April 25th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
WD Blue UltraSlim 500GB Review (WD5000MPCK)
The WD Blue UltraSlim blends affordability with capacity and is WD's latest effort at a mainstream hard drive designed for OEMs. This WD message has long been utilized by the Blue line of hard drives, but this time WD has pushed the boundaries even further, or perhaps you could say contracted those boundaries by releasing the drive in an amazingly thin 5mm body and 2.5" form factor. Just how thin is a 5mm hard drive? About half as thick as a standard 9.5mm form factor and thinner than three SD cards. An engineering feat for sure, UltraSlim 500GB contains just a single platter that spins at 5400 RPM and connects via the diminutive SFF-8784 edge connector and SATA 6Gb/s interface. The drive isn't just thin for thinness sake; OEMs are demanding thinner hard drives for their increasingly skinny portable computing designs and on the enterprise side, embedded solutions have the same requirement. Hardware designs are slimming down and manufacturers either don't want to give up the capacity hard drives offer or don't want or need to take on the expense profile of SSDs.
March 8th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Seagate SSHD Thin Review (Gen3 500GB, ST500LM000)
Seagate's third generation SSHDs (solid state hybrid drives), now for both laptops and desktops, are marketed as a replacement for HDDs and serve as a good option for those otherwise considering an SSD. SSHDs aim to offer users the price-point and robust capacity of HDDs while also utilizing NAND flash to provide the performance attained with SSDs by caching critical applications. Slimmed from 9.5mm to 7mm, our review model third generation Seagate 500GB SSHD Thin with 8GB of MLC NAND would fit well in any user configuration and is especially well-suited for ultra-thin, ultra-light laptops.
December 27th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
WD Black 4TB Review (WD4001FAEX)
The 4TB WD Black is Western Digital's top-capacity and top-performing 7,200 RPM client system hard drive. The standard 3.5" form factor is designed to provide bulk storage for desktop use, while still offering top class performance. WD is using their standard five platter design for the 4TB Black (note: Caviar has been dropped from the branding) that is also highlighted by a 64MB cache, SATA 6Gb/s interface to deliver 154MB/s throughput.
July 10th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive Review [WD30EFRX]
It's an interesting decision - WD is expanding their low-power 3.5" hard drive offerings with a second line at the same time Seagate exists the "green" market, claiming low-power drives aren't really all that beneficial or quite frankly, special. The Western Digital Red family of hard drives is designed for the 1 to 6 bay SOHO NAS space, which is about as specialized as it gets. WD has several features that they're touting as critical for the NAS user including; NASware specialized firmware, Intellipower low power spindle, robust NAS compatibility list, three year warranty and a dedicated WD Red 24x7 customer support line (1-855-55-WDRED if you need them).
June 13th, 2012 by Josh Linden
Hitachi Travelstar Z7K500 Review
The arrival of the Travelstar Z7K500 marks the widespread availability of second-generation 7mm portable hard drives. Hitachi’s first-generation Travelstar line demonstrated the technical viability and affordability of the 7mm portable HDD form factor in a marketplace that is pushing for smaller devices and lower power consumption. Second-generation Travelstar drives like the Z7K500 bring added performance to the mix with a 7200RPM rotational speed and 6Gbps SATA interface that translate into better performance than previous 7mm Travelstar drives across a variety of applications.
May 19th, 2012 by Josh Linden
Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 Review
Hitachi continues to innovate in large-capacity hard drives, and it is easy to see from products like the Deskstar 7K4000 why Western Digital found Hitachi's hard drive division an attractive acquisition. The 7K4000 provides four terabytes (TB) of storage at 7200RPM, and like the Deskstar 5K4000 which we recently reviewed, the 7K4000 uses a five platter design, paired with 800GB platters and 4KB sectors to increase maximum capacity and improve error correction. Compared to the 5K4000, The Deskstar 7K4000’s specs emphasize performance, so we’ll see some key differences emerge between the drives during benchmarks.
April 30th, 2012 by Josh Linden
Western Digital Scorpio Blue Review - 500GB 7mm (WD5000LPVT)
Shrinking dimensions in the ultrathin computing market have threatened to push hard drives to the side in favor of higher performing and more battery friendly SSDs. At only 7mm high and featuring a new single-platter design, Western Digital's updated Scorpio Blue hard drive line is engineered for maximum mobile appeal for those who still need bulk storage in their ultrathin devices.
April 16th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB Review
While SSDs get all the attention when it comes to high-performance storage, the venerable platter-based alternatives aren't dead yet. Western Digital is out to prove that hard drives can still create substantial performance under the right conditions, with capacity points that would make most SSD users envious. The new WD VelociRaptor is a 10,000 RPM hard drive with enlarged 1TB total capacity, up from 600GB in the prior model. The goal is to provide enterprise-grade drive reliability for workstation users and creative professionals who want a high-performance, high-capacity drive, without the expense of SSDs.
March 26th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
2TB Western Digital My Passport Portable Hard Drive Review
Last week WD announced the latest generation of their popular My Passport portable hard drives. The newly redesigned enclosures surround a 2.5" 15mm Western Digital hard drive that uses four platters to offer capacities up to 2TB, making it the highest capacity drive available in this form factor. The My Passport also picks up USB 3.0, making it idea for not just toting files, but for completing high-speed local backups of your PC as well.
March 2nd, 2012 by Kevin OBrien
Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 Review
The Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 represents the first major leap in hard drive capacity we've seen in over a year. The 5K4000 provides 4TB of bulk storage coupled with Hitachi's CoolSpin technology to deliver quiet and power-friendly operation. Along with big capacity, the 5K4000 gets an updated SATA 6Gb/s interface, 32MB cache buffer and delivers media transfer rates up to 162MB/s.
