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Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS (2 TB)

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This is it: the world’s first 2 TB or 2,000 GB hard drive. It is not a high-performance 7,200 RPM drive, but a 5,400 RPM energy-efficient drive, according to Western Digital’s specifications for the Caviar Green WD20EADS. You may still remember our review of the 1 TB version, the WD10EADS, which remains  the most energy-efficient terabyte hard drive we have tested. Therefore, our expectations are high.

Still, there are some things to consider. The WD10EADS, for example, is based on three platters, while the WD20EADS utilizes four platters for its full 2 TB of capacity. More moving parts translate into higher power consumption, which is why the new drive cannot beat its 1 TB brother. However, capacity per watt still is much better.

Specifications

All Western Digital desktop drives are based on SATA/300 interfaces with NCQ, and those with capacities of 1 TB or more have 32 MB cache. The operating temperature range was increased from between five degrees Celsius and 55 degrees Celsius to between zero degrees Celsius and 60 degrees Celsius, which is also the case for the two other drives.

Western Digital doesn’t talk about its actual spindle speeds and prefers to refer to IntelliPower, which is the marketing name for the balance between spindle speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms, as part of its effort to design drives with the best balance between performance and power consumption. Insiders still say the speed is 5,400 RPM.

Power and Performance

The Caviar Green product portfolio is comprehensive, and it leaves out all of the little capacities that aren’t useful for end users, but system integrators seek. Western Digital’s Green drives start at 500 GB, while the high-capacity versions offer capacities of 1.0 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2.0 TB. The 1.5 TB and 2.0 TB drives are the new models, and only these were rated for the operating range stated above.

The WD20EADS is not one of the most efficient drives, as it is based on four platters. Therefore, its operating temperature reached 39.0 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) after a long idle period, which is higher than the temperatures we observed with the other drives in this review. The throughput maxed out at 102 MB/s, which is a bit less than what Samsung’s Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen reaches. Access time, however, was surprisingly quick at only 13.2 ms. We double-checked our test results several times, but always found the same results: The WD20EADS has great access time and I/O performance despite being a low-power drive.

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waxdart 21/04/2009 11:27
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Speed Or Capacity = erm both. Speed for the OS - Capacity for the grot.

vasthegreek 21/04/2009 14:18
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waxdart :
Speed Or Capacity = erm both. Speed for the OS - Capacity for the grot.



Why do people make such comments?
Get 2 drives or more...You should know that there is no single solution that fits all cases well.

Get a VelociRaptor for OS/Apps and a 2TB for the grot. I actually have 4 drives. OS/Apps in mirror raid on VelociRaptors, 1 drive for games and 1 drive for general data + my NAS etc. Or look at SSD for the OS. It is best to partition the data you have based on the usage of your system. If you want a single HDD then you must be suicidal. No offence =)

vasthegreek 21/04/2009 14:21
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Regarding the review, WD once again are on top of the game =)
Always reliable, fast and I am surprised about the noise levels. I cannot hear my VelociRaptors and they are 10000rpm drives. (Ok I know they are not the drives in the review, but still WD).

Anonymous 22/04/2009 05:58
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VelociRaptors are premium drives, costs about 2~3 times the normal drives of the same capacity. I wonder if the VelociRaptors drives can outperform a pair of interleaved Raid drives.

Anonymous 22/04/2009 07:38
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What people dont realise is that Western Digitals are nearly impossible to do head swaps on, so if your drive fails, your pretty much buggered if its a heads/preamp problem.

vasthegreek 22/04/2009 10:19
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ICE_COOL :
What people dont realise is that Western Digitals are nearly impossible to do head swaps on, so if your drive fails, your pretty much buggered if its a heads/preamp problem.



And does the head swap cost less or is more successfull than a mirrored drive? That is why there is RAID =)

vasthegreek 22/04/2009 10:25
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conman77 :
VelociRaptors are premium drives, costs about 2~3 times the normal drives of the same capacity. I wonder if the VelociRaptors drives can outperform a pair of interleaved Raid drives.



THAT is the main issue !!! PRICE !!! One of my drives could have got me 4 normal WD drives. But usually what you pay for is what you get. I don't think that a single drive would outperform raid-0 on the other hand you can do raid-5 instead of raid-0 etc. I think it is really hard to decide what is the best choice cause we don't all have the same use of our data and computers. You got to think or power consumption too and, overall heat in the case etc. However I was pleasantly surprised with the VR's regarding heat, noise and speed.

Anonymous 22/04/2009 15:19
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where's Miles? has he not got anything pointless to say about this article?

hockeyguyinoc 23/04/2009 01:12
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Just a comment that will help newbies understand what they are looking at. For the benchmark graphs add somewhere that lower numbers are better/higher numbers are better or something like that. I would put it either access times or at the bottom of the graph. Just my two cents for someone who is new but wants to learn something.

voicepass 27/04/2009 13:17
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