A Hard Drive for the Digital Age.
Written: Mar 01 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quiet, Extra Large Capacity, ease of installation.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: If you're planning to enter the Digital Age, a gigantic hard drive is essential. But with Western Digital¡¦s WD1000BB hard drive, you'll have no problems with it.
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| lavoisier's Full Review: Western Digital Caviar WD1000BB Special Edition 10... |
When I was looking for a hard drive to store a collection of digital pictures, digital video and digital audio; I knew that a 40GB hard drive wouldn't really cut it at all with my rather large digital audio collection of about 3GB, the Windows XP occupies about 1.5GB and with my other digital applications software and other productivity software occupies about 8GB of hard drive space, which includes my scanner, 2 printers, the CD-Rewriter software and other productivity software like MS Office XP. With my ever-growing collection of audio files, you can see that a 40GB hard drive is not enough to even store all of my other digital files, even with the CD-Rewriter here.
Buying the Hard Drive
When I looked at the ads that are posted in my monthly computer newsprint, I knew that many of the local computer hardware stores sell hard drives, as OEMs and they're generally cheaper than the full retail boxes. Recently I just saw a promotion at a local computer store near my house and it was the Western Digital 100GB hard drive. When I was thinking of a hard drive that would go above the 60GB mark, I though that it could be too much for me in a computer, but with my computer use habits, I would need a hard drive much more than what I basically need. At about $200, it maybe expensive, but it's worth it for those who really need such amount of space for their computer storage.
Installing the hard drive
Installing the hard drive is not very difficult, as it only requires a connection between the motherboard and the hard drive with an IDE Ribbon cable. But the installation procedure is very carefully explained through the manual and it is also suitable for beginners to even install the hard drive. So, no longer do you have to hire a professional to install a new hard drive and/or to even think of transferring data from the old hard drive to the new. In no time at all, you can start setting up the hard drive. Once you've turned your computer on, the BIOS screen should come up to check if your computer recognizes the hard drive. But if it doesn't, you should go to your motherboard's vendor website for BIOS updates.
Using the Hard Drive
With 100GB of hard drive space, formatted space should only include about 94GB. But for many users, that is far more than adequate and it's ideal for those who want to experience the full digital world. During the hard drive operation, it isn¡¦t very noisy, unlike some of the cheaper hard drives and some of the 7200rpm hard drives as well. Even during intensive access times, the hard drive doesn't really seem to generate too much noise at all and I can even carry on with my phone call, even while I'm busy accessing my videos. Even though with just about 2 months of use in the hard drive, I didn't have any experiences of breakdowns, even though the technology is really proven. Because of ultra large hard drive capacities of 100GB or above that are relatively new to the PC market, I would of thought that they may have hardware defects or faults, such as possible quality issues. Because my motherboard has an ATA/100 controller built into it, I can really rest assured that my content is accessed fast enough to really keep up with my productivity schedule. To date, since I've used about 12GB of the 100GB, I can really rest assured that I don't have to buy a completely new hard drive for a long time. Along with my Plextor CD-Rewriter, I can really be sure that my hard drive will hardly ever be filled up, until applications start hogging hard drive space.
Final Thoughts
Because of my computer use habits, by collecting digital audio files, taking snapshots from my digital camera, shooting video from my digital camcorder and some graphic design, a large hard drive is basically essential. This goes the same for all users out there that have the same computer use habits like mine. I would recommend this hard drive to professionals and home users alike. With the ultra large capacity, we can all rest assured on not worrying about hard drive space for a long time.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
lavoisier
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Member: Hugh Jazz
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 180
Trusted by: 26 members
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