It's not uncommon to see hard disk drives having more than 1 TB of storage capacity nowadays as price per gigabytes continue to go down. Even though solid-state drives are the current speed kings, not one solid-state drive will snatch the storage king title. Today we'll be reviewing Western Digital's 2 TB Caviar Black. We have the WD2002FAEX model which takes advantage of SATA Revision 3's 6 Gbit/sec transfer rate.

System

• Case: Corsair 800D
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (Socket LGA 2011)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 3960X C2 (Socket LGA 2011)
• Processor Cooling: Corsair H100
• Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 32 GB 1866Mhz (9-11-10-27-160-2T XMP)
• Video Card: ASUS DirectCU II Top 7970 (CrossFireX)
• Solid-State Drive: Corsair Force GT 240 GB
• Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium
• Power Supply: Corsair Gold AX1200 Professional Series

Technical Specifications

• Rotational Speed: 7,200 RPM (nominal)
• Buffer Size: 64 MB
• Average Latency: 4.20 ms (nominal)
• Load/Unload Cycles: 300,000 minimum
• Transfer Rate: 6 Gbit/sec
• Formatted Capacity: 2,000,398 MB
• Capacity: 2 TB
• Interface: SATA Revision 3 6 Gbit/sec
• Height: 26.1 mm
• Depth: 147 mm
• Width: 101.6 mm
• Weight: 0.75 kg

Testing Methodology

We'll be using hiyohiyo's CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Technology's Disk Benchmark to measure all of the hard disk drive's performance. We'll be using the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme as our motherboard and the hard disk drive will be connected through Intel's SATA Revision 3 6 Gbit/sec port.

Installation

Installing Western Digital's 2 TB Caviar Black is just like any other hard disk drive out there. All you have to do is attach it to whatever hard disk drive bracket that your computer case has and you're all set.

Results

Final Thoughts

I'll say it right now...Caviar Black  plus a SATA Revision 3 port will be really fast. Not Solid-state drive fast...but fast enough that at some of the test, you'll think that you have a Western Digital Velociraptor as your hard disk drive. There's one thing that I did not like about the Caviar Black and that is when it comes to acoustics. It is loud. It's louder than your run-of-the-mill hard disk drive. I sounds like someone is knocking inside my case when it does it. I would definitely buy an internal hard disk drive case if you are building a quiet PC. Then again, you'd be buying an SSD for that or a Caviar Green if you're on a budget. For raw performance though outside of SSDs, and 10,000 RPM hard disk drives, nothing can beat the Caviar Black right now. Nothing.

Rating

Ease Of Use - You won't have any problem installing the Caviar Black unless this is your first time assembling a computer. If that's the case, please read the manual. Just don't forget that the Caviar Black will benefit from a SATA Revision 3 port.

Noise - Performance comes at a price and what you usually not get is a fast and quiet hard disk drive. It's just not possible. If you want speed and low noise from a storage device, then get an SSD.

Price And Performance - A little bit on the expensive side. But if you want speed in a 2 TB package then this is the hard disk drive to buy.