Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive Review

Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive Review - Performance Analysis

What's immediately clear from our testing of the Black2 is that its SSD isn't the fastest around but that it does hold its own. Meanwhile the HDD portion of the drive is as slow as to be expected.

The most clear Achilles heel of the drive is its sequential write speed, which is reported as 136MB/s in AS SSD. This is adequate - and a step up from a laptop HDD - but it clearly trails decent mainstream drives such as the Samsung SSD 840 250GB, which delivers 249MB/s. The story's similar in CrystalDiskMark, where the Black2 delivers 143MB/s compared to the Samsung 840's 256MB/s. As such, movement of any large files won't feel significantly faster on this drive than a normal laptop hard drive.


However, when it comes to delivering that crucial 'feel' of speed, which SSDs are desired for, the Black2's read speed delivers in spades. Again it falls short of most competing drives but with 405MB/s in AS SSD and 442MB/s in CrystalDiskMark it is only 50MB/s or so behind the fastest drives out there. The 114MB/s - 120MB/s speed of the HDD portion shows just what an upgrade the SSD portion provides.

Similarly, when it comes to random read and write speeds the SSD of the Black2 is right up there, at least at single queue depths, and if you ever needed more proof of just what an upgrade an SSD provides the comparative HDD scores here show it conclusively.


At higher queue depths the SSD of the Black2 does struggle a little in both read and write, but only compared to the latest top-end SSDs. Other more mainstream drives, again such as the Samsung Evo 840, it compares to very well indeed. Certainly for a laptop environment you're unlikely to be desperate for more performance.

Rounding things out, the Starting Applications Test of PCMark 7 again demonstrates how performance of the SSD portion of the Black2 is on par with other mainstream SSDs while the HDD is again so slow as for the number not to even show on our graphs. In the Gaming Test the HDD at least registers a comparable score of 3.8MB/s but the SSDs still trounce it, delivering around 16MB/s, with the Black2's SSD pretty much as fast as any other.

Conclusion

The Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive is certainly a mouthful to name but thankfully it's worth the effort as it really does deliver on being an ingenious upgrade for anyone out there with either a PC or laptop that only has room for one 2.5in drive. Its HDD is a little slower than performance 2.5in HDDs but that's where its SSD comes in to play, delivering performance that far outstrips any hard drive. It's not the fastest SSD, either, delivering performance somewhat on par with mainstream drives from last year, but it will still be a decent upgrade from any HDD.

We're also convinced when it comes to Western Digital's strategy of separating the SSD and HDD, rather than having one act as a cache for the other.

However, there's no denying you're paying quite a premium for the convenience of having the speed of an SSD and capacity of an HDD in one drive. At ~£230 the Black2 is around £100 more expensive than buying a separate 120GB SSD and 1TB hard drive. So pricey is it, in fact, that you could buy a ~500GB SSD for the same money, and although that's still quite a step down in capacity we'd consider it enough for the vast majority of users.

As such the Black^2 is far from award worthy at the moment. If that price drops by £50, though, it'll be well worth a look.