With its 32MB of on board cache, the 2TB Caviar Green fares well when it comes to burst speed, just about toppling the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB. Of course, burst speed has the least significant impact on performance of any of the attributes we test here, but it's still good to see the Western Digital hasn't skimped on the cache.
HD Tach
Average Read
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
Intel X25-E 32GB SSD
OCZ Apex 120GB SSD
G.Skill Titan 256GB SSD
G.Skill 128GB SSD
Patriot Warp V.2 128GB SSD
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB
Seagate 1TB 7200.11
Seagate 250GB 7200.10
Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM Raptor
Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green
237.1
230.0
165.5
161.5
142.5
140.0
108.5
106.5
92.8
91.1
89.6
82.1
79.0
0
50
100
150
200
250
MB/s (higher is better)
Speed (MB/s
Oh dear. Despite the massive 500GB platter size, the 2TB Caviar is the slowest drive we've yet to test in HD-Tach's theoretical tests, outperformed by even a bargain single platter 250GB Seagate drive. This can only really be blamed on the drive's "variable" spindle speed and we're guessing our review sample is some way off the maximum 7,200RPM.
HD Tach
Average Write
OCZ Apex 120GB SSD
G.Skill Titan 256GB SSD
G.Skill 128GB SSD
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
Seagate 1TB 7200.11
Seagate 250GB 7200.10
Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green
Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM Raptor
137.3
134.5
87.7
81.4
81.2
78.1
62.2
61.2
53.1
51.3
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
MB/s (higher is better)
Speed (MB/s
Write speeds across the drive are equally disappointing and are another victim of the sluggish spindle speed. Only the ageing 150GB second generation Raptor is slower in HD-Tach's average write test, and this doesn't bode well for real world performance.
HD Tach
Random Access Time
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
Intel X25-E 32GB SSD
Patriot Warp V.2 128GB SSD
OCZ Apex 120GB SSD
G.Skill Titan 256GB SSD
G.Skill 128GB SSD
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
Western Digital 150GB 10,000RPM Raptor
Seagate 1TB 7200.11
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB
Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11
Seagate 250GB 7200.10
Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green
0.1
0.1
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
7.0
7.8
12.5
13.5
15.0
15.1
17.5
0
5
10
15
20
m/s - less is better
Time (milliseconds)
More disappointing results when it comes to random access time as well, with the 2TB Caviar Green delivering a very high 17.5ms random access time, a full 5ms slower than that of the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB and 2.5ms slower than the £50 Seagate 250GB drive. This will likely result in poor real world results when booting windows or loading games - both very hard disk intensive tasks.
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