Western Digital

Caviar Green, 1 TB: WD10EACS-00ZJB0

Western Digital was reaching the capacity of 1 terabyte in a calm and steady manner. First it introduced the “green” WD10EACS which had four platters rotating at 5400rpm and only then the 7200rpm models came out. A “green” 1TB model is quite a competitive product, by the way. Although its performance is somewhat lower, it needs far less power and is quieter than its opponents. If your hard disk is used only for storing rarely used information, you don’t need it to show record-breaking performance while such properties as low noise, reduced power consumption and heat dissipation will come in handy.

Caviar Green, 1 TB: WD10EACS-00D6B0

People at Western Digital can count their money, too. So, they transitioned the Green drive to 3-platter design as soon as they had got the opportunity. This reduced the manufacturing cost and increased the speed of the product. Its power consumption should be lower according to the laws of physics, but there is a difference between the drives’ electronics cards. The newer model’s electronics seems to have been revised as well. The only problem is that the newer model can only be differentiated from the older one by the full model name (by the letters behind the dash, to be exact), which may be confusing for the customer.

Caviar Green, 1 TB: WD10EADS-00L5B1

Western Digital went further in improving its green drive and increased the amount of memory from 16 to 32 megabytes in the three-platter model. This is a reasonable solution. If the cache is utilized cleverly, it can make up for the performance loss provoked by the reduced spindle rotation speed. Good for the customer, these drives can be easily identified by the letters EADS in their name. By the way, it is in this series that Western Digital is going to introduce a 2-terabyte model with four platters. The company seems to like the idea of achieving new capacity milestones by means of 5400rpm models.