News

posted on 10 June 2008 13:40

WD has announced that its 3.5-inch, 1TB Caviar Black SATA hard drive is the fastest such drive on the market.

The Caviar Black comes in either 750GB or 1TB capacities and has a 3Gbit/s SATA interface.

Don Bennett, WD's VP and GM for desktop storage, said: "During initial testing, the new 1 TB product proved to be the fastest 3.5-inch 7200 RPM drive we have ever built, so much so, that we were inspired to create a whole new class of product with WD Caviar Black."

The drives feature:-

- Dual processors - twice the processing power to maximise performance.
- 32 MB cache - bigger, faster cache means faster performance.
- 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.
- 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.

WD's new 'blue, green, black' product system details drive class differences. Caviar Blue represents standard WD drives. Caviar Green drives offer cool, quiet and eco-friendly operation. Caviar Black drives deliver maximum performance.

Seagate also has a 1TB SATA 3.5-inch drive, the ES.2 Barracuda with a 32MB cache as well. Concerning the fastest drive claim, our understanding is that the Seagate drive is 4 x 250GB platters and the Caviar Black is three platters, so WD's areal density is much higher and reduces the number of accesses required. Increased areal density should provide a boost in performance as data is packed more densely on the platter.

The Manufacturer's Suggest Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Caviar Black 750 GB is £107.10 and the Caviar Black 1 TB is £154.65. Both drives are covered by a limited five-year warranty.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}