In the world of enterprise-ready 7,200-RPM Serial ATA drives, the Caviar RE2 has few competitors and no equals. Our IOMeter results paint a clear picture of the drive's performance under multi-user loads, and while it's not quite as fast as the Raptor, it dominates everything else. Combine that with a high storage density and an affordable price tag that's very un-enterprise-like, and the Caviar RE2 comes out as a definite winner for the workstation, server, and network attached storage applications that it was designed to tackle.

The Caviar RE2 a winner for a whole lot of other systems, too, in part thanks to that affordable price tag. Selling for only $220 online, the drive is less expensive than its closest competitors, Hitachi's Deskstar 7K400 and Seagate's 400GB Barracuda 7200.8. Not only is it cheaper, but the Caviar RE2 also has double the cache of the Hitachi and Seagate 400GB drives. Hitachi's drive lacks a five-year warranty and NCQ support, too.