This drive from Western Digital is meant for entry-level
server storage. high performance computing and data transfer intensive
tasks. The WD Caviar SE16 is a 500 GB drive with a spindle speed of 7,200 rpm.
It has a buffer memory of 16 MB, which is what makes it suitable for server
class applications.
The drive is designed to be cool and quite during
operation. It has support for the next generation SATA, which has data transfer
rate specification of 3 Gbps. The first generation SATA only supported 1.5 Gbps.
Price: Rs 16,000 (1 yr warranty) |
Key Specs: 500 GB, 7200 rpm, 16 MB cache memory |
Contact: Champion Computers, Delhi Tel: 26214751 E-mail: champion@usa.net |
We tested the drive with an Athlon FX55 machine with 512 MB
RAM. To judge the overall performance, we used the WinBench 99 benchmark. The
drive showed overall good results in the benchmarking scores.
On comparing with the Hitachi Deskstar 7K500, the WD Caviar
SE16 led in the scores. It gave a score of 17.2 MBps in Business Disk
Winmark, as against the 12.7 MBps of the
Hitachi
.
In High-End Disk WinMark scores though, the drive gave
slightly lower performance. It gave 38.7 MBps as against 40 MBps scored by the
Hitachi
drive. However, there was a major difference in the average data transfer rate.
The WD drive clocked 58.3 MBps, while the
Hitachi
was way behind at 48.3 MBps.
The disk-access time of the Western Digital drive was 13.6
ms against the rated 8.9 ms and the CPU utilization was a whopping 96%.
Bottom Line: This drive is sure to give better
performance for high data transfer rate-intensive tasks like graphics and
high-speed business computing. This will definitely increase the performance of
your workstation manifolds. Overall, it gives a very good pe rformance and
comes with an affordable price.
Anubhav Verma