A Western Digital WD1200JD 120GB Hard Drive is only worth a recycling credit!
Written: Nov 04 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: SATA I interface and 7200 RPM spin speed
Cons: Loud during heavy read or write operations
The Bottom Line: The Western Digital WD1200JD 120Gb SATA Hard Drive has seen its time come and go, but you still can use it as file storage or recycle it.
rgathright's Full Review: Western Digital Caviar® SE WD1200JD 120 GB SA...
Last week, I realized that I should archive my digital artwork and used the Western Digital WD1200JD 120Gb SATA hard drive to do so. After the work was done, I should have just used another Kingston 16GB Micro SDHC card but I was trying to save money as well. I hope reading this review will show you the problems of relying on old technology and give you ways to dispose of it properly.
For my purposes this year, I plugged it into a MSI G31M3-L V2 Desktop Board to act as a back up drive for some POV-Ray animations that I am creating. When plugging in a new SATA drive make sure that you have a Tripp Lite SATA ribbon or similar cable to ensure a good connection to the computer.
Operation The Western Digital WD1200JD hard drive is louder than a Socket 775 processor fan. When copying files it makes a loud clicking noise that can become quite annoying if used outside a computer case.
Performance Testing The Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb SATA Determining the true speed of a hard drive is tough because you have to find a motherboard capable of generating enough I/O traffic that it will eclipse the SATA interface speed of the drive. Luckily, I have an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 and motherboard that can stress the drive. The boot drive was a Patriot 32Gb SATA SSD running Windows XP Pro SP2 with the 120Gb Western Digital SATA drive operating as a spare and formatted using NTFS full partition size. Super Pi V1.1 is an application that extrapolates the specified digits of PI into a text file. The small packet writes to the hard drive exhibited by the 3.33Ghz Intel processor and Super Pi can cause unexpected behavior. In fact, I gave up testing this drive after two tests because the head was making an awful sound as it tried to keep up with the operating system requests.
Here are the results of two runs at 32 million digits of PI on the Intel E8600 processor: #1; 7 minutes 37 seconds ERROR NOT EXACT IN ROUND #2; 8 minutes 10 seconds ERROR NOT EXACT IN ROUND
HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0 was utilized next to gather the burst, random access, cpu and sequential read of the hard drive. The drive could barely break 50 Mb/s average read which is painfully slow compared to the Seagate Barracuda and Patriot 32Gb SSD which could all read at over 140 Mb/s.
Here are the results of three runs at Long Bench setting (32mb zones): #1 Burst Speed: 126.4 Mb/s, Average Read: 50.2 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 1%, Random Access: 13.1ms #2 Burst Speed: 126.4 Mb/s, Average Read: 50.2 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 2%, Random Access: 13.1ms #3 Burst Speed: 126.4 Mb/s, Average Read: 50.3 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 2%, Random Access: 13.2ms
SiSoftware Sandra 2009.5.15.99 in the File Systems benchmark, I obtained the following performance figures for the 120Gb Western Digital SATA drive:
Test 1 Drive Index; 45.27Mb/s Buffered Read; 29.83 Mb/s Sequential Read; 55.1 Mb/s Random Read; 28.66 Mb/s Buffered Write; 59 Mb/s Sequential Write; 55.12 Mb/s Random Write; 38 Mb/s Random Access Time; 16.74ms
Test 2 Drive Index; 44.33Mb/s Buffered Read; 29.53 Mb/s Sequential Read; 116.4 Mb/s Random Read; 61.4 Mb/s Buffered Write; 75.1 Mb/s Sequential Write; 55.03 Mb/s Random Write; 38 Mb/s Random Access Time; 16.76ms
Wow, I never realized how slow this hard drive was until now. Compared to the new SATA 2.0 Seagate 2.0 TB hard drive, the scores are almost half! In fact, a newer drive like the Seagate 2 Tb can achieve a Burst Speed of 233.3 Mb/s in the HD Tach benchmark.
When these drives were widely sold, my computer firm was replacing them faster than we could get new supply. After just six months, we decided to stop replacing the factory computers with these drives because they were simply to unreliable. Slow performance on a modern operating system that has heavy file paging means that your computer is going to dump even more I/O demand on the hard drive. Eventually, the increased heat from all these paging operations will result in failure.
To show what a hardware raid card can do with this drive, I plugged an Adaptec 2410SA hardware raid card into a free PCI slot on my MSI motherboard. My 120Gb Western Digital hard drive was identified by the BIOS because it was firmly within the SATA I specification. Working with the Adaptec 2410SA raid card also means that this drive will work with most SATA drive connectors on both motherboards and RAID cages. As quick test, HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0 was used next to record the burst, cpu, random access and sequential read of the hard drive. The CPU Utilization went down to 0% but the burst speed and average read were all reduced because of the overhead associated with a raid array. If I had attached multiple drives in a RAID 0 configuration, we would have seen an increase in burst speed.
Here are the results of two runs at Long Bench setting (32mb zones) using the external Adaptec 2410SA hardware raid card: #1 Burst Speed: 76.1 Mb/s, Average Read: 37.8 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 0%, Random Access: 18.7ms #2 Burst Speed: 75.9 Mb/s, Average Read: 37.5 Mb/s, CPU Utilization: 0%, Random Access: 18.7ms
We can clearly see that the 120Gb Western Digital drive did not work well with my hardware raid card. The benchmark results show that it scored even lower ratings across the board. The only figure that did improve was the CPU Utilization. The reason is that a pure hardware raid card relieves the processor of file system handling. Consider this if you wish to build a high performance gaming computer or server, a good hardware raid card can free up some needed CPU cycles for you.
Recycling Old Hard Drives Due to the slow speed of this hard drive, you may be tempted to throw it away after you have upgraded your system. Do not throw this drive away! Consider recycling instead! Most people in America have at least one old computer sitting in the attic or a hall closet collecting dust bunnies. We are often tempted to just throw these old computers to the curb but doing so can harm the environment. Today, we now have the ability to recycle these components using free online disposal centers. Recycling one hard drive saves enough energy to power a 100 watt light bulb for 133 hours! Recycling one hard drive saves the energy equivalent of 1.5 gallons of gasoline! If you wish to recycle your old hard drive visit http://www.freeharddriverecycling.com
Product Specifications Manufacturer: Western Digital Model Number: WD1200JD Disk capacity: 120Gb Onboard memory cache: 8Mb Hard disk RPM: 7200 RPM Warranty: 3 years
Summary In the end not even 7200 RPM or an 8mb of onboard buffer memory cache could make this storage product attractive enough for me to use. Due to the archaic speed of the Western Digital hard drive, I strongly recommend avoiding the purchase of this product. After waiting over 12 hours to copy all my POV-Ray animation TGA files, I decided to disconnect the drive and be thankful for what little was actually copied over.
Instead you should consider a Patriot 32Gb SSD SATA hard drive or a 2Tb Seagate Barracuda LP hard drive. These drives not only feature quiet operation but also can reduce you energy consumption through reduced spindle speeds or no moving parts at all! Finally, regifting or selling the Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive to a friend will only result in failure because of the poor performance this product exhibited during my testing. Hence, my review title still applies… recycling and hoping for a core refund would be the best thing to do with this hard drive in the year 2009.
In all, I give the Western Digital WD1200JD 120GB Hard Drive two thumbs down.
WESTERN DIGITAL - CAVIAR 120GB 7200RPM SATA 7PIN HARD DISK DRIVE. 8MB BUFFER 3.5INCH FORM FACTOR LOW PROFILE(1.0 INCH). . WD1200JD IN STOCK.More at Server Supply
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