2TB WD Caviar Black slower than 3TB Caviar Green

Koff99

Honorable
Nov 26, 2012
6
0
10,510
Greetings,

I bought a 2TB Caviar Black (WD2002FAEX) and a 3TB Caviar Green (WD30EZRX) off Amazon 3 weeks ago, and when I installed them both in my new PC I and done few benchmarks, I noticed that my Caviar Black transfer rate is going (Min: 63.9 MB/sec, Max: 134.8 MB/sec, Average: 106.7 MB/sec) while my Caviar Green transfer rate is (Min: 96.0 MB/sec, Max: 152.4 MB/sec, Average: 125.7 MB/sec) .

Is this normal? I mean Caviar Black is 7200 RPM while Caviar Green is 5400, shouldn't the Black be faster than that? or did I just got a faulty unit?

 
Solution
Could we see HD Tune read benchmark graphs for both drives?

Assuming that there is no performance plateau as a consequence of a SATA 1 interface limit or a chipset limitation, then the Green drive is benchmarking like a 5400RPM drive with four shortstroked 1TB platters. A fully stroked drive would have a 2:1 ratio between maximum and minimum sustained transfer rates.

Your Black drive is benchmarking like a fully stroked 7200RPM drive with four 500GB platters.

Therefore ISTM that the increased data density of the Green drive is outweighing the RPM advantage of the Black drive. Also, the Caviar Green is an Advanced Format model which means that it would pack 10% more data per track than the non-AF Black drive.

If your 3TB Caviar Green...
there might be a jumper on the drive that limits its data transfer rate to sata 1.5 gig for compability reasons in older systems. read the user guide that came with your hard drive to find out if you have to remove that jumper to get the sata 3g speeds
 

Koff99

Honorable
Nov 26, 2012
6
0
10,510


So I just opened my case and looked at the HDD..I'm not seeing any jumper on it (since I'm not a hardware guru I assume it's the small connector that's used on the side pins. it might worth noting that I bought it OEM) so that shouldn't be the issue ;\

@ mbreslin1954 I'm not sure if that's the case...but the Caviar Green is even reporting a higher burst rate (188.2 MB/sec Green VS 175.4 MB/sec Black).

 
Could we see HD Tune read benchmark graphs for both drives?

Assuming that there is no performance plateau as a consequence of a SATA 1 interface limit or a chipset limitation, then the Green drive is benchmarking like a 5400RPM drive with four shortstroked 1TB platters. A fully stroked drive would have a 2:1 ratio between maximum and minimum sustained transfer rates.

Your Black drive is benchmarking like a fully stroked 7200RPM drive with four 500GB platters.

Therefore ISTM that the increased data density of the Green drive is outweighing the RPM advantage of the Black drive. Also, the Caviar Green is an Advanced Format model which means that it would pack 10% more data per track than the non-AF Black drive.

If your 3TB Caviar Green does turn out to be a shortstroked 4TB Green, then this would confirm that WD is withholding the 4TB models from the marketplace purely for marketing reasons rather than technical ones.
 
Solution

Koff99

Honorable
Nov 26, 2012
6
0
10,510


Sorry for the late reply, here's the Benchmark screenshots:

This is for the Caviar Green 3TB:

HDTune_Benchmark_WDC_WD30_EZRX_00_DC0_B0_test_2.png


And this is for the Caviar Black 2TB:

HDTune_Benchmark_WDC_WD2002_FAEX_007_BA_test_2.png
 
Thanks, that definitely looks like a shortstroked Green drive. If it were fully stroked, the minimum transfer rate at the innermost zone would be about 75MB/s.

That said, notice that the model number is showing a capacity of 2199GB. This means that your drive is not being fully utilised, or perhaps the remaining capacity is assigned to a "virtual" physical drive (as is the case with Seagate's DiscWizard). Or do you perhaps have a 2TiB driver limitation which you have not bothered to address?
 

Koff99

Honorable
Nov 26, 2012
6
0
10,510


I don't think so, when I installed the drive I did partition my drive with disk manager

Disk_Manager.png


I think HD Tune couldn't recognize the whole drive or maybe it's just a bug that the drive is reporting wrong capacity?

Could I say the Caviar Green drive is better than Caviar Black due to the HDD mechanics with the Green? Like should I move my Games partition to the Caviar Green?
 
Others can best advise which drive is best for gaming. However, be aware that Green drives tend to autopark when idle. This annoys some people.

As for the capacity issue, I would test your third partition. If it has no data, I would try a full format on it.