Conclusions
The Caviar Black's most impressive performances came with disk-intensive multitasking and demanding multi-user loads—staples of enterprise applications. In fact, when I reviewed the Black just one month ago, I said that it was "better suited to workstation and server environments that will capitalize on the drive's quick access times and strong performance with workloads that include more randomized I/O request patterns."

As we've seen, the RE3 has lost none of the magic that made the Black so impressive. Western Digital has essentially taken a desktop drive whose performance suited workstation and server workloads and wrapped it up in an enterprise-friendly package littered with RAID-specific optimizations. Read Ahead Fast Forward and Time-Limited Error Recovery may not be necessary in single-drive desktops, but they're potentially important features for multi-drive applications that have to deal with different error recovery rules and additional environmental vibration.

One might expect Western Digital to charge a hefty premium for the RE3's RAID-specific goodness, yet the drive actually carries the same $250 suggested retail price as the Caviar Black 1TB. Already, the Black's street price has plunged to just $170 online, and although the RE3 isn't yet listed in our price search engine, I'd expect it to ring in at under $250 when it becomes widely available.

If you're looking to build a high-performance, multi-terabyte RAID array for a server or workstation, the RE3 is currently the best candidate on the market. Enthusiasts looking for a desktop drive should stick with the Black, though. Now that Western Digital has extended its five-year warranty to high-end Black series desktop drives, there's no reason to dip into the RE line for additional coverage.