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Conclusion:
The Black² Dual Drive from Western Digital is almost literally in a class of its own, considering what it brings to the table. The ability to have discrete access to a 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD within the same 2.5″ 9.mm drive is a game changer for some consumers, as it finally spares them the excruciating agony of having to decide between performance or capacity when faced with a single drive system limitation.
With an MSRP of around $299, if you were to try and build this on your own, purchasing a stand-alone SSD and HDD, it doesn’t appear that WD is really charging too much of a premium for the single drive implementation of two drives in one. Which is quite admirable, considering the lack of competition. Add in the fact that the WD Black² Dual Drive performance tested higher than printed specifications in some testing, just adds to the excitement of this product.
The WD Black² Dual Drive is not without some documented limitations thou.
- Currently, there is no MAC support (sorry Apple users).
- Drive security can only be enabled on the SSD portion (ATA/BIOS lock).
- Drive cannot be used in RAID environments.
- nVidia storage drivers and ASMedia controllers are not supported.
In addition to the WD printed limitations, the “For the hell of it!” performance testing highlighted SSD performance degradation during simultaneous access to the HDD portion. This testing may be futile, in that even thou there appears to be some performance tradeoffs sandwiching an SSD and HDD into a single drive sharing the same SATA connection, you have to come back to the fact that the WD Black² Dual Drive provides the only solution in town if you want a discrete SSD and HDD in a single drive design.
All in all, the WD Black² Dual Drive is fine piece of tech and I suspect is something that the competition will try and replicate or fail trying to keep up. Hats off to the folks at Western Digital!
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I would like to see the mechanical drive having 16GB of flash memory itself, so it’ll be a hybrid drive, along with the 120GB SSD. Maybe a 256GB SSD option too.
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.
Otherwise I think it’s a great product and I’m letting my friends know about it.