WD Caviar SE16 performance?

RDaneel · Post by **RDaneel** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 12:13 pm

Does anyone know how the SE16 performs compared to similarly sized Seagates and Maxtors? I'm not expecting Raptor performance, but I'd love if this nearly-silent drive, could be the only HD in a performance-oriented quiet system. With cooler Conroe chips (and passively cooled mobos) around the corner, I'm hoping that I won't have to make the noise sacrifices I did with my P4 system to get adequate performance, and a relatively quick HD is a part of that.

Thanks for any insight!

tempeteduson · Post by **tempeteduson** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 12:49 pm

Rest assured that the SE 16 is no slow poke. In fact, the 400GB version has been Maximum PC's favorite (read: fastest) 7200-RPM drive for some time... that is, until its 500GB brother took the thrown, offering very similar performance with a capacity boost. So, SPCR's stellar review of the drive combined with this kind of performance makes it the high-capacity 3.5" HD to get.

RDaneel · Post by **RDaneel** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 6:33 am

Thanks, glad to hear it. I hadn't realized it was on MaximumPCs list. I'm very pleased to have such a large quiet drive also perform well enough to be my primary HD! I'm just afraid the Raptor is too loud and hot, even though they now have a 150gb version.

afrost · Post by **afrost** » Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:10 am

get back to AV123 you bastard

muguiman · Post by **muguiman** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 11:56 am

all the HDs of the SE 16 type are as quiet as the one of 500GB? or the small ones are not as good as this

thanks...

darthan · Post by **darthan** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 3:55 pm

RDaneel, as long as the 500GB drive is in the same speed range as its competitors then you will not notice any performance differences between the two. To get noticeable hd performance improvements you have to use RAID or Raptors (or SCSI 10k and 15k drives but those are crazy loud) if you are comparing to any current desktop drive.

P.S. Why do you need a hard drive? I'm pretty sure positronic brains don't use them...

RDaneel · Post by **RDaneel** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:46 am

afrost - we all need other hobbies, right?

darthan - good catch on the username - I'd go positronic, but you need liquid cooling for that, and I'm going back to air!