Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green

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).

going to make a request for an article here

would it possible to test out some HDD controllers
http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1397855

compared against an areca and some cheapo £15 ~ebay sil3132 based controllers would be great.

More and more people are using home servers and these components are very much a underevaluated part of the system

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?

Originally Posted by iwod
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?

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.

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....).

Originally Posted by tank_rider
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....).

you need three drives for RAID 5, regardless of capacity

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

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

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.

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

Originally Posted by iwod
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?

Originally Posted by Tim S
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.

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.

Originally Posted by Bauul
So basically they created a crap drive, realised they had, so stuck "green" on the title to attempt to make up for it?

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.

Originally Posted by cosmic
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.

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.

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.

Is that not what we said in the article?

Not only is it extremely expensive at over £260 (bizarrely so considering even 1.5TB drives are half the price), with twice the cost per GB of faster 1TB hard drives, but it’s comparatively slow in every department too, making this a decisively niche drive suiting only home theatre PCs or set ups which require massive amounts of storage in just one 3.5” drive bay.

Originally Posted by Nexxo
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.

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Goty
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.

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.

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.

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.

Glad I bought my Samsung :D

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!

Originally Posted by zr_ox
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.

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg
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.

Originally Posted by zr_ox
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!

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.

Originally Posted by zr_ox
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!

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.