WD Launches Largest Ever 3TB Drive, HH Tested

Pretty impressive. Though it would work best with a SSD drive in a desktopto get the best of performance and space. 

Good review. It's a giant drive, but a 1TB WD Black seems to be a lot faster as a data drive. Adding two of them (1TB WD Blacks) gives lots of space and in RAID, should be speedier too.

Though I know it all has to do with maximizing profits, I wish WD would come out with their Black before their Green. I have zero interest in slower Green drives and do not particularly enjoy waiting. My 2Tb and 1.5TB drives are both nearing capacity. Hopefully I won't run out of space before they've finally wrung enough profits out of this Green drive to offer their Black drive to us unworthy peasants.

"Bad news the fogs getting thicker...... And Leons getting larger"

Hopefully it will be in the one fiddy range early next year. Maybe by that time I will have used up the 3Tb's I have now

Dave,

Possibly I look at this a little differently than you, but my evaluation of this HDD is in terms of number of streams, noise, heat and Cost/BD. A 500 BD server would need five of these dudes in Raid 5. I am willing to pay $2/BD to store'em and serve'em and let me flush all of my boxes. That's my goal. It means that this 3TB drive needs to come in a little under $150. Come on Seagate. Let's have some stiff competition.

Orville

Man I feel like my 1TB drive should still be new.

bob_on_the_cob:

I feel like my 1TB drive should still be new.

It Is,.............

bob_on_the_cob:

Man I feel like my 1TB drive should still be new.

I'm on the same boat as you, my hard drive is starting to feel like a dinosaur right about now.

Great reporting - I wonder if the same benchmark outcome holds true when the drive is in a RAID-5 configuration. To me, this drive is meant to be in a RAID5 Array; it will save energy and will render better performance than when used in a standalone configuration... what do you think?

I also would like to know (I may have missed it) where it is sold for $239?

Abeiis:

To me, this drive is meant to be in a RAID5 Array;

WD doesn't like for us to put some of it's drives into RAID arrays. Many of the newer low cost drives that they sell 'all of a sudden' don't work in RAID.

If you do want a WD drive to use in a RAID array, you can spend quite a lot more for it.

Examples: 1.5TB WD Non RAID Enabled Drive costs $119.00 at NewEgg

But one that does RAID is: 1.5TB WD RAID Enabled Drive costs $239.00 at NewEgg

Same capacity, and same 64MB cache on the drive, but you pay a RAID tax to WD,......and this just started about 8 months ago. I found out the hard way with the purchase of four 2TB WD drives for a NAS box. Had to trade them back to NewEgg for Seagate drives that worked fine for my purposes.

So, Seagate is now my drive of choice for RAID setups.

I just want to briefly describe my experience with WD25EZRS, the 2.5 TB drive that is not reviewed and rarely even mentioned anywhere.

Let me state first that I'm just an average Joe, not a hardcore system builder and the drive was attached to an ultracheap MSI 880GM motherboard with Athlon x3 450. Little to write home about. In this system, the drive isn't really stunning. It works OK, but I expected a bit more, what with the increased data density and the 'cool and quiet' PR schtick. To wit, the benchmarking software gives me 110-120 MB/s for writing and a similar number for reading. Didn't we expect 140? Yes sirree, we did. Even if HD Tune can only test the first 2,19 TB, the access time shown isn't breathtaking. Random 4K in CrystalDiskMark are a tad disappointing too. Stats can be seen in the following screenshots:

ATTO - http://i53.tinypic.com/33u9011.png
HD Tach - http://i56.tinypic.com/xeo1ly.jpg
HD Tune - http://i52.tinypic.com/j16dtj.png
CrystalDiskMark - http://i55.tinypic.com/2l8hrgp.png

As far as its operation is concerned, I'm happy with the noise (perhaps not inaudible, but inobtrusive) but not with the temperature. My case is small and crowded but this hdd is consistently 8-10 degrees Celsius warmer than the other three drives (all by Samsung). An HD154 used to lie in the exact same spot and would idle at 37-39. This little monster reaches 46-48 soon after being turned on. I tried improving the air flow, letting the heads catch some zzzs via intellipark (big mistake, it's not a feature, it's a bug; the load cycles count increased like crazy, jumping every 10 s and I almost felt like one of those people who had to use wdidle3). It still doesn't go below 40 degrees whereas my other drives are 29-31 in the morning (the system runs 24/7). Plus, it once didn't want to boot and wasn't visible in the BIOS when i moved the plug a bit. A finicky rascal, to say the least.

WD25EZRS I got works and isn't really a black sheep if you forget a few kinks. Still, when we think of the 2.19 TB barrier problems (MBR can only use the first 2048 GB, 32-bit WIndows builds won't boot from bigger drives...) as well as the current price, the 2 TB hdds appear to be a much better option. But the choice is yours.

Feels like I just got my 2TB Green Drive just yesterday.  Why they do this!?  An extra terabyte could come in handy eventually.

wd25ezrs:

 

As far as its operation is concerned, I'm happy with the noise (perhaps not inaudible, but inobtrusive) but no with the temperature. My case is small and crowded but this hdd is consistently 8-10 degrees Celsius warmer than the other three drives (all by Samsung). An HD154 used to lie in the exact same spot and would idle at 37-39. This little monster reaches 46-48 soon after being turned on. I tried improving the air flow, letting the heads catch some zzzs via intellipark (big mistake, it's not a feature, it's a bug; the load cycles count increased like crazy, jumping every 10 s and I almost felt like one of those people who had to use wdidle3). It still doesn't go below 40 degrees whereas my other drives are 29-31 in the morning (the system runs 24/7). Plus, it once didn't want to boot and wasn't visible in the BIOS when i moved the plug a bit. A finicky ***, to say the least.

HI and welcome to HH, really enjoyed reading your post in regards to the WD's temps being noticeably higher.and yep they are compared to the Samsungs.

Curious as to what chassis you have this in and if you considered to upgrade some fans.

thanks

@rrplay

Hello and thanks for taking interest  I've got a fairly cramped case (380x380 mm, that is 15x15 inches) with four drives inside. Amazing that the hdds don't hover around 50 degrees, actually. After moving a few cables around and tying them up into bundles the WD25EZRS was 38 degrees half an hour post restart and 42-43 in the morning and ever since. It's still 5 degrees hotter than my precious Samsungs (which are 36 at the moment), but I'm not going to worry about the temperature anymore. Again, I expected a little faster transfer rates (cf. http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h2574.htm) and less bumpy first phase of our friendship, but the drive is a keeper.

If anyone wants to, they can take a peek at .