Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Caviar Black model of drives differ in three ways from Blue in three major ways:
1) 32MB buffer vs 16MB.This means the drive is overall faster because it can store more data in memory local to the drive.So if you access the same data frequently there is little or no drive access to get at the data.
2) Dual processors vs single.This will alleviate the load on your CPU as the drive itself has more processing power locally.
3) Five year warranty vs three.Five years is a lifetime in hardware.Basically, you're covered for longer than you will most likely use the drive.
The Caviar Black line comes in three four sizes; 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, and 500GB.The 1TB and 640GB are the fastest because they use a denser platter technology which allows the drive head to get at the data quicker.The 750GB and 500GB are no slouches though and the differences in speed will not be noticeable to most people under most real-world usage scenarios.
Caviar Black drives are the fastest affordable consumer drives available today.If you want faster you have to look that the VelociRaptor 10000RPM line of drives but expect to pay a lot more for a lot less storage.
I measured the speed of the 750GB model using the HD Tune utility and access time was a fast 12.5ms with less than 1% CPU usage on my 3.2Ghz Intel Quad Core setup.The drive runs cool at 32
