Quote:
Originally Posted by
HybridCoreÂ

Edit: So this is essentially Western Digital's Fine-Tune Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D drive with the same capacities available and double the cache...I wonder how the Seagate 1TB per platter drives compete.
It's going to be their mainstream part, I suspect. They are taking advantage of dense platters to reduce parts costs, increase reliability, and increase profit margins. They'll probably start pushing this model hard - mass producing them will again raise margins, so that they can reduce the MSRP. We may finally see drive prices dropping close to what they used to be.
Cache doesn't do much for a drive - although an advertised stat, pretty much every drive has 'enough' for the platter count/density and ECC type. Doubling it won't automatically provide a huge speed boost. It's all the unadvertised stuff that does. (Platter Density, Firmware, Seeking Style (Quiet/Aggressive), etc.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
HybridCoreÂ

I don't see WD marketing 1TB/platter anywhere on the product page so I assumed that they never decided to upgrade to 1TB platters yet.

They have never advertised platter densities. I couldn't say why - it seems like a good advertising point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
duffman55Â

I noticed Kramy stated it's not the best candidate for an OS drive, but hopefully it's good enough for me. The only thing I'm worried about is the slower average access times compared to my current setup. Maybe I'll break down and buy an SSD for my OS drive one of these days.
It's not the best choice because of how performance degrades
when full. If your drive is mostly empty, don't worry about it. If you get an SSD one day, you have even less to worry about. The high sequential speeds mean it should perform very well for a lot of tasks.
