Caviar Black Drives Meld Size, Performance

Western Digital claims its latest line of hard drives, with capacities up to 1TB, are the fastest 7200RPM 3.5-inch models on the market.

RAID arrays may offer the perfect blend of performance and massive storage if you have room in a case for them, but for smaller applications, it can be tough to find a drive that balances capacity with snappy speed. Western Digital released its own attempt at compromise on Tuesday with the Caviar Black line of 7200 RPM hard drives, featuring capacities up to one terabyte.

With two internal processors, a 32MB cache, and a SATA interface to deliver up to 3Gb/s of throughput, Western Digital claims its drive is the fastest 7200RPM 3.5-inch drive on the market. It also includes some of WD’s standard features for reliability, like StableTrac to minimize vibration by securing the motor shaft at both ends, and a recording head that never touches the drive platters to reduce wear and tear.

Available next week, the 750GB version of the drive will run for $199 while the larger 1TB model will cost $249.