Gamers like to pair two identical hard drives in RAID 0 to speeding up game load times, but the word on the street is that WD's Caviar Black drives doesn't handle RAID 0 very well... we'll find out. Once again, the Caviar Black is a 7,200RPM drive with a peak external transfer rating of 3GB/s and sustained rate of 106MB/s - let's see how close to those numbers it actually gets.

Evolution of Western Digital Hard Drives Drive Capacity Spindle Speed Cache Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1,000 GB (1TB) 7,200RPM 32MB Western Digital Raptor WD1500AHFD 150 GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Western Digital Raptor WD740 75 GB 10,000 RPM 8MB

The details of how the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS hard drive test system was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this SATA hard drive is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system processor: intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (45nm) Motherboard: ASUS Striker II NSE (NF 790i) Videocard: MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E Memory: 2GB Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 (DDR3) Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital WD1001FALS CDROM: ASUS BC-1205PT-BD Blu-Ray Drive Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 750W Monitor: ASUS MK241 24" LCD Heatsink: Intel LGA775 Reference Software Setup: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.0.0.1008 nVIDIA Forceware 169.25 Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra 2008 PCMark Vantage HDTach 3.0.1.0

HD Tune Pro 3.5 READ / WRITE Drive Benchmark	Source: HD TUNE

HD Tune Pro is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as: write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark. The benchmark measures raw performance in a couple different ways to measure a hard drive for Read and Write tests, which are conducted separately. To read the results below consider that highest minimum/maximum/average transfer rates are better, while lower (quicker) access times are best. Lastly, highest burst rates are better.

HD Tune Pro 3.5 - READ Tests Minimum Transfer Rate: MB/s Ranking Western Digital WD1001FALS 52.2 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 0) 100.3 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 1) 51.1 Maximum Transfer Rate: MB/s Ranking Western Digital WD1001FALS 108.7 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 0) 204.6 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 1) 108.6 Average Transfer Rate: MB/s Ranking Western Digital WD1001FALS 86.1 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 0) 165.1 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 1) 86 Access Time: ms Ranking Western Digital WD1001FALS 12.2 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 0) 10.1 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 1) 10.2 Burst Rate: MB/s Ranking Western Digital WD1001FALS 134.4 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 0) 143.6 Western Digital WD1001FALS (RAID 1) 144.7

The benchmarks certainly benefit from a nice speed boost when the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS hard drive is configured in RAID 0, although access time and burst rates do not see any improvement.