While Seagate grabs headlines as the market share leader in the hard drive world, lately we've been more impressed with Western Digital's portfolio. The company's Black and Blue Scorpios fared very well in our latest mobile storage round-up, outpacing rival Momentus drives from Seagate. Then there's the radically redesigned VelociRaptor, which recently raised the bar for Serial ATA hard drive performance while riding a bold new form factor. For enthusiasts, the Caviar SE16 640GB offers the best blend of performance, capacity, noise levels, and overall value of any 7,200-RPM desktop drive. And let's not forget the power-efficient and nearly silent "GreenPower" Caviar GP drives with terabyte capacities.

The GreenPower line's prodigiously low power consumption is achieved by dialing back spindle speeds, but that sacrifices performance, and it ultimately cost WD the title of fastest terabyte on the block. Somewhat surprisingly, Western Digital was apparently in no hurry spinning a terabyte up to full speed. Indeed, the new Caviar Black 1TB is the last 7,200-RPM drive to reach the terabyte mark, arriving a year after Hitachi broke the seal and well behind entries from Seagate and even Samsung.

So was the Caviar Black 1TB worth the wait? Can WD extend its hot streak and add the terabyte performance crown to its already impressive palmarès? Read on to find out.