It would have been better had you included the black caviar 1 TB hard drive in your review instead of the green one.
Compare Apples with Apples ;)

Where are the noise and temperature measurements? Those are important for decisions too. 3 - 4 - 5 platters must have clearly different noise & temp level.

Excellent review. Personally, I find the WD drive most remarkable, being able to stay in the same league as the top dogs, and even surpassing some of them in a couple of benchmarks. And yes, there is a 3-platter version of the Caviar available, too, I guess it packes a punch :)

Article says: "HDD can be quite a fine hard disk for a home PC because it is quiet and consumes little power. Still, I wish Western Digital added a 7200rpm model into the Caviar GP series. On my part, I promise to benchmark its performance without bias as soon as it arrives."

Well - the Caviar Black is out there. It's not "GP", but it is a 1 TB 7200rpm-drive. It should at least be mentioned in relation to this....

"If Western Digital had had the technical opportunity to release a 1-terabyte drive with a spindle rotation speed of 7200rpm, it would have done it. And the company did not because it didn’t have the opportunity." - Page 10

You better tell the guys at WD quick, because they seem to think otherwise:
http://www.wdc.com/en/company/releases/PressRelease.asp?r elease={7B1B2956-DA4E-4C63-A076-718840C1A020}

If I may make a suggestion. You want to create fragmented disks? Starting out the way you did is fine. However for REAL fragmentation, I'd suggest getting file sharing programs, particularly emule or bittorrent, then downloading random files (the more the better - especially if there's a lot of simultaneous downloads (I'm talking 50+; if you can get 100's you're good to go); pick large files that are not TOO popular). Let it sit for a few hours (5, maybe 8), and you'll get a huge mess - dozens of files with 1000+ fragments.

I was hoping to see benchmarks on the 3 platter version of the 1tb WD GP drive. The serial number starts with WCAU for the people that might get one at a retail store.

Why not throw a Caviar black in there as well?

The WD 1TB Green 5400RPM (what was tested here) is in another category (where power/noise/temps are more of a priority) but it is nice to see that it isn't too far off the pace from these 7200RPM drives.
I hope the review can add the WD 1TB Black 7200RPM drive (they are in stock in stores around here) as they are suppose to be outstanding drives. This drive is however a recent addition (I think it appeared in the last week) and I have seen very few reviews of it so far.

As many already pointed out, The wd "GreenPower" drive is marketed towards another type of customer. It's not that they couldn't do a "better" performing drive (there is, also pointed out), This drive is for users that prioritize powersavings (and lower noise/temp). This have been a successful move by wd, not only for corporate buyers who buy large quantities of drive (and care about powersavings), but also by home users who want a quiet, cool drive for ex. htpc use.

And WD is not alone for long either, Samsung have announced it's own "gp" series called "EcoGreen".

When are we going to see bigger HDs??? 1.25 TB's, 1.33 TB, 1.5 TB's. Sorry to say, but I need more space..

Where are the sound measurements?

The average positioning speed seems actually more relevant than the average access time. I've been saying we should compare different size hdds restricting the bigger one to a partition equal to the smaller. Thus a Raptor may lose to a big F1 even on access speed. However, I think the Hitachi got on top because of different track to track and short stroke speed rather than different number of heads.

Ironically, this positioning speed deserves more the (data) average access time name instead, and vice versa.

Best, I agree with the article, and xbit is my favourite. Still, some noise measurements would make it right perfect (make use of a mic amplifier perhaps?).

Excellent review!

Any chance of adding some noise tests as well? Even if it's just a subjective "this is quieter" or "this makes a really grating whiny noise" ;)

good review ! spinpoints are kicking ass

I would have liked to see you do the dB tests and heat generation as well. I've seen that the WD 1TB green is superior in those catagories as well in other reviews, but this is the first one I've seen that compares JUST 1TB drives. I expected the WD drive to do rather poorly based on it's slower rotational speed, seeing that it competes in some of the tests as well as the fact it doesn't fall flat on it's face for the rest of tests prove that WD knew what they were doing when they made this drive.

I bought 3 of the 1TB WD drives based on the power consumption, heat production and noise generation numbers I read about for my HTPC server. I do notice a little sluggishness when copying files around but 90% of the time these drives sit around doing absolutely jack squat. If I really needed the speed I'd just get a 300GB raptor and be done with it, but it's a totally different usage scenario, not to mention price bracket. I'm in no real hurry here, and these drives are just for storage, not OS related.

Good show though, keep it up!

Because I'm a n00b at HD's I simple can't figure out now which HD I should buy. I love the review, it go's into detail like I'm used from you guy's but I would love you added something for our n00bs.

So I'm a PC gamer, which HD will be best for me to buy?
My PC is in that case mostly used to run games, watch a movie, download stuff and unrar the downloaded stuff and of course surf the net.

Is there a possibility to add this in the reviews?

Also I'm wondering about the new WD, a shame it didn't release a little earlier.

Good review, keep it up!

This test is a bit unfair since I have teste the AAKS series from Western Digital and they are very good.
In fact a lot better than Caviar series. Too bad
they did not released 1 TB disks yet.