Western Digital Caviar Green (2TB) review

Western Digital's enormous 2TB drive is the largest internal disk that we've ever seen. Over 1,800GB of formatted storage is split across four platters, and Western Digital's environmental features limit power draw to 6W - not quite 4W, but still impressively frugal.

The 2TB drive was the best performing Caviar Green disk on test. An average read speed of 84.5MB/sec competes with drives that aren't optimised for low power draw, and the write speed of 77.9MB/sec is good too. Access times of 7ms and 4ms for file reading and writing keep up the good work.

A cost of 11.1p/GB isn't prohibitive on paper but, at £208, this is the most expensive disk in the Labs this month. And the 2TB Caviar Green faces stiff competition from the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, which is better value (7p/GB) and faster. Unless you really need the biggest drive available, we'd recommend that drive instead.

Author: Mike Jennings