Disclaimer
I build computers for friends and family as well as some to sell on ebay as I find parts at a reasonable price. My own PC is a Do It Yourself (DIY) that I am constantly upgrading and adding onto. As such, I have some experience with PC’s and their components, and hope to share some of that knowledge with others. I hope this review helps you to decide whether or not the 80 GB HD by WD with 8 MB cache is for you, and if it does, please leave me a friendly comment.
Why did I buy this drive?
Pure and simple, it was the right drive at the right price for my computing needs at the time. I bought this a little over a year ago with a rebate from BestBuy.com for $69.99. Less than a buck a Gig was a good deal at the time, although you can now get this performance at a much cheaper $0.50/gig, or less than $40. I just bought another one of these this week, as a matter of fact, at CompUSA.com for $39.99 after rebates for a computer I am in the process of building!
Specifications
This hard drive is the special edition version with 80GB of capacity and an 8 MB cache. The lower end hard drives have 2 MB cache, and if you are anything like me, you did not have any idea what the larger cache meant, other than bigger is obviously better, right?
After a little research, my understanding is that the cache is there to store data in the process of transferring it to your processor. If the processor becomes bogged down or the hard drive is trying to access data from varying positions on the platters, (meaning fragmented files are present) the cache acts as buffer storing data. Think of it as a train depot holding people waiting for the train. The bigger the depot, the more people you can store, right? Therefore, the larger the buffer, the more capacity you have, thus reducing bottlenecks.
Long story short, this drive has an 8 MB cache, which is
4 times larger than the industry standard.
In addition to this, the drive rotates at 7200 RPM, thus allowing for faster data collection. The scan time is typical at 8.9ms, which is industry standard. The above are the most important statistics, and give the true picture of the performance of the drive.
Purchase
As I said, I purchased this to put in my own computer. I was replacing a 40GB Maxtor as my primary drive. I saw the drive on BestBuy.com with a rebate which brought the price down to $69.99 and thought that it was the right time to buy. The 8 MB cache with expanded capacity was exactly what I was looking for, as my 40GB was filling up with downloaded music, movies and the like. (All legal, of course!)
Installation
Once the box arrived, I filled out the rebate form, cut out the UPC and sent that in. Once that was taken care of, I opened the side of the computer box and installed the drive on the secondary IDE cable with the jumper in the slave position. I didn’t worry about fastening the drive into the case at this point with the four screws, as I wasn’t sure yet that it worked! I personally didn’t need the additional ribbon cable that comes with the drive or the included software, as I was going to use another program to format and partition my hard drive, but just so you know, they are included.
I switched the jumper on the Maxtor to primary, loaded up a ghosting program and created an exact image of the old disk to the new. I switched the jumpers around and booted Windows, ensured all of my data was there, and wiped the old drive.
When installing a new drive, you need to keep in mind what you are using it for to determine what the jumper settings will be. Since this drive I have purchased a Seagate 120GB drive for backup/data storage, and that drive had to have the jumper in slave mode. Not a big issue, but if you haven’t done it before, ask someone who has!
Dimensions
The dimensions of this drive are similar to every other 3.5” drive on the market, but if you are unfamiliar with that, here they are
Height: 1.028 inches
Depth: 5.787 inches
Width: 4.000 inches
The weight of the unit is also similar to other drives of this capacity, weighing in at 1.32 lbs. They are easy to handle and install.
Performance
As I said above, I have since added a second hard drive. I have also become more savvy with benchmarks, such as SisSoft Sandra, which can measure performance of a hard drive. Does the 8 MB cache really make it faster? The short answer is no, I don’t think so. I ran HDTach 2.61 on both of my hard drives, one being the Western Digital with 8 MB cache and the other being a Seagate 120GB with 2 MB of cache. The Seagate can read and write faster, and maintains a higher average transfer rate. It may be that I am limited by my motherboard or my cables, or that my hard drive was not defragmented completely, but in any case there was not much difference in read/write times. They both averaged between 40 and 47 MB/s read rate!
This drive is quiet in comparison to other drives I have had. The reported decibel production for this drive is between 34 and 39 dB depending on what the drive is doing. If your drive begins to sound a little funny or louder than usual, back up your data immediately, as you may have an impending crash on your hands!
Reliability
I cannot speak to more than my own experiences in the area of reliability, but I have had great luck with this drive. The Maxtor I was replacing was starting to find errors on the disk surface when performing check disk, and that led me to believe that it was possibly time to get my valuable electronic pictures, financial data, etc. moved off of it.
In a little over a year, I have repartitioned this drive several times, had to reload windows multiple times, and transferred ungodly amounts of data back and forth to the processor. I have had no errors to date, and do not anticipate seeing any in the future. My feeling, as well as the feeling of several folks on the internet that I have seen, is that Western Digital makes good products.
Warranty
So what happens if the drive does begin to go out on you? Western Digital recently (the past year) changed their warranty period from 3 years to 1 year. At the time that I purchased my hard drive, the warranty period was still 3 years, so I am covered for a few more years to come. That makes a person feel pretty good about the product. On the other hand, if they are reducing their warranty period, it may indicate that they were receiving too many returns. I have not seen any problems with my particular drive, but…
Conclusion
At the time that I bought this drive, it was the price/performance leader. At $39.99 for the drive this week, I believe that it may have taken this title back yet again. I bought another one for a computer I am building now, and I would recommend that you do the same!
Benchmarks, for those that are interested
Interested in knowing how your CPU stacks up in benchmarks? Here are some links to benchmarks I use:
Pifast: Pi Fast is a program that tests your CPU by loading it. It will calculate the value of Pi to as many digits as you want and then report to you the time it takes to do so. The lower the better. My current best score is 43 seconds to calculate to 10,000,000 digits.
http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/PiProgram/pifast.html
3dMark benchmarks: There are four, to be exact, that I use from 3dMark. 3dMark2001SE and 3d2003 are graphics engine benchmarks, while PCMark2002 and PCMark2004 are benchmarks for the CPU, Memory and Harddrive.
http://www.futuremark.com/
Aquamark: This is simply one that will benchmark your graphics engine.
http://www.aquamark3.com/
UT2003: Unreal Tournament 2003 is a graphics engine test as well. It is also a fee downloadable game that is pretty awesome.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/
SisSoft Sandra, a multipurpose benchmark used all around the industry:
http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=
HDTach 2.61, a utility to test read/write of disks:
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
Finally, Prime95: Prime 95 is not a benchmark, but a test for stability of your system. You run this program for an extended period of time, and it will torture your CPU and RAM. If you are at all unstable, this will find it before anything else.
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Other reviews of interest
My Motherboard, the IS7-E, based on the I865-PE chipset:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124412268164
My memory, Corsair PC4000PRO XMS series:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124563984004
My LCD monitor, the NEC MultiSync LCD1760V:
http://www.epinions.com/content_119510109828
My PDA, the Palm Tungsten C:
http://www.epinions.com/content_118730559108
A good electronics superstore on the web, BestBuy.com:
http://www.epinions.com/content_126474882692
Another decent electronics superstore on the web, CompUSA.com
http://www.epinions.com/content_125633334916
My best friend, Newegg.com:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124769439364
I hope this helps you to make your decision, and please rate or leave a comment. Feel free to write as well!
CompuVest
