Setting up the Black2
Setting up the Black2 drive is simply a case of plugging it in and either installing the operating system of your choice or cloning your existing drive using the supplied Acronis True Image WD Edition software. When you first plug in the drive only the 120GB SSD portion is visible to the operating system. In order to access and use the 1TB portion of the drive you need to download and install the WD Black2 installer – and that’s where that USB key comes in. Plug it in and it opens up the WD website and you can select the software to download.
Installing the WD Black2 installer software is simple – just run it, click through a few screens and then its done.
You can then see, and use both the SSD drive and the non-SSD drive.
Performance Testing
We ran are usual batch of performance tests on a 64-bit Windows 8.1 machine using CrystalDiskMark.
The 120GB SSD
The average read speed was 421.8 MB/s and the write speed was 144.7 MB/s.
The 1TB drive
The average read speed was 115.1 MB/s and the write speed was 113.6 MB/s.
Final Thoughts
Hybrid drives, those drives with both an SSD component and a “normal” drive component are nothing new, and previously these drives just haven’t delivered what they promised. This has changed with the Black2 drive – it certainly delivers everything it promises.
Setting up the SSD was simple, and so was setting up the 1TB partition – once you downloaded the software it only took a few moments to be completely up and running.
Performance wise, the read speed on the SSD was very good, but the write speed was disappointingly slow. The speeds on the 1TB were as expected.
The inclusion of both cloning software and a USB cable for the cloning was a good idea, and cloning a drive was simple.
While I really liked the idea of the Black2 drive it is slightly let down by the write performance of the SSD and most notably the cost – at £249.99 it isn’t cheap, and when you think that you can buy both an SSD and a standard drive for a lot less than the price of the Black2 drive, and those drives could be faster (think the Samsung 840 SSD for example with an average write speed of 480.3 MB/s) you have to seriously think about what you want for your money. If you plan on using the Black2 drive in a laptop then the combination of the two drives in one are certainly a major drawer. If you are planning on using the Black2 drive in a desktop, then you should think long and hard.
Retail price for the 2.5-inch 120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD WD Black2 dual drive is £249.99 and it’s available now.
Additional information about WD Black2 dual drives can be found here: http://products.wd.com/wdblack2.
