WD are king
by MrMcSwagginsWD are one of my personal favourites when it comes to hard drives, still haven't jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet either because every build I make just has one of these bad boys in it!
Type | |
Drive type | HDD |
Storage | |
HDD drive capacity (total) | 1 TB |
Colour | |
Primary Colour | Black |
Connectivity | |
Connection Type | SATA |
Drive Specifications | |
Drive size | 3.5" |
Drive rpm | 7200 rpm |
Cache | 64 MB |
Shock resistance (during operation) | 30 G |
Standards / Specifications | |
Standard / specification | SATA III (6G) |
Power Specifications | |
Power consumption (idle) | 6.1 W |
Power consumption (operation) | 6.8 W |
Dimensions | |
Weight | 690 g |
WD are one of my personal favourites when it comes to hard drives, still haven't jumped on the SSD bandwagon yet either because every build I make just has one of these bad boys in it!
I bought four of these years ago (5 years? 6?). I recently rebuilt my whole PC and as I put the drives into it, it occurred to me just how long I'd been using them (and using them a constantly). So I figured I owed WD a positive review. These were double the price when I bought them years ago. Today I'd probably buy the 2TB or 4TB versions but they're the same line. I have all four as part of a Storage Space in Windows 10 and I've added to SSDs to the pool as well to act as a faster cache layer. Not that these drives are at all slow. Given I can do this now I'd probably also buy the cheaper Blues because the SSD layer makes up for the lower performance but if you're not doing that (and you're probably not), these drives are the best non-Enterprise drives you'll find, imo.
There's not too much to talk about really, it's an OEM packaged hard drive, you get the drive in a moisture barrier bag as well as the packaging it was shipped in, so obviously you'll need SATA data cables. So where to start? Speed would be a nice place to start but I'll start somewhere else. The model... A bit of an odd place to start right? This is 2013 model of the drive which I believe is (at the time of writing this) the newest model of the drive which is a bit... Strange. Anyway. there will be a short summary at the end of the post.Anyway, on to speed.Unfortunately I don't have any numbers for the drive brand new but I'd expect 150MB/s - 180MB/s for sequential numbers, 45MB/s read and 80MB/s write for 512k numbers, 0.5 read and 1.5 write for 4k numbers and 1.4MB/s for 4k QD32. Currently, after a year of use with my drive this is what it is achieving in CrystalDiskMark. Keep in mind this is after a year's worth of use and it is not an indication of speeds for a brand new drive.Information:Minimal disk usage, making sure not to use things form that drive while the test was running. Without me doing anything it would occasionally go up to 4% usage but the large test size should negate any effect that would have.Passes: 9 for more accurate dataFile size: 3.73GB in binary (Base 2) (4000MB), 4GB in decimal (base 10). This means that it'll be testing the the hard drive rather than the cache.File space: 575GB used out of 931GBTests:Sequential (large file E.G. A short, high bit rate 1080p video)512k ("medium" sized files, E.G. a few files a couple hundred MB in size) 4k (small files, E.G. a lot of MP3 files) 4k QD32 (same as 4k but more requests are sent to the controller as some drives increase performance in this situation)I MUST STRESS THAT THESE ARE SPEEDS AFTER A YEAR OF USE AND THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE SPEED OF A BRAND NEW DRIVE.Results:Sequential 122.4MB/s Read, 110.7MB/s Write512k: 28.12MB/s Read, 52.60MB/s Write4k: 0.297MB/s Read, 0.730MB/s Write4k QD32: 0.604 Read, 0.772 MB/s WriteSpace:My drive came with 931GB and you should expect to see a similar number with your 1TB drive. If you are concerned that you're paying for "1TB" but getting 931GB there's a simple solution. Hard drives are marketed using the decimal number system, that's base 10 or 0-9. Windows will read it in binary, that's base 2 or 0 and 1.Noise: Perfectly quiet. It makes a noise occasionally but nothing loud. My drive is mounted vertically and the bracket for the drive uses rubber mounts to reduce vibration so noise 'experiences' will vary.Price: This is my reason for dropping a star. Yes, this drive performs well but unless you get that one in a million drive it just isn't worth it. There are cheaper options which are almost half the price. If you're looking for a 1TB drive that's cheap, this is not that drive. If cheap is what you're looking for then lookout for cheap drives from HGST/Hitachi, Toshiba's DT series drives (usually rebranded HGST drives) or something like a WD blue, all of which will provide similar or even better performance (the 7200RPM drives that is) for less. If OCUK had half stars then I would've knocked off another half star for it.Summary:Well to keep it short, it's quiet and it performs well and it's a pretty decent drive. However, it's a decent drive which is ruined by an extremely high asking price, yes,
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