Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive Review

[Apoptosis]

Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive Review

These days many consumers and enthusiasts are looking for massive storage capacities, and for more than a year the largest capacity desktop hard drive that you could buy was 2TB. All that changed today when Western Digital announced the world's first 3.0 Terabyte drive that is available for internal desktop use! Read on to see how this 3TB hard drive performs!




Article Title: Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1442/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $239.00

[skier]

that's one fast green drive!

[Digital Puppy]

Impressive...can't help but wonder how this will affect the 1.5TB and 2TB drive prices....

[Apoptosis]

Impressive...can't help but wonder how this will affect the 1.5TB and 2TB drive prices....

WD Green Drive Pricing:

1TB - $59
1.5TB - $85
2TB - $99
2.5TB - $189
3TB - $239

I don't see pricing going down much on the exisiting drives... The 2.5TB and 3TB drives will come down. Eventually you won't need the bundled HBA card, so that will knock ~$50 off the price. That would put the 2.5TB drive at $139 and the 3TB drive at $189.

[rpsgc]

Wow, that really is fast for a Caviar Green.

[pwcmed]

Wow pretty impressive!! Did I read that right, you need a AHCI HBA? EDIT: Oh I guess you only need it to boot off that drive.


WOW that highpoint card has some pretty bad reviews.

[Kartoff]

Hi all This is my first post in this forum...

Just read review because i need to buy new HDD and just ralise they launch 3TB HDD's
But i read also about problems with 2,19 TB barrier i will not have problem with though... I have i7 and X58A-UD3R mobo and seems it will handle such large drive...
But i cannot understand where exactly are the issue with 4k sectors ? Since i begin to use Windows 7 i format all HDD with 4k sectors without any issue. I had over 6 HDD, 2x 1TB Samsung and 4x 1,5TB Seagate 7200.11 (but i am happy with them) working in my PC and some other HDD laying on shelves...
So can someone explain me what to expect in the future or if there are no problem at all ?
Something i just about to forgot, i run IDE setting in BIOS, not AHCI...

Otherwise i think the price is not so bad regarding controller bundled... If i sell it i can return about $40 or more though ;) Or to keep it and i will be able to connect tottaly 14 drives in my PC

Regards.

[Apoptosis]

It's mainly a controller issue and if you are using an Intel board and want to use the ICH10 southbridge then you'll have issues as they don't have the right drivers for 3TB drives yet. If you buy one of these cards you'll get the HBA anyway, so might as well use it. As for AHCI and IDE... Why in the world would you not want to use AHCI SATA settings? I can't see any pros to IDE over AHCI

[Kartoff]

My AMD system before i get i7 didnt work well with AHCI instead of IDE... I had some issues and experienced a slow boot and slow work in windows with AHCI then i set to IDE and do not have problems at all... So i will try to switch to AHCI soon to try how it will work with my i7 setup but i dont know can i do it without preinstall 7...

Regards.

[FZ1]

So i will try to switch to AHCI soon to try how it will work with my i7 setup but i dont know can i do it without preinstall 7...

Regards.

Do some Google searches...there are a ton of sites that list out how to change from IDE to AHCI on an existing install. We may even have it on here somewhere. I have a registry change file I can post when I get home tonight that makes it super easy.

[Kartoff]

Yes allready did it and seems to work better than AMD before