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Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive - Don't Call It a Hybrid (Updated with SSHD Performance!)

By Kenny Yeo - 21 Jan 2014
Launch SRP: S$459

Results - AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD 1.7.4739 Results

AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SandForce SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. Therefore this is a useful benchmark because drives that use the SF-2281 controller don't gain an upper hand.

On the copy benchmark, the WD Black2 recorded the lowest copying speeds amongst all the SSDs. Compared to the Crucial M500, a mainstream SSD, its scores were about 25% to 40% slower. When compared to SSD luminaries like the OCZ Vector 150 and Samsung SSD 840 Pro, its copying speeds could be as little as half.

Moving on, while sequential read and write speed were poor, the WD Black’s read performance on the random 4k workload was actually competitive. For example, on the 4k workload, its read speeds of 30.12 MB/s meant it outscored the Crucial M500 (27.50 MB/s) and OCZ Vector 150 (25.64 MB/s). However, performance took a turn for the worse on the intensive 4k, 64 threads workload.

Its hard disk drive performance on AS SSD was remarkable, easily seeing off the Seagate Ultrathin Laptop HDD and was easily on a par with the WD UltraSlim.

Update: Again, we saw that the hybrid hard disk drive was no match for the WD Black2's SSD. And this was especially true when it came to handling smaller data blocks where the hybrid hard disk drive would struggle to even attain speeds of 1 MB/s. The hybrid hard disk drive scores were also no better than the WD Black2's hard disk drive, which suggests that when it came to handling random, non-compressible data, the hybrid hard disk drive's caching performance benefits are negated.

SSD Results

 

HDD Results

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8.0
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 7.5
The Good
Innovative two drives in one design
1TB of storage
Easy to setup
The Bad
Lackluster SSD performance
9.5mm thickness won't fit all notebooks
Windows only
Very pricey
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