The 500 GB of WesternDigital's Caviar RE2 WD5000YS that we tested isn't the fastest drive we've ever had in our labs, but it remains a fairly solid hard drive.

When writing data, it averages 61.7 MB/s against 57.9 MB/s for reading files, whereas the very best of today's internal hard drives are capable of speeds of 100 MB/s or more.

Its response time is a little slower than average at 13.7 ms, and it makes a little more noise than most of its competitors, too.

The problem is worse when writing data, and we noticed a very irritating scratching sound when copying files.

Fortunately, it remains at a reasonable average temperature of 41.6 °C.

Noise Management

When we turned on Automatic Acoustic Management, the noise produced by writing files was reduced a little--it fell by 1 dB(A), but remained audible.

While copy speeds remained largely the same, only falling by around 1 MB/s at worst, but the response time did dip to a very slow 20.6 ms.