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Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB Hard Drive |
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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Monday, 30 July 2007 |
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Page 3 of 3
The File System benchmark returned a drive index of 78MB/s and a random access time of 8ms. Compared to the other drives in the database, it beats them hands down. However, keep in mind that this is a synthetic benchmark and should only be used for comparison to other drives rather than a standalone measurement.
The Physical Disks Read Performance benchmark returned a drive index of 88MB/s and a random access time of 14ms. Once again, these are synthetic results which will be used in future reviews to compare drives relative to each other.
HD Tach had the following to report. A 210.4MB/s burst speed is simply ridiculous. Random access time was clocked at 13.8ms (typically for 7200RPM drives and without a spindle speed increase this number is almost impossible to improve), 3% CPU utilization (+/- 2%), and an average read of 79.8MB/s. These are all very high numbers and will certainly be used in future drive comparisons. Finally, I decided to run a few temperature measurements. To avoid the airflow variable in a case, the drive was tested exposed, sitting atop a plastic test bed. Temperature readings were taken with a Fluke 561 HVACPro IR Thermometer at a distance of approximately 1 inch. The side of the hard drive was measured. Ambient room temperature was recorded at 23.5C. In an idle state (just sitting in Windows XP) after one hour the drive got to 44.5C (21C rise over ambient). After an hour of load testing (Sandra's burn-in test looping the Physical Disks benchmark nonstop) the temperature rose to 47.8C (24.3C rise over ambient). That's a bit warm, but perfectly tolerable and with a couple case fans should be significantly lower.
As far as other testing goes, let me say this. I've been using this drive for about three weeks now and it's blazing fast. Load times on games and applications take no more than a few seconds, I can easily switch between a currently running game and any other application I want to run (who wants to sit and wait for the next round of CS:S to begin when you die?), and for the first time in a while my computer is waiting for me to make the next move, not the other way around. However the best benefit may be the price. Currently selling for roughly $200 ($250 if you buy direct), this comes out to a little over 29 cents pre usable GB. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all that space
Pros
- Solid design
- Extreme storage capacity
- Interesting features
- Great performance
- Great price-to-performance ratio (currently about $200, or 29 cents per usable GB)
Cons
- Runs a bit hot
- SecureConnect cable won't work on legacy-free drives
Western Digital first got it right with their original SE series of drives with 8MB caches. The 7500AAKS, part of the SE16 series, takes things up another notch. 750GB, 16MB cache, and great performance all for less than a buck per 3GB make this drive deserving of our Editor's Choice Award. Feel free to comment on this review here. Thanks for reading and enjoy the site!
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 August 2007 )
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