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Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA Hard Drive
(Western Digital 2TB Green Drive)
Western Digital have released the world's
first 2TB hard drive that not only boasts some truly tremendous
storage space but also some impressive specifications which has been
exclusively designed to be one very eco friendly drive. Ladies and
gentlemen, I introduce you the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA
Hard Drive, the Green Drive.
In terms of history, I still remember
getting a 20MB (megabyte) hard drive in the late 80's and thinking that I
would never fill this up, however the 90's and I purchased a 1.6GB
(gigabyte) hard drive, once again thinking that I would never fill it
up... Of course I was wrong again and here I am thinking that my 500GB
hard drive is too small.
This is all a result of operating systems,
software and games requiring larger hard drive space. Thankfully hard
drive manufactures have been keeping up with not only the developers but
also the community in terms of storing videos, music and the like.
So how big is a terabyte (TB)? The answer
is 1024GB but to appreciate how large this drive is, you need to break
it down even further.
| Bit |
0 OR 1 |
| Byte |
8 Bits |
| Kilobyte |
1024 Bytes |
| Megabyte |
1024 Kilobytes |
| Gigabyte |
1024 Megabytes |
| Terabyte |
1025 Gigabytes |
In laymen's terms, this
is equivalents to;
| Photos |
Up to 400,000 digital photos
(5MB per photo) |
| Songs |
Up to 500,000 songs (MP3)
(128kpbs @ 4 minutes) |
| Video |
Up to 150 hours of Digital
Video (3.5MB per
second) |
| DVD Videos |
Up to 770 hours of DVD quality
video (2.59GB per hour) |
| HD Videos |
Up to 240 hours of High
Definition video (8.3GB per
hour) |
Epic is probably the
best word to describe the amount of content that can be stored on this
hard drive and if you divide the following table by 4, that will give
you the standard amount on a 500GB hard drive. Another important feature
of the drive is that it is eco friendly, meaning that the drive has good
power consumption that not only benefits the user but also the
environment. This relates to lower temperatures and quieter
operations which is another bonus. Once installed, the drive was
extremely quiet, even when it was accessing data thanks to the "Cool and
Quiet" technology.
Features
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Reduced power
consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent
compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD’s
IntelliSeek, NoTouch, and IntelliPower technologies.
-
Helps enable
eco-friendly PCs - WD Caviar Green drives yield an average drive
power savings of 4-5 watts over standard desktop drives making it
possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with
higher capacities and the right balance of system performance,
ensured reliability, and energy conservation.
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Cool and quiet -
GreenPower technology yields lower operating temperatures for
increased reliability and low acoustics for ultra-quiet PCs and
external drives.
-
Massive capacity -
Capacities up to 2 TB offer the most available capacity for
storage-intensive programs and space-hungry operating systems, like
Windows Vista, with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and
video.
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Perfect for external
drives - External drive manufacturers can eliminate the need for a
fan in a high-capacity product with a WD Caviar Green drive, the
coolest and quietest in its class.
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IntelliPower - A
fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching
algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and
solid performance.
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IntelliSeek -
Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise,
and vibration.
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NoTouch ramp load
technology - The recording head never touches the disk media
ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as
well as better drive protection in transit.
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - Employs PMR technology to
achieve even greater areal density.
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StableTrac - The
motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced
vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read
and write operations. (2 TB models only)
-
Low power spin-up -
WD Caviar Green drives consume less current during startup allowing
lower peak loads.
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Advanced power
technology - Electronic components deliver best-in-class low power
consumption for reduced power requirements and increased
reliability.
