Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500 GB

The 500 GB of WesternDigital's Caviar RE2 WD5000YS that we tested isn't the fastest drive we've ever had in our labs, but it remains a fairly solid hard drive.

When writing data, it averages 61.7 MB/s against 57.9 MB/s for reading files, whereas the very best of today's internal hard drives are capable of speeds of 100 MB/s or more.

Its response time is a little slower than average at 13.7 ms, and it makes a little more noise than most of its competitors, too.

The problem is worse when writing data, and we noticed a very irritating scratching sound when copying files.

Fortunately, it remains at a reasonable average temperature of 41.6 °C.

Noise Management

When we turned on Automatic Acoustic Management, the noise produced by writing files was reduced a little--it fell by 1 dB(A), but remained audible.

While copy speeds remained largely the same, only falling by around 1 MB/s at worst, but the response time did dip to a very slow 20.6 ms.