I think one big bonus of this drive that everyone seems to be missing here is heat. Unfortunately the review doesn't do any drive temperature readings, but a few other reviews floating around the web have.

Hard drives in general throw off a hell of a lot of heat (movement = friction = heat) into your case and the Deskstar 1TB is one of the hottest drives around. If you want a quiet drive for a htpc the GP is a perfect match, but it also might be a good fit if you're looking to lower your cpu/gpu temps for that little extra bit of OC headroom - especially if you're using more than one drive in your system. In the tom's hardware review after two hours of intensive operation the GP runs a full 12 degrees cooler than the hitachi (41 vs. 53) putting it into the same league as single platter designs. Any way you slice it that's a lot less heat spilling into your case.

Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

Great review.

I just popped one of these into an external case - perfect timing for use as a Time Machine drive for my main rig (G5).

I was attracted to the GP due to its low noise/power/heat and great price.

I went with the WD's SE16 750 for my gaming rigs boot drive but I would definitely consider getting more GP's for use as storage drives (especially in my NAS).

An OK review but about 2 weeks behind StorageReview.com's much better comparative article. Their use of a stable test bed means you can compare the Caviar GP's numbers to the Caviar RE from 2 years ago.

Also, TR and other sites need to steer away from using IOMeter to benchmark desktop/workstation drives. No desktop system - even those of this enthusiast crowd - can come close to the highly randomized, IO-intensive usage scenarios of even a workgroup server.

BTW, StorageReview was able to calculate the drive's rotational speed and estimate it's actually around the 5400rpm mark.

I would also appreciate it if there could be a small graph of the monthly added / difference in cost to a particular (let's say 25ct /kWh) electrical bill by adding a "Green drive" or heck, even a green PSU to your pc.

I'm amazed that there's so little focus yet on this by all review sites.
Nice to hear about green stuff, 80+, power efficient, but what real life difference? well us readers still have to just whip out a calculator to see if it'll make a dollar or two difference.

"Green" labeing on this HDD is nothing, but a marketing gimmick. HDDs aren't really that large of a power hog, unless you got 10K and 15K units running. The point where HDD consume the most juice is upon start-up where the electronic motor has to rev-up. I doubt this "Green" WD 1TB HDD fares much better than normal 7200RPM counterparts.

I find it funny to called a "1TB Green". It is like a making a hybird SUV and calling it "Green" when it only get like 1MPG more than its normal counterpart.

If HDD wanted to seriously make a "Green" HDD. Just make a 5400RPM unit with a single high-density platter. Sure its performance wouldn't be stellar, but no 7200RPM could touch it in power consumption arena.

Seems only worth it if your goal is quietness first. Strange that it's recommended then.

The power savings are minimal compared to other areas where you could save a lot more, say using a low watt CPU/GPU/motherboard.

You must have had fun generating those IOMeter graphs. ;-)

Awesome review, as always. I'll probably look for a hdd like this for my next build.

#9, #17, power efficiency is desirable in every component of the computer. A couple weeks ago TR did the power supply review and one of the big "features" of the power supplies was their efficiency. Couple that with CPU efficiency, HDD efficiency, chipset efficiency, and *cough* GPU efficiency, if you only save a few watts from each component then you aggregate some decent gains. Power efficiency is a worthwhile pursuit in each and every component of the computer.

Heh. Hard drive power consumption isn't exactly out of control. I guess they needed a new way to market them. I sense a new bandwagon coming to town.

I would be interested in seeing power consumption at spin-up for this (and all other drive reviews). While it represents a very small chunk of overall power usage, it can represent peak usage, which is why enterprise controllers offer staggered spin-up, and it's useful when trying calculate the minimum adequate PSU for a build.

Also it would be interesting to know the relative contributions of the 5V and 12V lines to the power consumption.

On your conclusion page Western Digital was only aiming for "solid" performance with the drive, and they're largely achieved it. Shouldn't it be they've?

I think this drive would be excellent as a storage drive. Get a some-what small, fast hdd for games and windows, and then use this drive to store all your pr0n on. It's priced competitively, and no real disadvantages, if you're not using it as a main drive.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13379/10

With over 20 drives, those latter graphs are a little difficult to read, so we'll focus our attention on the first set and the Deskstar's direct rivals.

Typo?

I don't get all the complaints in the comment section. It is not like it is the slowest drive in the world. It is still fast for the home user. On top of being quieter, drawing less power and producing less heat. It may even be more reliable by keeping it cool running and slower spindle speeds.

It seems like a great drive to me.

My current system could use a quieter hard drive (not to mention more space). 500GB using only two platters sounds good. I'll probably be getting one of these.

I wonder about the temperature differential too. If it's consuming a good bit less power, then there's reason to believe that it's producing less heat. That is always a good thing, especially when it comes to dense arrays of hdd's. I wonder if it'd be possible to TDP of a hard drive. It's probably fairly linearly with the power consumption. Since you have to power the drive and often pay for the cooling of heat produced, you can almost factor a savings of double for unit less of power used.

I could see these as being helpful in a datacenter environment where all-out speed isn't important, but having 100 is amazing. Just a little bit of my own dabbling:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7030/graphwf3.jpg

I do not understand focusing on power efficiency of HD which pull < 10W of juice in worst case anyway. It's irrelevant next to power hungry GPUs, CPUs, and chipsets lately.

Even if you run RAID array it's not great save (comparing to performance hit).

I agree with indeego, It's only real strength is low noise level...

wow. this review has just put the hard drive at the top of my list of hard drives for my next build.

i was expecting the low-power, mystery-speed hard drive to take a bigger hit in performance, but it looks like it won't even be noticeable.

Seems to be one of the least expensive TB drives on Newegg.

Although If you are trying to slim down power (and willing to sacrifice performance) I doubt you are looking for this kind of space.

Either way it's a fairly nice drive that is addressing the power issue.

Something that hopefully will be looked at by all companies soon.

I really like the idea and execution of this product. I'd love to put one in my next build. There's no reason to not be able to get good performance and low power consumption. I'm glad WD took this step.

Niiice.

Performance is 'solid', and that's more than good enough for a htpc box. Seeing as these are often slim/SFF cases, the lower power consumption, and by extension, lower heat output, ought to pay off as well.

Well, at roughly 28¢ a GB, I guess it's more economical than the T1 Deskstar…

… these hard drive articles make me yawn really hard.