Review Wd - 3tb Internal Hard Drive (Nas) Us as External Drive

Western Digital has both announced and started shipping their 5th generation Caviar Green hard drive. Of course the major highlight this fourth dimension around is the monster 3TB capacity, a outset for internal three.5" difficult drives. WD accomplishes this feat by leveraging Advanced Format and four 750GB platters. In addition to the 3TB model (WD30EZRSDTL) in that location'south also a 2.5TB (WD25EZRSDTL) capacity available. Other bulldoze highlights include a 64MB buffer, 3Gb/s SATA interface and quoted standby power consumption of only 1W. While the high capacity is surely a blessing to many users, there are certain risks WD is taking by going to marketplace right now. We'll dive into these potential compatibility issues and take a expect a performance numbers in this review.

Western Digital has both appear and started shipping their 5th generation Caviar Light-green hard bulldoze. Of course the major highlight this time around is the monster 3TB capacity, a commencement for internal iii.5" hard drives. WD accomplishes this feat by leveraging Advanced Format and four 750GB platters. In addition to the 3TB model (WD30EZRSDTL) at that place'southward also a two.5TB (WD25EZRSDTL) capacity available. Other drive highlights include a 64MB buffer, 3Gb/due south SATA interface and quoted standby power consumption of merely 1W. While the high capacity is surely a blessing to many users, at that place are certain risks WD is taking by going to market right now. We'll dive into these potential compatibility issues and take a wait a performance numbers in this review.

To this bespeak, 3TB drives have been limited to external enclosures. Doing so gives consumers the selection to have access to large capacity drives, but limits their utility past leaving them outside of the system. Equally it stands, one of the largest impediments to loftier-chapters internal drives is the 2.19TB bulwark. WD is banking on consumers working around this barrier, while we collectively wait for software and hardware to take hold of up, supporting larger drives natively.

Before nosotros get as well far forth, it's worth clarifying the 2.19 problem. Windows and some Linux variants striking the two.19TB capacity limit because they can but address 2³² logical blocks (OSX is not affected by this limitation). With a drive sector size of 512 bytes, y'all arrive at the two.19TB cap. Considering of a combination betwixt legacy BIOS and back up only booting from a MBR (Chief Boot Record) segmentation formatted drive, there are limitations when attempting to move to a higher chapters drive. To exist able to boot from a bulldoze larger than ii.19TB, the BIOS and arrangement drivers need to agree on capacity and layout of the hard drive to kick and operate properly.

To solve this problem, the manufacture is moving to GUID Division Tables (GPT) instead of MBR partition tables through organization by UEFI, which is "a community effort by many companies in the computer industry to modernize the booting process." Moving to GPT partitions allows for up to 18 Exabyte (2⁶⁴) of Logical Block Addressing, thereby breaking through the current clogging. While some UEFI capable systems are already shipping, the industry is probably looking toward mid-2011 for full adoption for Windows-based machines (OSX is already there). Also a requirement is a 64-scrap operating system.

Since nearly current systems don't withal back up UEFI standards, WD is providing an interim solution for those who want to kicking these high-capacity drives in certain operating environments; they're including an AHCI-compliant  host bus adapter (HBA) card with the retail bulldoze kits. This allows legacy BIOS motherboards and GPT-ready operating systems to use a known driver to correctly support large capacity drives. While not a perfect solution, WD had to either go this road or agree off until UEFI adoption warranted the bulldoze release.

The rules are slightly different when using the drive in a not-kick scenario, merely as a secondary storage device. Here the drives play well with 32-bit operating systems when used with or without the included HBA (depending on OS). The following chart breaks down the scenarios:

1	Win XP 32-bit	Win XP 64-scrap	Vista 32-bit	Vista 64-bit	Win vii 32-bit	Win 7 64-scrap	Mac OS 10.5	Mac OS ten.6	Linux
Boot Drive	Note 1	Annotation 1	No	Supported5	No	Supported5	Supportedfour	Supportediv	Supported2
Secondary Bulldoze	Note 1	Notation i	Supported	Supported	Supported	Supported	Supportedfour	Supportediv	Supportedtwo
HBA Requirediii	N/A	N/A	Aye	Yes	Yes	Yep	No	No	Yeah
USB External Supported	Supportedhalf-dozen	Supported6	Supported6	Supported6	Supported6	Supportedsix	Supportedvi	Supported6	Supportedhalf dozen

1. Presently WD does not directly provide support for these applications. We take worked extensively with our partners and solutions may be bachelor. HBA and RAID Controller vendors may have developed solutions for these applications.
2. Linux solutions are available. Please consult your Operating System provider for apply with Large Capacity drives.
3. An available PCI-Due east slot for the HBA is required. Supported by using the native Windows Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) drivers only.
4. Apple Bootcamp is presently not supported. Support is limited to the operating arrangement simply.
5. Boot support requires a organization with UEFI Back up and a 64 chip version of the OS.
6. Bank check with USB Span provider to verify if and how Big Drives are supported.

