Conclusions
Western Digital has captured the capacity crown by a comfortable margin with the Caviar Green 2TB, and it'll likely hold onto the title for a while. That's probably why the drive's suggested retail price is a lofty $299—there's a premium to be paid for flagship capacities, especially when the competition may be slow to catch up. MSRPs don't always line up with street prices, though, and already at least one retailer has the 2TB Green listed for $270. At that price, you're looking at over $0.13 per gigabyte, which is more than not only the $0.10 per gigabyte you'll pay for a terabyte Caviar Green, but also the $0.09 per gigabyte offered by Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda.

So the latest Caviar Green isn't a cost-per-gigabyte king. However, it's often faster than the 1.5TB 'cuda, which is its only competition above the terabyte mark. The latest Caviar Green is almost universally faster than its terabyte predecessor, as well, with the only real exception arising in IOMeter. Enterprise customers looking forward to an RE version of the 2TB Green won't be impressed by the drive's anemic performance under multi-user loads, but that matters not for the average desktop, home theater PC, or closet file server. For those applications, the 2TB Caviar Green is most certainly fast enough.

Of course, the Caviar Green isn't a performance product. The drive's acoustic and power consumption characteristics are far more important, and it does well on both fronts. Not only is the 2TB Green one of the quietest drives we've ever tested, it's also among the most energy efficient. In fact, the new Green has the lowest power draw per gigabyte of any high-capacity desktop drive.

If you're looking for conspicuous capacity in a surprisingly inconspicuous package, you'd be well-served to consider the Caviar Green 2TB. The drive is a perfect candidate for secondary storage in a high-performance PC, or even as the primary drive in systems that prioritize noise levels, power consumption, and capacity over blistering throughput and speedy access times. With Western Digital's new 500GB platters set to quickly trickle down to more affordable price points, the Caviar Green's future looks very bright indeed.