Western Digital’s Caviar Blue range of drives is the company’s mid-range brand and, consequently, there’s only a 16MB cache and none of the power-saving features that distinguish Caviar Green products.
The 500GB Caviar Blue drive has the smallest platter capacity on show this month too – it’s constructed from three 166GB platters – which, as we expected, translated to disappointing levels of performance.
Average read and write results of 74.5MB/sec and 48.1MB/sec place the 500GB Caviar Blue near the bottom of our benchmark table, with several other 500GB drives – including Hitachi’s Deskstar and the eco-friendly Samsung EcoGreen – outpacing this disk.
The 500GB Caviar Blue can’t make up for its lacklustre performance with good value, either. At 9.4p/GB, it’s one of the more expensive drives on test this month. If you need a 500GB drive the Samsung EcoGreen is cheaper, faster and uses less power.
Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 500GB |
| Hard disk usable capacity | 465GB |
| Hard disk type | Mechanical |
| Cache size | 16MB |
| Spindle speed | 7,200RPM |
| Seek time (ms) | 9ms |
| Cost per gigabyte | 9.4p |
Noise and power | |
| Idle power consumption | 8W |
Performance tests | |
| HD Tach burst speed | 101.0MB/sec |
| HD Tach random access speed | 9.2ms |
| HD Tach average sequential read speed | 47.0MB/sec |
Disclaimer: Some pages on this site may include an affiliate link. This does not effect our editorial in any way.