Specifications
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Performance
Specifications
Transfer Rates - Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
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Physical
Specifications
Formatted Capacity - 2,000,398 MB
Capacity - 2 TB
Interface - SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive - 3,907,029,168
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Physical
Dimensions
Height - 26.1 mm
Length - 147 mm
Width - 101.6 mm
Weight - 0.73 kg
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Environmental
Specifications
Operating Shock (Read) - 65G, 2 ms
Non-operating Shock - 300G, 2 ms
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Acoustics
Idle Mode - 25 dBA (average)
Seek Mode - 0 29 dBA (average)
Seek Mode - 3 26 dBA (average)
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Vibration
Linear - 20-300 Hz, .75G (0 to peak)
Random - 10-300 Hz, 0.008 g² / Hz
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Non-operating
Low Frequency - 5-20 Hz, 0.195 inches (double amplitude)
High Frequency - 20-500 Hz, 4.0G (0 to peak)
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Electrical
Specifications
Read/Write - 6.00 Watts
Idle - 3.7 Watts
Standby - 0.80 Watts
Sleep - 0.80 Watts
From the specifications, the standout
features for us include the speed, acoustics and electrical
specifications which are thoroughly impressive for a drive of this size.
In relation to a 3.5" drive, the drive is also quite heavy due to the
size of data that can be stored.
However, in order to do this drive justice, we recommend that you have a system
capable of supporting and complementing the specifications of the hard
drive. This includes CPU, RAM, motherboard and Operating System.
Installation
The installation of the Green Drive was relatively
straightforward as all we needed to do was ensure that the drive was
secure in our case, connect a SATA cord and connect the power. The rest
was up to the motherboard and operating system. Our test system included
the following;
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Motherboard - Gigabyte
GA-MA790GP-DS4G
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Graphics Card - HD4870 X2
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Memory - 2048MB (2 x 1024MB) DDR2 CAS4 1066Hz Dominator Corsair
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Power Supply - Titan 850W ATX Intel AMD PC
Case Power Supply
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Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
(64-bit) with SP and DirectX - 10
Once installed, Microsoft Windows Vista
Ultimate Edition automatically detected the drive and it began the
formatting process which took a longer than use amount of time compared
to smaller drives and once the
operating system was installed, we were ready to test this behemoth. Compared
to our previous drive, the boot-up speed was fairly similar and
accessing the drive through a variety of programs was quite fast.
We tested the drive with SiSoftware Sandra 2009 (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant),
one of the world's most definitive benchmarking programs and the results
were quite impressive, especially in relation to read, write and seek
speeds.
Sandra 2009 SP2
Read and Write (MB) |
Sandra 2009 SP2
Random Access Times (ms) |
(74.4) Write Index
(78.91) Read Index |
(4) Write Access Time
(16) Read Access Time |
For a drive that is built to be
eco-friendly, the Green Drive is still a contender with other smaller
drives built for speed.
Another testing program we used was HD Tune 2.55
that showed some close results to other drives. The results once again
mirrored those of Sandra 2009 with some decent results in all aspects of
data access.
HD Tune 2.55
Transfer Rates |
HD Tune 2.55
Random Access Times |
(80.2) Average
(105.1) Maximum
(49.9) Minimum |
(12.1)
|
HD Tune 2.55
Burst MB
(154.2) |
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In terms of transfer rates, The Green
Drive performed a little slower than other drives, however the random
access speeds of the drive was extremely impressive with the only
shortfall (just) being the Burst rates. Even so, it performed
exceptionally well for a drive of this caliber.
We also tested the drive using a
variety of "normal" applications that include the operating systems,
CS4, surfing the net and a variety of games from low performance ones
such as Peggle to Crysis. When accessing the hard drive, the speeds
remained at a good constant with no slowdowns or waits and proved a
flawless experience for the user. The StableTrac technology also ensured
that our system did not vibrate when accessing data unlike previous
drives that we have used.
In conclusion, the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA Hard Drive
is a very remarkable drive that although is not the fastest drive on the
market, it still boasts some impressive results for a drive of this
size. The only downsides to the drive is the price for now and the
repercussions of a doomsday scenario, however developers have come a
long way since drive failures. Even so, this is one drive that we could
happily recommend to a variety of users from business to home and
gamers.
Recommended!
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