Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB

The Western Digital Caviar Green is part of the manufacturer's 'eco' range of hard drives, which spin at 5400 rpm rather than the more common 7200 rpm.  According to Western Digital, ''as hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives as well.''

The aim of the Green series, then, is to find the right balance between performance, storage and energy efficiency.

Energy use not far from a regular hard drive
We wanted to put Western Digital's claims to the test, and it's true that this hard drive uses less power than a regular hard drive.  While it was idle, our equipment measured a consumption of 3 W compared to just over 7 W on the Samsung SpinPoint HD103UJ.  When both drives are in use, the difference is even smaller, with just three Watts separating them.

This is a relatively efficient hard drive, then, but in a computer system where a graphics card could easily be running at 100 W, the difference is negligible.

Silence is golden
We think that the most impressive thing about this drive is how quiet it is, even before you start AAM, when it becomes almost inaudible.  You really need to get very close to it to hear it spinning.  Even more impressively, the speeds we recorded didn't change, but the access time did climb from 15.1 to 20.1 ms.

Speeds
Unsurprisingly, this drive is slower than a regular hard drive.  Writing to the Caviar Green, we achieved average speeds of 62 MB/s instead of 81 MB/s on the Seagate 7200.11.  Reading from it, the Western Digital falls a long way behind, with average speeds of of 78 MB/s instead of 94 MB/s.  It's the 7200 rpm that really makes the difference when it comes to large and medium-sized files, though it's less pronounced for smaller files.

Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB   Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB
Write speed (MB/s) Read speed (MB/s) Local Copy (MB/s) Distant Copy (MB/s)

A hard drive for quiet computers
So: this hard drive isn't the fastest around, and so it was never going to fly through our application launching tests.  Compared to the Seagate 7200.11, it was a little slower, but it still remains an ideal choice for somebody looking for an quiet PC.  Its average temperature is usually six, if not eight degrees cooler than average drives.

That's useful, as any parts of a PC that get too hot can heat up nearby components.  That heat needs to be dealt with, and the usual answer is a fan, which leads to yet more noise.

Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB   Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB
Crysis (s) Winrar (s) Open office (s) Photoshop (s) Access time (ms) Boot to Windows (s) Temperature (°C)