Lightning Fast Drive!

[jankster]

Yes thats what on the box for the Western Digital 100/120 GB hard Drives LIGHTNING FAST. The secret? 8 MB cache they say.

I had (2) 40 GB WD drives on my main computer (one on each primary IDE controller), but you know I needed more space, so I bought the 100 GB WD for $90 USD (if I get my rebates) from Best Buy.

I ran my standard benchmark software on it: HOLY S-H-I-T !!!!!
This sucker is fast. Using 500MB test blocks, I got write speeds of 46-47 MB/s and read speeds 48-49 MB/s. My 1-year old 40 GB WD drives only do 27-30 write and 22-27 read. And it isn't just large block transfers, its fast in all tests. In fact it is faster than a brand new Dell server with SCSI RAID drives at my work. I don't know how but it is, except for many small multi treaded transfers, then the SCSI kills it in speed.

I sucked in a m2v in to SpruceUp and watched the transfer rate with Task Manager, 26-30 MB/s. WOW! Working with DVD stuff, you can't have a fast enough CPU or hard drive.

I am very happy with this drive and just wanted to share this with you all.

[jacobjef]

really only $90? How much is it without the rebates? I usually loose them!

[jankster]

It was $150 and has a $20 + $40 rebates

[PkmoNk]

are they still offering the rebates? and did you get them? :D

[Xayd]

I have a pair of 36 gig 10k rpm U160 Fujitsus. Last week I also got one of these 8 meg cache WDs to give it a try.

1) Yes, they're very fast. The access time isn't much slower than my SCSIs are, and for "single drive" functions (moving files around, etc.), it's great.

2) Despite that, no matter how great the drive is ya can't really overcome the inherent limits in the IDE bus, it's still sucking hard on CPU time and takes forever to copy from drive to drive :\.

I guess the final answer is "I dunno". If you wanna save money and get similar speed, these definitely aren't bad. I don't expect them to last as long as my SCSI drives do either honestly, no IDE drive I've used ever does. But then again, for only 100 bucks for an 80 gig drive, ya could just use the hell out of them and then throw them away after you break them and get more ;).

When I shelled out the 800 bucks for my SCSI setup, before these drives were out there, it was clearly a good choice to make. I like the speed, and I like not having my computer being worthless while it takes a crappy 7200 RPM drive 20 minutes to move a few gigs of files around. With this WD drive I have to admit IDE is almost tolerable again, though.