Cheat Engine

[kls85]

Western Digital founded in 1970 as a supplier of calculator chips have come a long way from where it started. Today it is one of the leading manufactures of digital storage, including mechanical and nand based solutions.

In their consumer line up of mechanical storage, Western Digital (WD) decided to label their drives targeting towards a specific set of audience, these drives are label as, Black, Blue,and Green

WDC Black:
Build primarily for performance, Western Digital Black boast one of the best specs you can get in a consumer drive: SATA 6G, 7200 rpm, 64MB of cache, dual processor, and a 5 year warranty.

WDC Blue:
The middle of the line up featuring both SATA or IDE, a rotational speed of 7200 per minute, 32MB of cache, and comes with a 3 year warranty.

WDC Green:
The energy saver of all drives with a capacity of up to 2TB, IntelliSeek, and the new 4K Advanced format, it is the ideal solution for storing massive amounts of data. Also includes with a 3 year warranty.

Our main focus of these of drives will be on performance after all most of us will get a drive that is fast, but does the Black truly live up to its claims
or does the blue and green even without the this so call "dual processor" can equally if not out perform the best drive in the line up?

Test BED:
-Intel Xeon quad core @ 2.66GHz/1333FSB/12MB L2
-Asus motherboard socket 775, Intel X48 chipset w/ dual PCIe x16 at full
x16,x16 bandwidth
-4GB DDR2 800
-ATi Radeon HD2900XT 1GB (GDDR4)
-Antec 850
-Vista Ultimate x64 w/SP2

HDs and controller Hubs
-Western Digital Caviar Black
-Western Digital Caviar Blue (x2)
-Western Digital Caviar Green

-Intel Controller Hub 9R integrated into the motherbord
-JMicron JMB36X PCIe x1 in a PCIe x1 slot
-Marvell 91xx SATA 6G (SATA III) PCIe x4 in a PCIe x16 slot running in x4 electrical mode.

Details on the drives:

-WDC Black
500GB/32MB cache/7200rpm/SATA 3G on ICH9R

-WDC Blue #1
500GB/16MB cache/7200rpm/SATA 3G on ICH9R

-WDC blue #2
500GB/16MB cache/7200rpm/SATA 3G on JMicron JMB36X

-WDC Green
1TB/64MB cache/IntelliSeek/SATA 3G/4K format on ICH9R and Marvell 91xx SATA 6G

Note: "WD Green 2" is the same drive but connected to the Marvell 91xx SATA 6G controller
The HDDs attached to the controller cards are for reference only. They're included to determine whether if the type of controller plays a certain role in the performance on the drives.

BenchMarks

HD Tune


HD Tach


Crystal Mark




Sandra


Copy and Transfer 4GB small


Copy and Transfer 4GB large


Compress and Extract (4GB)


HD Tach (WD Green)


Overall from the benchmarks,we can say the following about each drive

WDC Black: With its dual processor, the Black drive does not live up to its claim as the best drive in the consumer sector in terms of performance. Now if you still believe in all the hype or want it just to make yourself happy, then my all means go ahead.

WDC Blue: Absent from the features on the Black, this drive manages to keep up with the its "higher" sibling and who cares if you need to wait a few extra seconds to get the job done.

WDC Green: Having tons of space to keep our precious memories, this drive where most enthusiast stay away like the plague due to its slow speed, has managed to surprise us. And like a book, you can't judge by its cover or in this case, its label.

FAQ
Q:Why aren't the drives you have consistent?
A: This is to be as real world as possible where most users for
performance will tend to get a Black drive and large Green drive for storage. If they grabbed Green drive with the same size as the the Black it would defeat the whole purpose.

Q: Why not just get a 1TB black drive?
A: Out of my budget

Q: What is 4GB small?
A: A random group of files ranging from images, documents, movies varies in sizes, totaling up to 4GB.

Q: What is 4GB large?
A: A single file not mixed together with a total size of 4GB

Q: What is this 4K Advanced Format?
A: The 4K sector format where as WD calls it "Advanced Format" is a preparation to make way for drives larger than 2TB. Currently there are no pros of getting a Advanced Format drive although we'll probably start to see some benefits when all manufactures starts to take this path.

Q: Any article on this so called Advanced Format?
A: read here

Q: Where do you get the controller cards?
A: Online at the egg!

Q: Mind a specific link?
A: Can't find the JMicron (bought it like 3 years ago), but for the
Marvell SATA 6G: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813995004&cm_re=u3s6-_-13-995-004-_-Product
It's comes with 2x USB 3.0 and 2x SATA 6G for and for its price of $30 bucks it's consider a pretty good deal. Even if you'll probably not use the USB 3.0 ports at least you get 2 extra SATAs.


WD on wiki


Edit: The 500GB connected to the JMicron SATA controller doesn't seem to look right, so I've took that same drive and connected to the Marvell.
Ran the 4GB small file test and here are the results


This now looks right... and the drives connected to the discrete controller cards tend to have a high Burst Rate


WD Green on Marvell SATA 6G

[Hero]

my WDC black is onlt 32mb cache and 3g. Is there some more holy WDC Black than mine?

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

that benchmark looks incredibly broken

[kls85]

What do you mean by broken?

[Phox]

Yeah, what hero said. I couldn't find a 64 mb cache black, and if I did, I probably would have bought it.

[Hero]

[kls85]

Yen 10,580 around $118usd

[Hero]

Damn japan, they are ahead of us again.

[Karakawe]

[Shota]

[Hero]

I dont know, it sounded good. Anyway, I guess they only come in 1tb for a 64mb cache?

[elpacco]

[NINTENDO]

[kls85]

[Konata Izumi]

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