[Brian]

So we were messing around with the MyBook 3.0 external drive this weekend and went to see what was inside. It's the 1TB WD1001FAES, which is a Caviar Black with 64MB cache.



Here are a few benchmarks to compare the new model with the current WD1001FALS (32MB cache).

*Disclaimer - Benchmarking was done with one drive going through the motherboard's SATA and the other going through USB 3.0, so they are not on equal terms. We'll do more detailed work in the review.

[Brian]

Here are fresh benchmarks of the WD1001FAES when connected directly via SATA instead of USB.

[Slycer]

Hey! I like WD's a lot but don't have any comparison info.. How does this drive compare to others on the market?

[jedH]

I'm guessing WD1002FAEX would be no better...
It just has the SATA 6G connection which shouldn't make any differecne as SATA 3G is still more than enough?

This post has been edited by jedH: 06 February 2010 - 07:11 AM

[Brian]

Slycer, on 06 February 2010 - 05:16 AM, said:

Hey! I like WD's a lot but don't have any comparison info.. How does this drive compare to others on the market?

We compared it to the current comparable from WD in the first post. We're working on reviews right now.

[Charles P. Jefferies]

Those are some nice burst data transfer rates - the larger cache size helps there.

The access time is reasonably low as well (looking at the 12.1ms reading).

[Brian]

We're still working on the full review, but here's a set of benchmarks from our test computer. I just added benchmarks to the Seagate Constellation thread as well, these were both taken from the same machine.







Power Consumption
 wdc power.txt (500bytes)
Number of downloads: 40

[jedH]

So what's the story with this, is it to eventually replace the WD1001FALS?

Will it always have 500GB platters now like the WD1002FAEX (which also has two actuators)
If so is the only difference between the 1002FAEX and 1001FAES the SATA interface?

Is there going to be similar sorts of differentiation with the 2TB Blacks & 2TB RE's?

This post has been edited by jedH: 17 February 2010 - 03:39 AM

[Brian]

Jed, good questions but since WD hasn't really made the drive official yet, it's still not on their website, it's hard to know their intentions.

[jedH]

Damn, fair enough, thanks.
How's the review going?

All the best.