WD Black2 is a 2-in-1 SSD, HDD Combo Drive

[exfileme]

This 2.5 inch drive combines an SSD with an HDD.

WD Black2 is a 2-in-1 SSD, HDD Combo Drive : Read more

 

[bochica]

I already bought a 256 Samsung PRO and 1 TB Velociraptor. Damnit WD! You took too long!

Actually, I would like to see how real world numbers would do. The setup I have works pretty well. I almost went with Seagate's hybrid, but steered away from it for various reasons.

 

[PepitoTV]

Nice tech, however I feel that it's for a niche of small form factor systems or laptops, otherwise I don't think it justifies the pricetag versus just having two drives.

 

[m32]

I can't wait to see some reviews about this.

 

[JohnPMyers]

I can't wait to see some reviews about this.

http://www.techwarelabs.com/western-digital-black%C2%B2-dual-drive-review-two-drives-in-one/

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Black2-Dual-Drive-Full-Review-120GB-SSD-1TB-HDD-single-25-package

Having both an SSD and an HDD are going to be faster than this. That's why the intended market is laptops/notebooks that only have 1 HDD bay and that also need a nice amount of storage space. For them, this idea is brilliant.

 

[SlitWeaver]

This drive would be perfect for Mini-ITX cases with limited drive bays. For instance, the newly released EVGA Hadron Air only supports 2 hard drives in total.

 

[danwat1234]

http://www.storagereview.com/wd_black2_ssd_hdd_review

The SSD isn't the fastest and the hard drive has no hybrid portion itself and is 5400RPM. But the SSD is plenty fast for any desktop/laptop user. The 2 drives show up as 2 drives in 'My Computer.' No native support, needs windows drivers, otherwise you will only see the SSD portion.

I think it's a great product and over time the price will come down. Would be nice if the mechanical drive had 16GB of flash to work with too, and a 256GB SSD option.

My only concern with the device is that the controller is kind of unstable if you try to intensively access the mechanical and SSD drive simultaneously, storagereview found. WD will probably revise the firmware.

 

[tsnor]

If the laptop has a MSATA slot free then buying a normal disk drive and an msata SSD would be much cheaper. (disk = $100, 120GB ssd MSATA = $100-$125. vs. current newegg for the WD Black2 = $300.) For $300 you could get a 256GB msata ssd and the 1TB slow drive.

 

[awesomedude911]

it will only be good if the price is right, why pay more for "New" technology?

 

[alextheblue]

Great for SFF and laptops if you're an advanced user. For the tech illiterate? Smart caching is better. I'd really like to see something like Seagate's software-agnostic hybrid, only with 64GB+ of fast cache. Their existing models were OK for a while (I used one of their last 7200RPM models, it was pretty fast for a large laptop drive), but they've fallen behind and now they just seem dated.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I already bought a 256 Samsung PRO and 1 TB Velociraptor. Damnit WD! You took too long!

Actually, I would like to see how real world numbers would do. The setup I have works pretty well. I almost went with Seagate's hybrid, but steered away from it for various reasons.

I am not sure why anyone buys Velociraptors as their price is not really worth it. A Seagate 1/2TB HDD (the 1TB platter ones) already push almost 200MB/s + and the IOPS on Velociraptors is still low.

When I worked at a PC shop we had a customer buy our top end build only to take out the 120GB Samsung 840 and replace it with a 640GB Velociraptor then had us install Windows on the 1TB WD Blue and he put FSX on the VR.

This is the first thing WD has done for a while I would be interested in design wise. Their Blacks are no longer the fastest 7200RPM drive and only their REs have any real world use as their Greens and Blues are not supposed to be put in RAID of any kind.

 

[FlyTexas]

This drive is already expensive at list, hopefully it actually drops in price to $200 pretty quickly.

As it stands, 1TB Samsung SSDs are below $600, so the need for this type of drive is going away pretty fast.

A 500GB SSD is right around $300 these days, I know this dual drive has more space, but for the average user, a single 500GB SSD is likely to be a better choice than this thing is.

