Western Digital Caviar Black (1TB) review

£95
Price when reviewed

At 8.9p/GB, the 1TB Caviar Black is relatively inexpensive when compared with the 750GB model.

Western Digital Caviar Black (1TB) review

In comparison to the rest of the Labs, though, it’s still only middle of the road for value, and performance wasn’t particularly impressive, either. A read score of 84.5MB/sec and write result of 77.5MB/sec saw the Caviar Black slip into the bottom half of our results table, while mediocre burst and average sequential read speeds of 216.4MB/sec and 89.5MB/sec offered no sign of redemption.

Other 1TB drives, by contrast, are far better prospects. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11 1TB drive, is quicker and £8 cheaper, while the Maxtor DiamondMax 22 is at about the same performance level but is £16 cheaper.

In the face of competition like this, the premium features can’t make up for the disappointing performance and comparatively high price. If you’re searching for a terabyte of storage, you’d do well to look elsewhere.

Specifications

Capacity 1.00TB
Hard disk usable capacity 930GB
Hard disk type Mechanical
Cache size 32MB
Spindle speed 7,200RPM
Seek time (ms) 12ms
Cost per gigabyte 8.9p

Noise and power

Idle power consumption 9W

Performance tests

HD Tach burst speed 217.4MB/sec
HD Tach random access speed 12.3ms
HD Tach average sequential read speed 89.5MB/sec

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