All the to a higher place is a long way of explaining more or less why WD went with the HBA solution instead of delaying the release of the 3TB Caviar Green bulldoze and what the compatibility tabular array looks like. However, it'due south unfortunately non that simple, and fifty-fifty users who encounter the 64-flake Windows 7 Os requirement, for instance, may not notice entirely polish sailing when installing this drive, every bit we'll item later in the review. WD knows the path will be bumpy though and for those dedicated souls who want the additional capacity, the dedication volition by and large yield proficient results.

WD Caviar Greenish 5th Generation Specs

• 2.5TB and 3TB capacities
• 5400 RPM
• 64MB cache
• 3Gb/south SATA
• Power Consumption
  • Spin Up – x.75W
  • Seek – six.25W
  • Idle – v.5W
  • Standby – 1W
• Average Read Seek – 15ms
• Average Latency – 5.5ms
• Spindle Starting time Fourth dimension – 17s
• Mistake Rate – <ane in 10¹⁵

Aesthetics

We were kind of surprised past the lack of LED lighting, see-through Plexiglas cover, or chromed torso on the new Caviar Green 3TB drive. For being the get-go 3TB internal drive to come up to the market place, you might expect to run across a piffling more fanfare. Equally information technology is, the new 3TB Caviar Green looks to exist a near carbon copy of the previous 2TB green from the outside if y'all don't play close attention to the label.

Every bit always the black painted trunk and argent encompass goes mitt in hand with Western Digital hard drives (equally well as others) with the uniquely colored label to signify which family the drive comes from. In this example the green characterization lines upwardly with the Caviar Green product family unit.

From the front the 3TB Caviar Light-green has the standard SATA data and ability connection with eight service pins more often than not reserved for debugging modes and changing drive settings for advanced users.

Disassembly

The Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB drive uses a primarily single-sided PCB, with all components facing the torso of the drive for thermal dissipation. The board is held firmly to the bulldoze with four Torx screws with a vibration isolation pad mounted between the circuit board and metal trunk.

With the excursion board removed we get to come across the SMOOTH L7251 v3.ane motor driver, the Marvell 88i9146-TFJ2 controller, and 64MB Samsung K4H511638G DDR memory module.

Compatibility

In the introduction we mentioned that WD knew from the start that there would be some compatibility bug with various systems, but they didn't want to agree back this drive back whatsoever longer. In our lab we actually ran into a problem of getting the Caviar Greenish 3TB drive to recognize its proper chapters in our examination rig, even with the HBA add-on card. No thing what we did the bulldoze would only recognize as a 746GB drive.

In i of our alternating Linux-based systems the improver card actually worked equally intended, showing the drive's total chapters, and allowing us to run the Crystal Disk Marker tests on the very exterior and within of the platters. In our test rig we were only able to brand employ of the outside 1/three of the drive, which was fine for our IOMeter tests, merely would have given false readings in CDM.

We also tested the 3TB Caviar Green in two NAS units being tested in our lab, including a Synology DS411+ and a QNAP TS-459. Both models recognized the drive as a 3TB model and were eager to create a properly sized single partition on the bulldoze. Neither seemed to throw as much of a fit every bit our Dell XPS 9000, which wouldn't show more than a 746GB capacity with or without the HBA.

Synthetic Benchmarks

In our first exam nosotros take a look at the 3TB Caviar Light-green'southward 2MB sequential transfer charge per unit. The previous 2TB model reached 110MB/due south, then allow's see if the 3TB improved from its smaller sibling. The 3TB model jumped to 119MB/s read, just stayed at 100-110MB/s write depending on 4K alignment.

In our 2MB random transfer test the read speeds increased essentially, going from 37-42MB/s on the 2TB model to 52-66MB/s on the 3TB model. Not too shabby for a 'light-green' bulldoze. Write performance also went up, from 42MB/south with 4K-alignment on the 2TB drive to 60MB/s on the 3TB bulldoze.

