All of the performance issues can be resolved by running raid 10/01
(A mirrored stripe or striped mirror) with 4 drives. I've used the crappiest and slowest shit out there in this config and you'll almost always "pin the bus" I have two Raptors in a stripe and 4 500GB 5200 RPM slabs of storage and they both have nearly the same performance. The big thing is at idle these would be ideal for Raid 10'ers as the power savings with 4 drives is substantial relatively speaking.

For the green geeks just remember to keep things in perspective, there are better places to save power then your computer. Think about a 1000 watt power supply and how much you actually draw. My PC speakers use more juice then my hard disks and my hair dryer uses more power in a month then my PC does in a year. Seriously keep things in perspective if you are looking to save power. Last year I replaced my appliances and in power saving the fridge is already paid for.

Get a cansister Vac versus upright (less power draw, I guess less power to suction horzontal vs vertical, not an engineer but my wall outlet thingiees says my new canister vac uses 40% less juice then my old upright, at least that's what the wife is telling me.)
Gas Stove and Dryer (The stove I can still light during a power outage too!)
Halogen Blubs (Those CFLs are a rip off and a carbon nightmare. Most made overseas and the carbon you save is 1/20th the amount spent shipping them.)
Lower Themostat 2 degrees
Plastic on the windows for winter
Check the draft seals on your doors
Unplug shit! (I kid you not or put things on a power stripe with an off switch. I sliced $20 a month off my bill!)

Seriously disk drives are the last place to be looking for computers. If you have an ass-load of them I suggest keep on always on and set the others to wake-on-lan.

I sure as hell ain't a tree hugger (The Earth is not my mother, in fact my mother's name is Dorothy) but I do like saving money.

Need a clarification regarding power consumption at idle. Is this the power consumed when the hard disk is still spinning but not seeking or has it spun down already?

Very nice update to an already very good drive. I use my WD10EACS in an external enclosure for backups and i cant hear the thing, the passive enclosure is only slightly warmer than the desk it sits on and transfer speeds are limited by the USB connection, not the drive. If i were going to put it internally or with an eSATA connection then this new one would be the better choice, but otherwise there isnt much difference between the 2. I would have hoped to save more power, but then i guess the larger cache offset some of the gains of using less platters.
And my inner geek thinks the pictures of the drive foraging in the leaves and grass are brilliant!

Geoff, any follow up on the random access time results discussion we had after the Seagate 1.5TB article? We know different benchmarks get different results for that measurement which for a measurement like random access time is odd, the benchmarks should be measuring the same thing. Seems like something that could make an interesting original article to me.

Seems I'm the only one who cares about the access time issue where different benchmark programs can get different results. I thought a lot more people would find that intriguing or reply or want to know more about it. Oh well.

I really do think there's enough evidence (even bloody spectrographic harmonic frequency evidence) out there to prove beyond a doubt, once and for all that WD Green power drives spin at 5400rpm, without going through the same umming and arring every time one is reviewed.

On the noise measurements, it looks like your background is sufficiently high to mask alot of the differences between drives, so would it be possible to add a short subjective comment to the noise notes? Decibel readings are only part of the picture - 2 drives with similar noise outputs can sound considerably different.

Good review though and stunningly low power consumption - I have a WD 640GB Green which is fast enough for my needs and almost completely silent seeking. Plus it helps my PC idle at 39W, 1/2 that of the previous gear, which I'm pretty happy with.

That front page pic is driving me crazy. Almost as bad as the one with the bare naked videocard in the static-happy stocking.

Using a (wait for it... ) GREEN bar for the Caviar (wait for it...) GREEN would have made all those graphs so much easier to read.

Those nerdy enough to dig through data sheets or online reviews to find a drive's spindle speed are going to know that it's not the only factor that dictates performance.

I disagree - there are way more people out there who would see that 7200 > 5400 and automatically assume the 7200RPM drive is what they want and that 5400RPM is garbage. There are plenty of people on *this site* (among others) who know better, but there are far more people out there who are just dumb enough to skip this drive when it's worth looking at.

Can you explain how the boot times for the Velociraptor in this review differ so much from the Velociraptor review here:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/6 (55.92 seconds)

Your current review:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15769/5 (42.3)

System specs for this review:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15769/2

System specs for VR review appear to match:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14583/3

I have a server which will run an p2p program 24h/d, serve websites (not so frequently accessed), occassionally transfer large files to and from it and in the future will be holding something like Exchange server. Is this understood as "server operation" or is this so intensive that we're talking about heavy usage of HDD and so f.e. the black is much better?

Off-topic but..

Wow, the SE16 640GB actually beats a Velociraptor (150GB) in system boot time? Hell, the last generation Raptor beats it as well? Either the 150GB Velociraptor just sucks that much or something smells a little off....

sometimes, incremental improvement really is the way to go.

Just ordered one of these as storage to complement my WD Blue 640 system drive. It'll be replacing three old drives so the power savings will accually be pretty big! 25-30W on an IGP-system = about the same percentage!

Anyone else getting annoyed by all the "green this, eco that" in branding? Reminds me of about 8-10 years ago when everything was getting a www or .com attached to them.

Those photos for this product made me laf.

If only I could just go to the nearby bushes and pick ripe WD Caviar Green hard drive's. Too bad they are out of season.