Seagate 750 GB Barracuda Enters The Big League

Western Digital Caviar WD5000KS 500 GB

The Western Digital drive, as tested, ships with a 16 MB cache. The promotional material states that WD hard drives are designed to have the lowest power consumption of any similar hard drive in their class, thus reducing operating temperature. According to WD, this will permit enhanced drive reliability. Our tests confirmed the temperature claims, with the WD having the lowest operating temperature of the three drives we tested, measuring in at 5°F below the Seagate and 9°F below the DiamondMax.

Seek time is stated at 8.9 ms, and our tests showed that the full access time was around 13.4 ms, which includes rotational latency. Western Digital warranties the Caviar SE 16 for three years from the date of purchase.

Okay, enough tech talk, let's get to the test results.