Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive Review

Free Capacity and Final Thoughts

Capacity

When it comes to actual Windows storage capacity, the WD Caviar Green 3TB 3.5″ desktop hard drive has a free capacity of 2.72TB as shown above.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB hard drive is a welcomed addition to the market as 3TB drives have been a long time coming. Our testing showed that the Caviar Green 3TB drive had decent performance as we saw it peak at roughly 128MB/s read and 107MB/s write in the benchmark ATTO. No doubt about it, other hard drives are faster, but that is not the point of this drive. Remember, this drive features four 750GB platters, 64 MB cache, and a SATA II 3.0Gbps interface. This drive is clearly aimed at mass storage and once we got it installed on our system we were able to get it up and running without any issues. We heard rumors that 3TB drives would run extremely hot, but during benchmarking we never noticed that it got over 37C and it normally idled at around 33-34C on the test bench. Not only was it cool, but it also was nearly silent as WD rates the drive up to 29dBA and we have cooling fans in our system that run louder than that. If you are looking for a storage drive for a HTPC or a NAS server then something like this might be just what the doctor ordered.

The WD Caviar Green 3TB drive can be purchased this very second for $239.00 shipped, which comes out to be $0.08 per GB. This isn’t a bad price, but remember you can pick up a WD Caviar Green 2TB drive for $99.99 shipped, which breaks down to being just $0.05 per GB. This means you are paying a premium for this 3TB drive, but you’ll always pay a premium for the latest and greatest hardware out there.

The only downside to the WD Caviar Green 3TB drive is the required host bus adapter (HBA), and that is something WD told us to expect to see for at least the next six months. This is not an ideal solution, but it does work. We are not sure what this means for NAS compatibility, but we will find out in the days to come. We reached out to some motherboard companies this week to ask about UEFI capable motherboards and the phone went silent when we asked. This is still a cutting edge market and Western Digital is pushing ahead and now making companies adapt to the latest innovations. Once you don’t need an HBA we expect this drive to fly off the shelves, but in all honesty we think it will keep some people from adopting the drive right away. If you are okay with the HBA (or don’t need one with OSX) and need tons of storage room then give the new 2.5 & 3 TB hard drives a look. The entire Western Digital Caviar Green hard drives comes series comes backed with a 3-year warranty, so what do you have to worry about?

Legit Bottom Line: The WD Caviar Green 3TB Drive pushes the boundaries of storage and does so with solid performance and minimal heat and noise.