Struggling whether to buy speed or capacity when choosing drives is a common mix-up. Solid State Drive's (hereafter; SSD's) gives a rich amount of speed, while the Hard Disk Drives (hereafter; HDD's) offers more capacity. Opt for an SSD and forego without a mechanical drive and (mostly) would rely on the 'cloud'? or settle on HDD's and wait for it to chug along? Announced on Monday, Western Digital's Black2 promises to bring capacity and speed in a small form factor.
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| The Black 2 uses a single cable to connect to most SATA 6-gigabits-per-second drive controllers |
Sporting a 120GB SSD and a 1TB mechanical drive in a single 2.5-inch, 9.5mm package, the Black2 would be in line to fit most laptops. Ultrabooks most of the time can only accommodate thinner, 7mm drives
When planning to purchase the Black 2, be mindful that the Black 2's SSD and HDD are relayed as two independent drives. The idea here is to install the operating system, and all your frequently used apps and data on the SSD meanwhile, your large heavy chunk of files (be it movies, music etc) on the HDD. It works far better than the hybrid concept (a hard-disk drive with a large NAND cache), which has never delivered on performance promises in PCWorld's real-world tests.
Pro's:
Fast
Treated as independent drive
Cheaper alternative to a hybrid
Fits in most laptop drive bays
Cons:
WD highly recommends a fresh OS install
It doesn't support Nvidia or ASMedia storage controllers
No Mac support
Can't be used in a RAID configuration
Only the SSD is visible without the driver
Being the first of its category, the Black2 is a tad pricey: $299 (26c per GB). That's about $70 more than a 128GB SSD and a 1TB, 2.5-inch hard drive cost separately - not that you could fit both in the typical laptop or all-in-one.
Resource:
pcworld
Image Source:
cnet
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