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Hardware Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 13 Mar 2009.

  1. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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  2. BioSniper

    BioSniper Minimodder

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    Is there any possibility that you can measure the power usage as one of the main selling points of the green drives is that they are both quiet and use less power than other drives (the slower spindle speed is how they manage this which results in downgraded performance).
     
  3. yakyb

    yakyb i hate the person above me

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  4. iwod

    iwod What's a Dremel?

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    Sorry, but has Bit -Tech lost its Mojo?
    You are comparing a Green, Power Saving, Eco, HDD for its performance AGAINST THOSE Performance Hard Drive?
    So why not WD against OCZ Vertex 2 ?
    Honestly it could have at least conclude with Power Usage being its main selling point. May be this is for Home NAS where Speed is not a concern?
     
  5. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    The saving is £5 a year at Western Digital's best case figures... is that worth spending over the odds? I'd say the typical lifetime for a hard drive is three to four years, so at most you're going to save yourself £20 in power bills over the lifetime of the drive if you run it 24/7.

    As there are no other 2TB drives out there at the moment, you could argue that in order to replicate the capacity of this drive, it'd raise your utility bills because you'd need two drives instead of one to reach the same capacity. Two 1TB drives will set you back £150 at most and you've still got £110 in your back pocket to cover the increased power requirements over the lifetime of the drives. It's just bad value at £260... at £200, it'd be a different conundrum, but that is not the price these drives sell at today.
     
  6. tank_rider

    tank_rider What's a Dremel?

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    however, there is also the case that you only need 2 2TB disks rather than 3 (assuming raid 5) so you are saving the cost of running one whole drive (not sure what the power usage of one drive is....).
     
  7. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    you need three drives for RAID 5, regardless of capacity
     
  8. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Of course, all of what we've said goes without saying if you want 8TB of storage in a four-bay NAS box because there is simply no other option on the market today. But then if you've got £1,000+ to spend on storage, I envy you. :p
     
  9. Bauul

    Bauul Sir Bongaminge

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    So basically they created a crap drive, realised they had, so stuck "green" on the title to attempt to make up for it?
     
  10. cosmic

    cosmic What's a Dremel?

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    Its good to see an honest and frank report on this new drive, and I think the findings are about right

    It may be that Western Digital have launched before they can manufacture significant volumes of these 500GB platters so have gone for premium pricing to keep demand in check.
     
  11. Gremlin

    Gremlin What's a Dremel?

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    I'd hoenstly love to see just how well the Black version of this drive does, hopefully it sets a new level

    Also is there any chance of you guys testing the fan favourite amoung many enthusiasts the WD 640GB Blue/Black? Apparently its a very nice HD especially when in Raid
     
  12. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Sorry, but I must concur with iwod. Comparison with high-performance drives is kind of pointless --we know the outcome of that contest. This drive is quite clearly aimed at the mass-storage server market, so storage capacity, noise, temperature and power were the prime considerations. I think it is an ommision of this article to not even look at these factors.

    It's a bit like criticising a van because it can't keep up with sports cars in terms of performance and handling, while totally disregarding its primary function as a fuel-efficient hauler.

    No, they created a drive for a very specific purpose. The 1Tb version, I can personally attest, is excellent: capacious, quiet, cool, power-efficient: it is what I want in a HTPC drive.

    I think that the review is terribly imbalanced. It simply does not examine the drive on its intended application.

    The pricing simply reflects market forces: not too many 2Tb drives out there. Arguably, not too much use for them yet either. By next year, all that will have changed and the price will be half of what it is now.
     
  13. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Is that not what we said in the article?

    :rolleyes:
     
  14. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    But by your argument what sports cars are half the price of the van and are only 3 MPG less? Come on here! Don't be fooled by marketing Nex. For the price of other 1TB or even 1.5TB drives it's plenty slower and doesn't save you that much money. The only saving grace of it is that it's really, really quiet, but then I'd get a 1TB green over a 2 still - there's a heft premium for it and not that much more to gain.

    OK for a storage drive you still want fast continuous reads and writes - this thing is barely faster than what was available 2 years ago - it's only bigger.
     
  15. Goty

    Goty Minimodder

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    This has been stated before (and commented on), but I think it needs to be reiterated: knocking a drive for its performance when it was literally the last consideration when designing the drive is a little naive. I can see you commenting on performance if this was the server-oriented Caviar Blue series, and definitely a Caviar Black drive, but why the Green series? If I (or anyone else, for that matter) had been asked, we could have told you this drive would have been slower than pretty much anything else out there, so why were you disappointed when you arrived at this incredibly obvious outcome?

    Now, that being said, your price concerns are legitimate, but this is currently a halo product (in capacity if not in performance). As you stated, it's a four-platter, eight-head drive. Manufacturing costs probably aren't exactly cheap in comparison to other drives.
     
  16. dogknees

    dogknees Minimodder

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    Um, any particular reason that all the photos of the drive are of the same side? Why are the none of the controller board?

    Bit-tech usually gives is a good look at the hardware, this review has virtually the same 3-4 pics repeated several times.
     
  17. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Had this drive been priced competitively, we would have been much more forgiving of its understandably lacklustre performance - the fact is though, it's an expensive drive that doesn't perform up to scratch for what you're paying and won't save you any money in the long run. Performance is relative to price, as is capacity. This drive just doesn't deliver on either front and we've already covered the power savings.

    If this had been a Black 2TB drive at £260, delivering performance comparable to or better than the Spinpoint, you could make a case for it outside of the one usage model we highlighted in the article, but as it stands, unless you have a need for 2TB of storage in a single 3.5in bay, either grab yourself a 1TB Green for £70, or a 1.5TB drive for ~£130 if you've only got room for one drive or three 1TB Greens for £210 (if you're part of the 'Green' niche these drives are aimed at) and pocket the £50 difference to pay your power bill over the lifetime of the drives.
     
  18. ¦Cold¦

    ¦Cold¦ What's a Dremel?

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    Who cares how much power they use, it's not like they're running on batteries and as has been pointed out above by Tim the cost saving is negligible.
     
  19. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

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    Slapping "Green" on a product doesn't mean we should ever cut it slack - we review on an apples to apples basis, no matter what environmental buzz words get stuck on the packaging. Those who complain about us not judging it on its "merits" are being naive and no doubt defending this drive's "green" credentials, which as we calculated in the review, are flimsy at best. 4W is probably what a microwave runs at standby.

    From any sort of hard disk I'd expect performance, silence, and low heat - it's why we only gave the Samsung 1TB a 9/10 and not a 10/10. Here there might be silence and cool running, which as we said in the review makes it a good choice for media centres, but performance is in very short supply. Add to that the massive price premium for a drive that's only 500GB bigger than a drive that sells for less than half the cost and you end up with a lame duck of a product in almost every respect - it's simply crippled by the price.

    I'm not saying there isn't a place for low noise, low heat drives - the 1TB Caviar green for example is a great option for HTPCS. But when Western Digital expect you to pay almost £260 for the privilege of 2TB in a single drive, it really really doesn't add up.

    It doesn't matter if the drive "set out" to be a slow and silent or high performance bit of kit - we score hard disks on a level playing field and performance wise this drive just doesn't deliver.
     
  20. LeMaltor

    LeMaltor >^_^

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    Glad I bought my Samsung :D
     
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