stevelarrison's Full Review: Western Digital Caviar® Special Edition WD800...
The sad fact of marketing of PCs today is that processor speed gets all of the attention. While it is easy for the average consumer to get caught up in hype over processor speed, the fact is that processor speed is only one component of overall system performance. As PC microprocessors have increased in speed, other subsystems have lagged behind.
If you want to improve overall system performance, you have to address system bottlenecks. For most home and office desktop usage, any modern processor in the Pentium 4 or Athlon XP lineup offers performance that will satisfy the majority of computer users.
One area that can be adressed is absolute I/O performance. Disk access is a bottle neck in most systems. The Western Digital "Special Edition" line of harddrives fill an interesting niche. While not as fast as SCSI hard drives, they offer the best performance, this review will explain why the Western Digital Special Edition line of hard drives offers an ideal combination of price/performance that will make a noticeable difference in your overall system performance.
The architecture
The 80GB version of the Western Digital Special Edition hard drive is built upon a 3 platter disk drive (27GB per platter) with a 7200 RPM spindle speed, and 8MB of cache.
Those numbers sound dry, but understanding the previous statement is very important if you want to make an informed decision about what hard drive to purchase.
We will start with an examination of the number and size of platters.
Think of the internal operations of a hard drive as being similar to a record player. There are platters, and there are movable read/write heads that are similar to the stylus of a record player over each surface of the disk. Because data on your hard drive is spread throughout several platters, the amount of time it takes to move a read/write head from one portion of the disk to another is critical to overall performance.
There are a few ways to increase the performance of a hard drive. One way involves making the distance the read/write heads have to move as short as possible.
This is where platter size becomes important.
The physical size of platters in different generations of hard drives is not significantly different. The density of data is. At 27GB per platter, the data density of this hard drive is very good. While the newest generation of hard drives use 40GB platters, the 27GB packed into the platters used in 80GB are signficantly more dense than competing products in it's generation. (If you want something with better performance, the 120, 160, and 200GB Special Edition line from Western Digital is the brand to get. However, I have no problems recommending the 80GB drive because it offers performance that is only slightly slower than the 120GB version, but for about half the price.)
Next we will discuss spindle speed. This is how fast the disks spin. Current IDE hard drives are available in two speeds. 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM. Once the read/write heads make it to the spot on disk they need to read, faster rotation speeds lead to reduced time necessary to read or write data. In the past, I would have advised avoiding using 5,400 RPM drives for anything other than bulk storage. But now, 7,200 RPM drives are common enough (and inexpensive) that I would recommend avoiding 7,200 RPM drives for anything. Even space intensive applications like storing MP3 files should be done on faster hard drives. Though you will still be playing them at the same speed, the difference in amount of time to record an MP3 from CD, or to transfer an MP3 to a portable MP3 player make 7,200 RPM drives the way to go.
Now, for the final factor in hard drive performance. Cache size. Cache refers to internal memory where data is stored. This is where the 80MB Special Edition separates itself from other 80GB hard drives. The Special Edition line of Western Digital hard drives are called Special Edition because they have 8MB of cache. All other 80GB IDE hard drives have only 2MB of cache. (IBM and Seagate have recently introduced 160GB hard drives that have 8MB of cache)
The uninformed are probably asking what difference 6MB of memory can make. While the total amount of memory is tiny in comparison to the amount of memory modern graphics cards have, or in comparison to total system memory, it plays a very important role in hard drive performance.
Transferring data from cache memory to system memory is about 50,000 times faster than transferring data through the mechanical means of moving a read/write head and accessing data on the platter.
When you are saving files to disk, the memory will be written to cache, then from cache to disk. As long as you don't overflow the cache buffer, you don't need your system to wait for the physical operations to be completed.
When reading data from disk, algorhythms will try to predict what data you will need next based on what you read last. While your hard drive is "idle", it will be loading portions of your hard drive cache with the data you are most likely to need next.
What's the bottom line?
When all is said and done, benchmarks for typical home and office use show that the Western Digital WD800JBRTL is about 30% faster than the Seagate Barracuda ATA IV or DiamondMax D740DX. At about $100 for an 80GB drive, this offers about the best price/performance available. If you upgrade your system to this drive, you will notice a difference. (Note: If keeping your original drive in addition to a new Western Digital Special Edition, do yourself a favor. Though it is more work, you will benefit by transferring your Operating System (Windows or Linux) to the new hard drive.
Any reason I shouldn't get one?
Well, about the only reason I can think of to avoid the current line of Western Digital Special Edition hard drives is that Serial ATA is finally coming out. While I will save technical differences between Serial ATA and ATA drives for another review, it should be noted that sometime in the future, motherboards will stop coming with standard IDE connections. When this occurs, you will either have to abandon this hard drive, or use an add-in card to allow you to run this drive. The coming obsolescense of ATA is the only reason I would recommend going with a drive like this that uses 27GB platters instead of the newer and faster 40GB platter versions of the Western Digital Special Edition line.
80 GB Ultra ATA/100 internal hard drive 7200 RPM, 8 MB buffer Up to 100 MB/s burst transfer rates; data protection enhancments 40-pin EIDE Fits 3.5-in...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.