To put the Caviar SE16's performance into perspective, it's important to note that the drive's $149 street price is higher than that of its most direct competitors. 250GB flavors of Hitachi's Deskstar T7K250, which seems to do more with 300MB/s transfer rates than the Caviar, cost just $119 online. Drives from Maxtor and Seagate are also cheaper, with 250GB versions of the DiamondMax 10 and Barracuda 7200.8 selling for $110 and $123, respectively.

What does the Caviar SE16 have to justify its $25-40 higher price tag? Not much, at least as far as performance is concerned. The drive's most stunning performance is probably in IOMeter, where with the exception of the web server tests, it does rather well. Otherwise, though, the Caviar SE16's performance is at best even with other drives, and at worst, much slower. I suppose it's impressive that the Caviar SE16 performs as well as it does; after all, it's little more than a new logic board strapped to old drive technology. Still, it's not nearly fast enough to be that much more expensive than the competition.