This two terabyte (2TB) hard drive is a four-platter drive with a data density of 500 GB on each platter, spinning at 7200rpm and with a 32MB buffer.

The GreenPower branding means that it can rotate at a lower speed when required. It is almost inaudible when run in a normal desktop pc. WD claims power usage of 4.9W at idle, and 5.91W during operation. WD also claims their Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) helps reduce uneven wear on the drive's surface.

Performance-wise, the WD20EVDS didn't reach the sort of speeds that Seagate's current-gen 7200.12 drives do, but it isn't slow. We measured a read speed average of 83.4 MB/s, and write speed average of 83.3 MB/s. It never went below a minimum of 45 MB/s, and above a maximum of 104.8 MB/s. Real world file read/write speeds stood at 99.6 MB/s for a single large file (6.42 GB), but fell to 88.36 MB/s as expected, when copying multiple smaller files (1287 files totaling up to 2.33 GB). Transferring files from the first partition to a second on the same drive was at an average of 30.29 MB/s. The above scores are all good, and on par with current generation drives. Of course, as the drive gets fragmented during usage, speeds will fall. Read and write access times averaged 17.71 ms and 8.76 ms respectively.

The WD20EVDS is currently priced at a level which could buy you three 1TB drives, but it is a premium drive and not targeted at the mainstream yet. Western Digital offers a three year warranty on this drive.



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