Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Retail Desktop Drive

[Comment Bot]

Please feel free to comment about our story entitled "Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Retail Desktop Drive"

[BillyBuerger]

On the rotation speed of the GP series of drives. As you quoted from WD's PR... "IntelliSpeed, a fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance." Notice the use of words here. It doesn't state that it changes the speed of the drive at all, it just uses a "balance" of spin speed, transfer rate and caching. Every test that I've seen of the GP drives has shown them to actually be 5400rpm drives. But as 5400rpm drives tend to carry a bad rep as being poor performing, WD came up with their "ItelliSpeed" term to make their drives sound better. It does not as you say "If you are not accessing the drive it can slow down the platter speed and when asked to perform it can ramp up the speed to put a smile on your face."

[chrisram]

This is something that I am looking deeper into but I can hear the pitch of the drive change when it is being used. When asked, WD just points us back to the document we copy and pasted from.

[VinylVision]

Whch model and capacity WD VelociRaptor drive did you use for you test comparisons?

In view of your test results, do my drive specification of the more expensive WD VelociRaptor as the system drive appear in the following video editing pc appear to be a worthwhile additional expenditure? I am a new user configuring a video editing computer with a system drive plus a 4 drive hardware raid array. I intended to use the WD VelociRaptor 300GB Sata II 10,000rpm drive as the system drive and non-VelociRaptor 500gb Sata II 7,5000 drives for the raid. The PC will run Vista Ultimate 64.

Your review is an eye opener. Very informative indeed! Thanks.