Western Digital Caviar Blue (640GB)

Manufacturer:	Western Digital
Price:	£51.75 inc VAT
Reviewer:	James Morris
Review Date:	Sep 2008
Speed	52/55	95%
Value	41/45	91%
Overall	93%

Verdict: [+] AREALFast; affordable; sapcious[-] SURREAL750GB Samsung F1 faster at loading games

Despite a generous 640GB capacity, the Western Digital Caviar Blue has only two data platters. This equates to 320GB per platter, which is close to the highest areal density of hard disks at the moment. Greater areal density means that more bits of data can be read and written per second of given rotational speed, so the new 640GB Caviar SE16 should be fast. Otherwise, this is a standard 7,200rpm disk. The Caviar Blue range still has a 16MB cache, although some manufacturers have moved to 32MB caches in their largest-capacity disks. PERFORMANCEIn the Simpli Software HD Tach 3.0.1.0 RW tests, the Caviar Blue managed sustained reading at 99.4MB/sec and writing at 88.3MB/sec - not as fast as the 10,000rpm Western Digital VelociRaptor, but certainly faster than Samsung's F1 range. The similarly priced 750GB Samsung F1 (it costs £64.57 from Aria) has slower sustained reading speeds of 76.9MB/sec and a slower sustained writing speed of 72.2MB/sec. The average access time of the Caviar SE16 is also faster at 12.5ms, rather than 13.6ms. In real-world testing, this equated to a score of 975 in our Gimp image editing test. On the same system, the Samsung F1 scored 971, while the VelociRaptor scored 979. The Caviar Blue took 37 seconds to load the Relic level of Crysis, however - three seconds longer than the VelociRaptor and one second longer than the Samsung F1. CONCLUSION The 640GB Western Digital Caviar Blue is very quick and a great example of how important areal density is to hard disk performance. The 750GB Samsung F1 is also fast, and although it costs £13 more, it provides stiff competition.With a slight victory for both disks in one or other of our real-world tests, performance between the two disks is roughly evenl. Your decision is therefore based on price; the Samsung offers 11.6GB per pound while the Caviar Blue offers 12.4GB per pound. Therefore, the 640GB Western Digital Blue is the better buy.You can buy the 640GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 from Ginger6 for £51.76 inc VAT now (price correct at time of review)For more information on the 640GB Western Digital Caviar SE16, see Western Digital's website