WD Black 2 Dual-Drive SSD+HDD Hybrid Review

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 12:42 PM EDT

The price disparity between solid state and hard disk drives often forces mobile and small form factor users into the unenviable position of choosing performance over capacity. Provided they’ve got the budget, desktop users needn’t compromise, because their systems can accommodate multiple drives of different form factors without issue. But SFF and mobile systems are usually outfitted with only a single 2.5” drive bay, so if you want the performance of an SSD, but need a large capacity drive, you’ve got to shell out big bucks for a high-capacity SSD or settle for the lower performance of a hard drive.

WD recently released a totally new class of product that aims to resolve this conundrum, however. The new WD Black 2 Dual-Drive (SSD + HDD) pairs 120GB of solid state storage with a 1TB hard disk, in a single 2.5” drive. The WD Black 2 is not a caching solution, though, like some other hard drives outfitted with flash memory. Rather, the WD Black 2 operates as two independent drives—a fast SSD for your OS and most commonly used apps and a large hard drive for bulk storage.

WD Black 2 SSD + HDD Dual Drive Review

Tags: Western Digital, Storage, Hybrid, SATA, WD, drive

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com