Western Digital's single-platter 320GB Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS

April 9, 2008 by Mike Chin

Western Digital underwent a major makeover of sorts a couple of years ago, transforming its HDD lines from one of the noisiest in the industry to one of the quietest. Wholesale adoption of Fluid Dynamic Bearings marked the beginning of this change. Most WD products offered in the last couple of years have been very quiet, competing closely with the other low-noise HDD leader, Samsung. Their traditional emphasis on high performance has not been ignored, as they continue producing the 10,000 RPM Raptor drives. The Green Power line introduced last year broke convention with its 5400 RPM spindle speed, which exacts a price in performance, ameliorated by high areal density. It also set new records for acoustics; the GP drives are simply the quietest 3.5" drives available today.

Samsung, in the meanwhile, released the 7200 RPM F1 series, with an industry-leading 334GB maximum capacity per platter. This was 33% higher areal density than its closest competitors when the line was first released, and their terabyte model has been widely reviewed as the best performing of today's 3.5" desktop HDDs. Now, WD has nearly caught up with a couple of new models in their SE16 Caviar line that offer 320GB per platter.

Only two models are offered at this time, a 320GB model with a single platter, and 640GB with two platters. Normally, fewer platters means less noise, due to lower moving mass and less air tubulence; low capacity drives have often been acoustically preferable. This did not hold true for single-platter models from Seagate and Hitachi that we reviewed back in 2005; neither challenged the quiet leaders of their day. Will this new 320GB Caviar SE16 reconfirm the platters-and-noise truism?

WD Caviar SE16 320GB model.

SPECIFICATIONS

The specifications below are specific to the model that we examined. Capacity, cache size, platter number, interface, and performance can vary from model to model. Don't assume they're the same in a given line. Acoustics and power dissipation also vary depending on the number of platters in the drive; smaller capacity drives tend to have fewer platters, and tend to produce less noise and use less power.

It's possible that an earlier version of this model, which has two 160GB platters, might still be floating about in the market. The identifier for the single-disk version is the last part of the model number: 00B3A0.