Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD6401AALS
by Western Digital
Our Price: $89.95
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: Western DigitalAudio: English (Original Language)
Format: CD
Model: WD6401AALS
Product features:
- Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging
- WD Caviar Black high performance 3.5-inch SATA hard drives co MBine 7200 RPM spin speed, 32 MB or 64 MB cache
- High performance electronics architecture features dual processors and bigger
- StableTrac -- The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters
- High performance electronics architecture features dual processors and bigger, faster caches for maximum read and write speeds.
- 640 GB capacity holds up to 128,000 digital photos, 160,000 MP3 files, and up to 77 hours of HD video; 5 year limited warranty
- StableTrac -- The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD6401AALS
Customer Review: Incredible speed for the price
Summary: 5 Stars
This drive was highly recommended as the fastest drive available before going up to the 10krpm Velociraptor series, and after putting both in my system, I believe the claims are true.
This drive runs quietly, where I can't even hear drive accesses like I can with other drives. That's one of the most noticeable differences between this and the Velociraptor, aside from the speed, of course.
So, what is the speed difference between this Caviar Black drive and the Velociraptor? I ran HD Tune 2.55 to find out.
The test system was a brand new Core i7-920 based system using an ASUS P6T-Deluxe motherboard with on-board SATA. The 300GB Velociraptor is installed as the system drive, the 640GB Caviar Black as the data drive.
Caviar Black 640GB:
50 MB/s min, 109.4 MB/s max, 85.8 MB/s average
Access Time: 12.3ms
Burst Rate: 127 MB/s
Velociraptor 300GB:
74.6 MB/s min, 120 MB/s max, 100.9 MB/s average
Access Time: 8.6ms
Burst Rate: 188.3 MB/s
While the max rates are very close, you'll notice that the min rates are quite different, and the burst rate is even more so.
To put these tests into perspective, I also ran HD Tune on my previous system, which is a Pentium 4 3.06GHz Windows XP box with an 80GB Seagate IDE system drive and a 500GB Seagate ST3500641AS SATA drive for data.
I won't even post the 80GB's numbers because they are too pathetic and the technology it's based on is outdated, but I think a comparison to the SATA drive is apt because many people might have such a drive and may be contemplating the value of a replacement/upgrade.
Seagate 7200.9 500GB:
30.2 MB/s min, 61.3 MB/s max, 48.8 MB/s average
Access Time: 14ms
Burst Rate: 97.3 MB/s
As you can see, the new Caviar Black drive outpaces the older Seagate by a wide margin. An almost 76% increase in average speed, coupled with 14% better access times, makes for an upgrade that is going to be noticeable in disk-instensive operations, provided the rest of the system is not a bottleneck.
Bottlenecks are exactly what I didn't want in my new system. The Velociraptor came highly recommended by a local system builder that I trust, as he said that with the new systems he was building, the hard drive was fast becoming the bottleneck. Based on these tests and my usage of the new machine, I have every confidence that he was correct.
I decided to go with the Velociraptor for my system drive because I wanted the fastest drive possible, especially for quick accesses. While I could have gone with a second Velociraptor for the data drive, I wanted more storage space and lower cost.
While breaking in my system, I used both HD Tune's error scan function and Windows 7's thorough chkdsk routines several times. These tests took several hours to run, and I ran them directly after installation, and then after transferring about 300GB of data to the drive. No problems have been found in any of those tests.
I hoped that the Caviar Black was the bang-for-the-buck alternative, and I believe that was a wise choice. The Caviar Black 640GB drive represents a great value and delivers terrific performance.
More Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD6401AALS reviews:
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Description of Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD6401AALS
WD Caviar Black high performance 3.5-inch SATA hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 32 MB or 64 MB cache, SATA 3 Gb/s interface, and up to 2 TB capacity for the ultimate in power computing. Backed by a 5-year limited warranty. High Performance Electronics Architecture: Dual processor ? Twice the processing power to maximize performance. Colossal cache ? Bigger, faster cache of up to 64 MB means faster performance. Rock Solid Mechanical Architecture: Dual actuator technology ? A head positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy. StableTrac ? The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations. NoTouch ramp load technology ? The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit. Massive Capacity ? WD Caviar Black SATA drives are available in capacities up to 2 TB. Compatible ? We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab and Mobile Compatibility Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems. 5 Year Limited Warranty.Digital Cameras and Photo Categories
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