Damn!! I think I have got a SLOW 6400AAKS!! Max Read at 108MB/s, average 86MB/s and seek time at 15.8ms... why me?!!

"To further combat vibration, the Caviar SE16 is equipped with a SecurePark mechanism that moves the head completely off the disc when the drive is powered down, as well as during spin-up and spin-down."

Hasn't this been a part of SCSI drives for quite a long time?

for testing methods, in the future, can you tell us how you setup the drives in regards to stripe size (for RAID tests) and cluster size for partitioning?

Or do you have a default you always use?

I have some of the raptors (75 gb) and noticed a big difference in terms of performance with different combinations of stripe size, and cluster size (4k, 8k, 16k etc) when using a RAID 1.

I just bought one of these, and it's emitting an extremely noticeable high-pitched squeal that overpowers everything else in my case. Hopefully it's just a bad drive, and an RMA will fix it.

I received the one I ordered from Newegg last weekend. So far I'm lovin' it. Nice and quiet. MUCH quieter than the 300GB 7200.9 it replaced. Really fast as well. I'm really happy with my purchase. I was really getting tired of my computer sounding like a jiffy pop.

While the WD 640GB drive does not fit in with the industry-standard capacity sizes, we fully understand Western Digital's rationale behind this move. This allows WD to use economies of scale with their new 320GB per-platter design and allows a natural progression up to the 1TB~1.3TB level by simply increasing platter count for each logical step. Of course, unless you use sub-prime mortgage mathematics, three 320GB platters only equals 960GB of capacity. WD engineering told us they can easily stretch the areal density of the current platter design to get to the magical 1TB capacity to match their competitors and witness the marketing group smiling

+1 more contrasty colors

Excellent review, as always.

Although in the future, for the bar graphs, could you make the featured drive blue or red or something that really makes it stand out from all the other "yellows". I'm usually reading TR before I go to school and only just skim through articles, and having the drive stand out more would be nice.

Wow, amazing performance for the noise and power consumptions levels, and amazing value on top of it all.
Makes me wonder though is WD ever going to produce another Raptor, or leave it be?

Why PCB-up? They look kind of naked that way.

P.S. Since I bought 2 off Newegg before they went out of stock, I did a little informal testing in Windows XP, just to see exactly how badly file copies are broken in Vista. And, well... I expected slightly higher numbers than in your review, but...

Let me put it this way - after getting sustained transfer rates of OVER 9000 MBps, I decided my scouter was broken and crushed it with my bare hands, before growing a giant monkey-tail and going insane.

Why the long boot times? With the exception of those MB/s file copy tests the SE16 750GB seems like a good choice also.

Can Tech Report do an article on "short-stroking"?

~Ibrahim~

Well this drive, and it's sister 320GB version (what I'd be more inclined to buy) defiantly do sound like the best allrounders overall. This would be especially music to the ears of people with nVidia SATA controllers (including my current machine) who seem to have a problem with the F1. Just a shame for them that the SE16 isn't available in the same high capacaties as the F1.

So glad I grabbed these when they first came out. Got them for $120 each.

I'm waiting anxiously for a 3-platter version at 960GB. That would be just about a perfect balance of all metrics.

if the 320's perform as well as this one. i think it may be time to update my array. if'n they're under 80? 70?

Wow! Defo getting one of these to replace my aging Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 as a systemdrive. Especially since it's getting damn stuffed..

Huh. That's nice. Where's the B3 review? I want that sweded.