 

[bochica]

I already bought a 256 Samsung PRO and 1 TB Velociraptor. Damnit WD! You took too long!

Actually, I would like to see how real world numbers would do. The setup I have works pretty well. I almost went with Seagate's hybrid, but steered away from it for various reasons.

I am not sure why anyone buys Velociraptors as their price is not really worth it. A Seagate 1/2TB HDD (the 1TB platter ones) already push almost 200MB/s + and the IOPS on Velociraptors is still low.

When I worked at a PC shop we had a customer buy our top end build only to take out the 120GB Samsung 840 and replace it with a 640GB Velociraptor then had us install Windows on the 1TB WD Blue and he put FSX on the VR.

This is the first thing WD has done for a while I would be interested in design wise. Their Blacks are no longer the fastest 7200RPM drive and only their REs have any real world use as their Greens and Blues are not supposed to be put in RAID of any kind.

Western Digital updated the Black's last month (FZEX model), giving a nice little speed boost (hitting around 170 -180 MB/s in read and writes). - http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/11/13/western-digital-4-tb-roundup-black-vs-enterprise.aspx

The current Velociraptor's perform 200 MB/s+ speeds. The Barracuda with the 1TB platters reach around 160 MB/s speeds when done in comparison tests (unless they have upgraded them that much in the past year). - http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_velociraptor_1tb_review

You may have to specify which hard drive you are specifically referring to.

 

[outlw6669]

This would work great as the boot drive in my HTPC.
It is just to bad that it costs to much for the combination of an underwhelming SSD and underwhelming 1TB drive.
Hopefully they sell enough of them to justify investing into their R&D next generation to bring SSD performance up and pride down.

 

[game junky]

I like the concept - when deploying new workstations, it's a struggle to deliver high-speed performance and capacity without overspending on storage for a user laptop. I have been using a 120 or 250GB Samsung 840 Evo based on the used storage size of their current drive but this will make for another option for users who need more than 250GB of storage on their computer but not all of it has to be lightning quick. I am curious to see how it's broken down - is it like the other hybrid drives on the market where it caches files based on frequency of access or will it have 2 separate partitions to map in order to segregate the different formats.

 

[bigpoppastuke]

I'm curious to know if this would fit in a PS4 and actually work.

 

[bunz_of_steel]

For $300..... heck no

 

[Innocent_Bystander-1312890]

Sorry WD, I just picked up a Kingston HyperX 240GB drive for my laptop... If they had introduced this a week ago, it would have been a no-brainer.

 

[ram1009]

This doesn't make any sense for a desktop. It costs more than two equivalent drives and negates the reliability advantage of the SSD.

 

[soldier44]

Just drop the price of 1Tb ssd drives to $299 and I'll be all over a couple of them. Instead of a half assed hybrid.

 

[takeshi7]

bigpoppastuke,

This drive wouldn't work in the PS4. It needs special Windows only drivers to access the HDD portion of the drive.

 

[danwat1234]

In the PS4 I'm pretty sure the PS4 will just see the SSD drive. The dual drive feature needs drivers, not supported natively on SATA apparently.

 

[popatim]

Theres nothing wrong with hybrid drives as long as you know what you are getting. 4 to 8gb of nand cache is plenty for the average home user but gamers and power users sure would like to see more nand. This is a step in the right direction IMO and I'm sure this price will drop to where it should be - under $200.

The only thing wrong is naming it the BLACK2 yet stuffing a 5400rpm drive in it. Boo on WD.

 

[SirRaulo]

I have a 120 Intel SSD and 1TB WD...... for significantly less $$$.... now, what am i missing on that new tech(drive)?

 

[mynith]

Clever. But not quite as clever as a hybrid drive. However, I think doing it this way instead of a hybrid caching solution with less space may very well be a wise decision. It remains to be seen how it stacks up against a Momentus XT (or laptop SSHD as I think they call it nowadays). Will depend largely on how efficient Seagate's caching is and what sort of workload you intend to run. I reckon it outperforms the Seagate, until they get to the point where they have at least 32 GB cache. That guess is based on absolutely no previous experience at all though.