I have used Western Digital drives since I started building/upgrading my own computers back in 1987. I have good luck on all of them except for the 40gig harddrive WD400BB series. I believe there is a design flaw in this series of harddrive. The first one I bought lasted a week, I sent it in and received a reconditioned one in return which lasted 3 days. The next one has lasted so far the past 1 1/2 and the other one I bought at the same time has still worked with no problems.

I have heard people say that they think the harddrives we can get now are so expensive. In 1997 I can remember buying a 640 meg harddrive, at that time I thought it was huge and a great bargain but I paid $200 for this harddrive. For that price I can now buy 2 160 gig harddrives.

Specifications for this Harddrive

Capacity 120 GB
Interface IDE/EIDE
Enclosure Internal
Drive Dimensions 3.5" x 1/3H (Low Profile)
Spindle Speed 7,200 RPM
Technical Features
Special Features S.M.A.R.T Technology
Internal Data Transfer Rate 602 Mbit/s
External Data Transfer Rate 100 MBps
Seek Time 8.9 ms
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 4.17 ms
Interface (Detailed) DMA/ATA-100 (Ultra)
Sound Emission 39 dB
Other Features
Platform PC, Mac

OK for those who want more. I ran HDtach benchmark on this harddrive and on one that is smaller but turns at same speed (7200rpm) but only has a 2meg buffer.

Western Digital WD400BB
40 GB ATA100
7200rpm 2meg buffer
Burst speed 91.7 MB/s
Random access 14 ms
Average Read 42.9 MB/s

Western Digital WD1200JB
120GB ATA100
7200 rpm 8meg buffer
Burst speed 94.6MB/s
Random access 13.4ms
Average Read 52.6MB/s

Western Digital WD800JB
80GB ATA100
7200 rpm 8meg buffer
Burst speed 93.3 MB/s
Random access 13.9 ms
Average read 49.5 MB/s

Now I bought this harddrive back in July of 2005, it has run in my computer since then with no problems. Now I see no differance in performance between the 2 meg buffer or the 8 meg buffer,the only time you will see a differance in performance is a program that would move very large amount from and to the harddrive.I have used a varity of harddrives with Windows and the performance is as fast as any I have used. About the only way I will be able to get better performance is by going with SATA drives.

Since I was looking for a reliable and fast harddrive to beta test Vista with. I have had very good luck with Western Digital. Having only 2 harddrives out of all the hundreds I have used in the last 18 years, means that less than 1% of my drives have been bad. By the way that 640 meg harddrive stopped working last year so that's not bad.

Now I have this harddrive divided into 4 partitions. One for Windows XP Pro with SP2-one for Vista X32-Vista X64 and one for data or programs I get off the internet. They are all about 30 gig big.

I bought this harddrive from TigerDirect for $83 and at this time, am well satisfied with the cost/space/performance of this harddrive. Since it is a OEM harddrive the warrenty is only for 3 years but I can live with that.



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