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 3 TB WD Caviar Green AFT was a rather cool-running drive, despite sporting four platters. It was virtually at par with the 2 TB Western Digital RE4-GP enterprise-grade hard disk drive.

Platter Transfer Rate Profile

Here, we compared the WD30EZRSDTL's platter profile with its 2 TB cousin, the Western Digital WD20EARS.

The WD30EZRSDTL's maximum platter transfer rate appeared to be about 128 MB/s which progressively dropped across the platter to about 56 MB/s at the last track. This drive has about 22 density zones. The platter quality seems to be reasonably good in this sample, with only a few minor dips that would suggest the use of replacement sectors.

The WD20EARS had a higher platter transfer rate for the first 200 GB, and was neck-to-neck with the WD30EZRSDTL for the next 500 GB. However, its platter throughput fell below that of the WD30EZRSDTL after the first 750 GB.

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