Lot of 10 vintage Western Digital Caviar Drives - Were they really the fastest at the time?

Arnold0 - Arnlol
Arnold0 - Arnlol
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Published 2022-04-06
My collection was definitly lacking in term of early Western Digital drives, until I saw that listing for 10 of them at once, said to be in working condition! I couldn't resist buying those to finally have some more black casing Caviars to go along my Caviar 280. Out of 10 drives, there was 7 different models. (The lot had two Caviar 2200, 2340 and 2420).
Now that I have these, let's see if the saying that early Western Digital drives were among the fastest at the time is true!
The caviar 280 that I have since a long time is not included in this video. I already knew it was faster than the ~80MB seagate drives I could have compared it with. Don't worry, it still works perfectly fine!

Timestamps :
[0:10] Caviar 2120 VS 4 other drives.
[1:43] Caviar 2200 VS 3 other drives.
[3:13] Caviar 2250 VS 3 other drives.
[4:40] Caviar 2340 and Caviar 2420 VS 2 other drives.
[6:36] Caviar 2540 VS 2 other drives.
[7:56] Caviar 2700 VS 2 other drives.
[9:16] Conclusion.
[10:55] Bonus - Seektest of the 3 duplicates.



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Music at the end :
Song: T & Sugah - Sleepless (feat. MVE) [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds.
Watch:    • T & Sugah - Sleepless (feat. MVE) | D...  
Download/Stream: ncs.io/SleeplessYO
All Comments (8)
  • @ngtflyer
    These sounds take me back! At one point, I had a pair of WD 2540s in my system. I believe it was an early Pentium.. It was always the quickest at the LAN parties of that time. Incidentally, I believe I still have both of those drives in a box. I need to check them out and see what's on them!
  • @captain150
    Do you have a 21200? I'm curious if the slightly later silver case Caviars are also faster than other drives of the era. I have a 21200 in a P166 machine which I had growing up, and the sounds are nostalgic.
  • @ACompExp
    I was hoping you would have some more of the black WD hard drives and make a video on it. Finally you made it! Better suiting video for your channel.
  • @gennidee
    2nd video in a row that's quite familiar in style (: But well done ... and I'm a bit envious on your find. I really like these drives as you know and they have become quite hard to come by lately. Even if I see one occasionally on eBay they are priced way out of range. So I gave up on completing my collection though I'm still missing some models ... Interesting to see how the old Caviars held up to their contemporaries. Most interesting for me was the battle between WDAC2250, ST3290A and ST3295A (the Conner I didn't regard as a competitor). I had my bets on the WD but was quite surprised that the 1 platter ST3295A was so far ahead of the older 2 platter ST3290A.
  • @Nitrooooooogen
    Question: do you use these hard drives for anything other than the sounds and whatnot?
  • @XLGaming
    that caviar 2700 is very interesting to me. it has the same seektest as the caviar 31000 and 31200, and also comes in a silver variant. the black version is quite rare!