WD Caviar Green 3TB Hard Drive Review

While solid state drives get faster, mechanical hard drives get larger. Not long ago, we celebrated the first 1TB hard drive, and since then, welcomed 1.5TB and eventually 2TB drives to the consumer market. Yes, the performance increase that SSD's offer is more than impressive. However, they still can't touch the capacity that traditional hard drives provide tech-savvy, budget conscious consumers and system builders. When it comes to cost per gigabyte analysis, hard drives possess a huge advantage over SSD's.

Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB Hard Drive

Today, Western Digital announces the world's highest density hard drive, as they reach the 3TB mark with their newest, 5th generation Caviar Green product. To go along with its massive storage capacity, the Caviar Green 3TB serves up a super-sized combination of reduced power consumption, lower operating temperature, and a quieter working environment. Read on to find out how well it performs and if it deserves to be on your upgrade list.

While the specs are straightforward, there are a couple of points worth mentioning. First, Western Digital is announcing two Caviar Green drives today. Along with the 3TB drive we're reviewing, there's also a 2.5TB model with the model number WD25EZRSDTL, selling for $189. Besides capacity though, the two drives are identical. Second, it's worth noting the Caviar Green 3TB drive makes use of the older SATA 3Gb/s interface, versus the newer SATA 6GB/s. But you won't hear us complaining about this omission, mainly because we've seen that traditional spinning HDD's still fall short of saturating the previous generation 3Gbps SATA interface. Next, let's dig a bit deeper into how Western Digital achieved the 3TB mark.