider this drive.

 

spot on

 

The GP drives are 5,400 rpm, WD just don't explicitly state this to avoid putting people off.

 

From what I understand the drive speed is variable anywhere between 5,400 RPM and 7,200PRM, with lots of etailers listing the theoretical maximum 7,200RPM as the drive's spindle speed. In the end it's a moot point though - it's still slow.

 

Bit Tech does good HD!! Good review, It's good to show people how much difference a good HD can have on performance over a cheapo unit. I wonder how 3 Spinpoint F1 1TB drives in Raid 5, would have performed in your tests, any possibility of adding Raid configurations to your test suite in the future?

 

As a bottom line: "The van was slower than the Porche, and had worse handling (see graphs here). But it's OK if you want to haul stuff in it, I suppose".

Your points would be better made if you compared it to other large storage drives. Any van is a crap sportscar. but to know whether it is a crap van, you need to compare it to other vans.

Well... no. First: low power also means low heat. Second, this is a large storage drive. Their native home is likely to be a large server, where they can be observed chittering away in big herds. Now think of 10 drives. 40 Watts is not so shoddy now. Think of a large farm with 100 drives. 400 Watts --starts to add up, doesn't it?

Now think of power consumption at start-up, active read/write etc. All of a sudden the leccy bill starts mounting.

I take your point that its pricing makes it relatively poor value compared to other, slightly more energy hungry but cheaper large storage drives. But the point is: you did not compare it with those drives. You can't tell a good apple by comparing it to oranges. You have to compare it to other apples. On qualities relevant to apples.

 

You all seem to be missing the bigger picture here.

For the drives intended purpose it more than fit's the bill, yes a little on the expensive side however it's just been released. As for 4 watts not being much? Not as a single drive, in one PC however if more people went for energy efficient PC's then 4 watts per hard drive, per PC is an enormous saving in the long run.

Sure the PC in my sig is not exactly the most efficient, but these days it's seldom on. Only when the urge for some zombie slaying bites do I use it. Laptop for everything else!

To say that we should not buy into the green movement is utter ignorance, not that I'm here to argue climate change however we all have a role to play in making the world a better place for future generations!

EDIT - Nexxo beat me to the - It all add's up part!

 

To be fair, these are not enterprise-class hard drives, so no fruit based analogies.

 

Lol, you forget to test the power savings of a power saving drive. :banghead:

 

Me too. Love my Spinpoint. It's the coolest running drive I have every had and performs.

Green stamps on drive products are just sales tactics. Guys if you really want to save so much energy and performance is not an issue......... then cut down the volts to everything you have and under clock your components. Then you could sluggishly save the world one PC at a time.

I believe the article is balanced if you read well. They took everything into consideration on how different people would view this product on specific needs. What a hassle it would be to give a "Green" product its own comparison chart. There is probably a GreenPC.com site for that kind of thing you could go too. I don't care to google for it.

 

I am so glad I went with two Seagate 1.5tb drives for my HTPC ^_^