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Western Digital Caviar Blue (500GB) review

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Verdict

Inconsistent performance and a high price - one to avoid.

Review Date: 29 Apr 2009

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £44 (£51 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
3 stars out of 6

Performance
3 stars out of 6

Western Digital's Caviar Blue range of drives is the company's mid-range brand and, consequently, there's only a 16MB cache and none of the power-saving features that distinguish Caviar Green products.

The 500GB Caviar Blue drive has the smallest platter capacity on show this month too - it's constructed from three 166GB platters - which, as we expected, translated to disappointing levels of performance.

Average read and write results of 74.5MB/sec and 48.1MB/sec place the 500GB Caviar Blue near the bottom of our benchmark table, with several other 500GB drives - including Hitachi's Deskstar and the eco-friendly Samsung EcoGreen - outpacing this disk.

The 500GB Caviar Blue can't make up for its lacklustre performance with good value, either. At 9.4p/GB, it's one of the more expensive drives on test this month. If you need a 500GB drive the Samsung EcoGreen is cheaper, faster and uses less power.

Author: Mike Jennings

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User comments

Never failed me yet!

Maybe it isnt the fastest or the cheapest but in my view and experience since 1992 WD are the only mechanical HD's that have never failed me so far! Unlike Samsung, Seagate, Maxtor, IBM/Hitachi all have failed me at some point usually within days of the warranty expiring and needing a system re-install! So I take reliability over speed any day and so far so good (last 5 years I've had my WD drives)

By Saurus on 29 Jul 2011

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