4K random transfers also improved quite a bit, going from a rather wearisome 0.17-0.18MB/southward read on the 2TB Caviar Green to 0.32MB/s on the 3TB model. Write transfers went up from 0.44MB/s to 0.56MB/s.

In our write latency examination we saw a pregnant drib in both aligned and unaligned 4K random write transfers. The 2TB Greenish averaged near 40ms average when unaligned, dropping to viii.85ms aligned. The newer 3TB Caviar Green dropped to 17.4ms unaligned and six.96ms aligned.

CrystalDiskMark showed like results equally IOMeter, although there were some differences in the random 4K transfers.

In the IOMeter server profile tests, scores jumped across the board, in some cases improving well over 50% for a given queue depth. The 3TB Caviar Light-green drive is really starting bite at the heels of the performance-oriented 7200RPM 2TB drives.

Power Consumption

The primary selling point of whatsoever eco-friendly drive like the Caviar Green series from Western Digital is its lower ability consumption compared to 7200PM hard drives. Generally speaking they have a lower spindle speed, and scale other aspects back to conserve power. Western Digital improved things across the board with the 3TB Caviar Green, making it much more efficient than before; which is even more impressive if you look at it in terms of a ability use to GB ratio.

Most drives spend their entire life sitting at idle, especially when information technology comes to a server hosting media. The server might be on 24/7, but for most people you don't stress it unless y'all are downloading media throughout the twenty-four hour period or are using it to stream content at dark when you are domicile from work. The new 3TB Caviar Green now consumes 3.89 watts at idle, from a previous 6.31 watts on the 2TB model. That'due south nearly one-half of what it was earlier!

Write performance power use besides dropped by about 1.5 watts, downwardly to 5.69W. Some other area that actually improved was the startup power draw; albeit at the expense of a rather tiresome spin up speed. Previously the 2TB Caviar Light-green needed 14 watts to spin up, while the new 3TB model needs simply 12.3w. So if y'all keep your server running constantly, the new 3TB Caviar green draws much less power sitting idle and stresses your organization less when it spins up from a full power-saving state.

Warranty

Currently Western Digital offers a three year warranty on the 3TB Caviar Greenish (the same as the 2TB model). This is similar to what is offered from other companies when information technology comes to eco or low-power models, simply below average compared to standard drives such equally the Caviar Black which comes with a v yr warranty.

Western Digital offers one of the improve commutation programs if issues do come up, with a costless advanced replacement program with but a concur put on your credit card.

Determination

The Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB bulldoze is the starting time drive of its chapters to be available for purchase for use equally a boot or secondary drive. Seagate was technically first to market with their external 3TB storage solution, but it has non been sold every bit a bare bulldoze for DIY use. The fifty% capacity jump is not bad if you are working with limited bay NAS units, which might already be maxed out with 2TB drives. In a given RAID 5 implementation going from four 2TB drives to four 3TB drives ways your total storage capacity goes from 5.5TB up to 8.3TB.

Besides the significantly college starting price over the 2TB Caviar Green ($189.00 MSRP for the 2.5TB and $239.00 for the 3TB), the new 3TB model does have its drawbacks. Compatibility is limited, in that location is no current Windows XP support, and even with the HBA add-on card you lot still might run into problems. If you lot think this bulldoze might be something you are interested in, you might want to make certain you check our forums and comments at retailer websites to see what other users with your hardware are saying. As time goes on though, every system will be moving to go UEFI compatible, and this issue goes away on its own. Until then, if yous tin can't wait to finally increase the capacity of your machine, or absolutely must take the latest hardware, the 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green might be for you.

Pros

• Huge 3TB chapters
• Speed increases over the 2TB model
• Lower write, idle, and startup power consumption
• As bleeding edge every bit information technology gets for calculator storage for at present

Cons

• Compatibility will be an issue for some until systems meet UEFI standards
• Significantly college toll per GB over 2TB model

Bottom Line

Western Digital had to get artistic to sneak around software limitations in most operating systems to get this behemoth 3TB bulldoze working. Nosotros're glad they did; the 5th generation Caviar Dark-green is a bully performer and WD fabricated tremendous strides in the power consumption area – the 3TB drive wins all but one of our ability tests and crushes the others where it counts, idle power draw.

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Source: https://www.storagereview.com/review/western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-review-wd30ezrsdtl