Maximum Surface Temperature

We monitored the surface temperature of six hard disk drives during their benchmarks. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual temperature and the ambient room temperature.

The new Western Digital WD30EZRX seems to run much hotter than its predecessor, the WD30EZRSDTL. In fact, the WD30EZRX idles at the same temperature as the WD30EZRSDTL at full load. This is very likely due to the higher spindle speed.

However, do note that our WD30EZRSDTL is of the earliest batch, which runs at a slower spindle speed. Current WD30EZRSDTL drives will run at the same spindle speed as the WD30EZRX. Therefore, you should consider the WD30EZRX's temperature to be representative of all current 3 TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard disk drives.

Platter Transfer Rate Profile

The maximum platter transfer rate appeared to be about 134 MB/s which progressively dropped across the platter to about 52 MB/s at the last track. This drive has about 23 density zones. The platter quality seems to be very good in this sample, with no sign of any dips that would suggest the use of replacement sectors.

As you can see, the new WD30EZRX is slightly faster than the original WD30EZRSDTL. However, we expect newer examples of the WD30EZRSDTL to deliver a similar platter profile to the WD30EZRX.

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