Western Digital Black Series Review (2TB)

TECHNOLOGY X TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

HDD testing at Technology X differs slightly, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with a fresh drive so, not only can we verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an HDD that is top-notch.  We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.

TEST BENCH

PC CHASSIS: Cooler Master HAF XM
MOTHERBOARD: Asrock z77 Extreme4
CPU: Intel i7 3770K
MEMORY: G.Skill Ripjaws Z 1600MHz
GRAPHICS CARD: EVGA GTX 670 FTW
CPU COOLER: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
POWER SUPPLY: Corsair TX 750 Watt V2
STORAGE: Samsung 830 256GB

 

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Info, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, and PCMark Vantage. We prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 6.2.1

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, to the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

WD Black Series 2tb-2014

One of the nicer features of this drive is Native Command Queuing which in laymens terms is a way for the drive to optimize its read and write paths, allowing less time spinning and better performance, which is very helpful during multitasking.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.47

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

ATTO WD Black 2TB

As you can see here, the drive performs within spec — the read really picks up speed at around the 8.0KB mark, and the write catches up by 16.0KB

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

WD Black 2tb Crystal disk

Again the drive shows its strength in sequential writes and performs as expected in 4K; as you can see the results are much lower than what we see in SSDs.

The read and write performance is above spec. We were pleasantly surprised at the benchmark, as it was 20MB/s faster than it is rated.

Western Digital's Caviar Black drives have long been some of the fastest and most reliable consumer grade hard drives on the market, and for good reason. WD (Western Digital) has been making hard drives since the 80s and has been an industry leader since. Much of that has to do with their Caviar branding they have used since the 90s. The Caviar Black line has been around since 2008. They have been the fastest drives they sell outside of the Velociraptor series and also have the best warranty in mechanical storage. Western Digital has recently dropped the Caviar branding and is now simply calling…

Review Overview

Build Quality
Performance
Price and Availability
Warranty

Fast Premium Storage.

The Black Series lives up to its name and performs very well. For those of you looking for a fast mechanical drive that will last look no further!

User Rating: 2.65 ( 105 votes)

2 comments

  1. Just your basic sponsored ‘review’ here.
    No explanation of what the ‘corruption protection’ or any other technology is because they’re just marketing terms and the author of this review has no idea how they even work.

    Then we have some synthetic benchmarks which don’t really tell you anything about the hard drive.

    But here’s our gold seal of approval anyways!
    Get one from our amazon affiliate link!

    • The benchmark would be more meaningful if other drives were benchmarked as well to give us a comparison point with seagate, other wd models and other wd black capacities. It would be nice to know how the 3tb wd black fair. Do they take a hit on performance due to the larger capacity?

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