WD Black2 Dual Drive Review

Julio Franco

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Read the full article at:
[newwindow=https://www.techspot.com/review/750-wd-black2-hybrid-hdd/]https://www.techspot.com/review/750-wd-black2-hybrid-hdd/[/newwindow]

Please leave your feedback here.
 
Were any of the other drives in this comparison hybrids?

There are no other hybrid drives like the Black2, unless you mean SSHD like the Seagate Momentus XT in which case the answer is no.

Can you comment on subjective use? As in something like snappiness while using windows...?

The Black2 is very snappy when the OS is installed on the SSD portion of the drive, runs much like many of today's high speed SSDs thanks to the high read speed. However some tasks such as uncompressing large 3GB+ archives is much slower on the Black2 due to its poor write performance.
 
There are no other hybrid drives like the Black2, unless you mean SSHD like the Seagate Momentus XT in which case the answer is no.
Explain to me how a hybrid drive is more like non-hybrid drives than other hybrid drives? I'm perplexed at how you could even make such a statement. Both HDD and SSD are compared but yet the only other drives that are considered hybrid drives are not included in a hybrid review for comparison.

Am I mistaken in thinking this drive can also be manually configured as an SSHD?
 
Explain to me how a hybrid drive is more like non-hybrid drives than other hybrid drives? I'm perplexed at how you could even make such a statement. Both HDD and SSD are compared but yet the only other drives that are considered hybrid drives are not included in a hybrid review for comparison.

Am I mistaken in thinking this drive can also be manually configured as an SSHD?


Yes you are mistaken that is not the case.
 
Am I missing something?
This is a hard drive with a SSD and a HDD in it and both are read separately.
Other hybrid drives use the SDD part as some sort of cache for the HDD and is not a separate drive.
 
Am I missing something?
This is a hard drive with a SSD and a HDD in it and both are read separately.
Other hybrid drives use the SDD part as some sort of cache for the HDD and is not a separate drive.

Correct, you must have read the review ;)

Technically its just a drive with an SSD and a HDD in it but I get what you mean. Both of which can be accessed individually and appear in Windows as if they were two separate drives.
 
it should not be marketed as a hybrid drive since a hybrid drive 'traditionally' uses the ssd portion as cache.

it is a two-in-one device, you have two fully functioning and separate drives in one neat package: ssd and hdd.
 
After reading the review (Which is a good one as usual), this drive seems to be very mediocre in terms of performance overall. I mean the 5400RPM drive is just for data so of course I wont shake a fist at that performance, but the SSD is the problem in my opinion. It seems that the SSD was a very poor performer compared to almost all other SSD's. Even though you can say its less than 27cents a gigabyte, I feel that the only advantage of this drive is the form factor (Which is the point of this drive so its got me there). I would have just hoped that this drive could have performed a little bit better on the SSD side to say this is an excellent deal, but as it is right now unless your crammed for space and don't want to spend the extra 50-100 bucks on a Samsung 500gb SSD or need more space than that, I don't see much of a point to this drive.
 
No mention of the fact that this is a Windows-only drive at the moment. Maybe some people might like to see that mentioned in the "Cons" section or at least somehwere in the review (1st page?)
 
A very good concept. Western digital is already making good conventional hard disks, I just hope they use a good SSD Controller and keep the firmware updated. This could get very competitive everywhere.
 
I know the review puts it way behind other SSD's and the HDD portion is under part, but put together I think I like this. The OS and apps would not be taking up disk time and heavy disk action would not be effecting OS action, I think it sounds like it would be a benefit to me.
 
I seen this the other day, it is a great idea although not completely new but pushing the existing concept further than anybody else.

It is just priced too high for it to get any traction I believe.
 
Yep it's about the same price as lower end 500GB SSD made by companies like ADATA and such.
 
it should not be marketed as a hybrid drive since a hybrid drive 'traditionally' uses the ssd portion as cache.

it is a two-in-one device, you have two fully functioning and separate drives in one neat package: ssd and hdd.
I agree!

This is no hybrid drive, if it can not be configured to cache the SSD. It is only a combo drive. With that said; I'd rather have a drive like this, or the option to configure a hybrid drive this way.

If this drive is going to be labeled as a hybrid, it should also be compared to other hybrids. There are reasons why people purchase SSD and HDD in one package. These reasons should not be forgotten in comparison test.
 
This is no hybrid drive, if it can not be configured to cache the SSD. It is only a combo drive. With that said; I'd rather have a drive like this, or the option to configure a hybrid drive this way.

Just for the record WD doesn't call this a hybrid drive, they call it a dual drive. The editor added hybrid drive to the title of this review but we later fixed it.

If this drive is going to be labeled as a hybrid, it should also be compared to other hybrids. There are reasons why people purchase SSD and HDD in one package. These reasons should not be forgotten in comparison test.

Those reasons were discussed and were the main focus of this review.

What does the term hybrid mean anyway?

Any car that uses a fossil fuel engine with an electric motor is classified as a hybrid, despite how the setup works.

Technically this is a hybrid drive as it does combine an SSD and HDD in the one package. It just doesn't work like a traditional hybrid which uses the SSD as a cache, a method which offers poor performance in my opinion and should be avoided.
 
I have a similar setup in my laptop (a 13" Vaio from 2010). 2x64GB SSD's in RAID0 coupled with a 1TB Hitachi drive for bulk storage. Really nice to use, you get the power and speed benefits of an SSD with a lot of storage when you need it. Solutions like this drive are excellent for people who don't have the space to house more than one disk. Sounds a lot more interesting than hybrid drives!
 
This is a great drive for a laptop. I wonder why they called it a Black drive though. The platter speed is slow. It should the Blue^2. The Black^2 should have a 7200RPM platter. I guess that isnt possible yet.
 
This is a great drive for a laptop. I wonder why they called it a Black drive though. The platter speed is slow. It should the Blue^2. The Black^2 should have a 7200RPM platter. I guess that isnt possible yet.
Very true, I was expecting more performance from a black
 
This drive is a huge piece of **** for $159... just my honest opinion.

if cost per GB is your main concern just stick to 1TB drives in your server rack of a tower. If you want the performance of an SSD, go get one. This pos drive is going to die in 3-4 years just like every other physical drive out there.

Hybrid drives lack the throughput of an SSD, they are not even close. 140mb/s VS 550mb/s - how can you look at those figures and not realize what a waste of money this is.
 
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