[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion
Well now that the Western Digital Black 2TB Hard Drive has been on the test bench and received a good testing, can it really be considered a “performance” drive? With the emphasis being on pure performance and offering a happy medium to purchasing an SSD, how did it actually do?
Well in terms of performance and given the bracket WD has touted this drive to be in; it fits exactly in the market where it claims to be. It has slightly more grunt on ATTO disk benchmark than its blue counterpart and actually beats WD’s own Dual Drive (SSD+HDD) combo drive on write speeds which is really impressive; for a mechanical hard drive to even rival a SSD in terms of performance is something which should not be ignored and is driven by the SATAIII bus. With a large 64MB cache on the WD Black 2TB, it helps smooth out the sequential read and write speeds which give a little increase in performance over say a drive with a 16MB cache.
One area where a SSD will always win out is the IOPS (input/output operations per second), as you can see in the AS SSD results, none of the mechanical hard drives do well in this test and with it being one of the main factors in quick and fast performance, the SSD breed wins out always. With that being said, those wanting a 2TB drive are surely more focused on storage and given the levels of performance the Black shows in all the tests, it is a solid performer and in my opinion, deserves the moniker Western Digital has given the Black range.
Features wise, there isn’t much to give other than the actual specifications; the 2TB Black features a 7200RPM speed, 64MB cache and features SATAIII. It is also worth noting that this drive is Windows and Mac compatible but should also be fine for running Linux from (not tested).
Looking at probably the most fundamental area (the price), Western Digital have priced this drive at £111 which equates to a 5p/GB ratio which is highly impressive in my opinion given the performance. One thing worth mentioning is that if you are looking for a 2TB HDD for storage and don’t mind having a slightly lower spec drive, then the value for money factor of the WD Black 2TB goes right out of the window. For little over £63, you can get Western Digital’s Green 2TB drive which obviously sacrifices performance for reduced noise, power and ultimately speed, but unless you are putting games on the Black, maybe it isn’t the drive for you.
With that being said though, the Western Digital Black 2TB Hard Drive brings a new dimension of performance to the storage market and gives users “near” SSD read/write speed performance with a much healthier and desirable £/GB ratio. If you are looking for a high performing storage solution then the Western Digital Black 2TB HDD is a no brainer with a very reasonable price tag when you factor in all the vital components which makes it the drive it is.
Many thanks to Western Digital for sending us a sample in for review, I also look forward to seeing more in the future!
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Performance
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Design
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Value
Summary
The Western Digital Black 2TB drive offers top performance from a mechanical hard drive and with a very reasonable £/GB ratio, it makes for an interesting option to a SSD and certainly suits someone with a large Steam Libary and can’t afford a 1TB SSD.
