Are Western Digital drives any good? 120gb drive for 69.99

[Arkitech]

Best Buy has a WD 120gb 7200rpm Caviar drived listed for 129.00, there is also a 50 dollar and 10 dollar mail in rebate which brings the drive down 69.99. It sounds like a good deal but I'm just curious about the performance of WD drives. Are they any good? Are they prone to failing? And just out of curiosity if a drive dies on you is there anyway to retrieve the data?

 

[Arkitech]

If you had to choose between a 80 gig Seagate Barracuda for 99.99 or a 120gb WD Caviar for 129.99 what would you choose?

 

[Goi]

WD drives are great. Assuming you're talking about the 120GB drives with 8MB cache and either 80GB or 100GB/platter size, these drives are some of the fastest IDE drives around. They're definitely faster than the Seagate Barracudas, unless you're talking about the new SATA 7200.7 drives.

 

[tallman45]

Wd 120gb drives come with 80 or 100gb platters ? The 120gb SE 8mb cache drives that I have are 3 - 40gb platter jobs.

WD, Maxtor and Seagate drives are all very good. I just had a WD 80gb drive go bad and they RMA return took less than 10 days which is pretty good.

FYI, You can get drives for much less that $129.99 for 120gb or $99.99 for 80gb. Last month CompUSa has Seagate 120gb 8mb cache drives for $59.99 after rebate, Office Max had WD 80gb 8mb drives for $20 after rebate. Check Sundays paper drives are always on sale someplace.

 

[fireontheway]

how about a Hitachi Dekstar 200gb $99.00 after rebate, any good?

 

[Goi]

tallman, the old 120GB HDDs are 3x40GB, mine are too. The later ones come with 60 and 80GB platters, and I think even fluid dynamics. The 100GB platter one is reserved for the 200GB version IIRC.

fireontheway, do you mean the 7K250? If so then that's the current king of the hill.

 

[fireontheway]

i really couldnt tell you the exact model number, only thing i remember is that its a 200gb 8mb cache 7200rpm hdd. im about to find out for sure coz im omw to fry's to do return

 

[Special1Sauce]

on my old rig (p3 450 192Mbs of Ram) I had two maxtors and they both died within two years. so I replaced them with a ten gig WD caviar in my current rig. And Its still alive and kickin!

 

[Arkitech]

Thanks guys, I guess I'll take my chances with the WD drive. I've been needing a new drive desperately so I'll probably head out today and pick one up.

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: Goi
tallman, the old 120GB HDDs are 3x40GB, mine are too. The later ones come with 60 and 80GB platters, and I think even fluid dynamics. The 100GB platter one is reserved for the 200GB version IIRC.

fireontheway, do you mean the 7K250? If so then that's the current king of the hill.

Thanks I was not aware that the newer 120's used 60 or 80gb platters. Definately would make the outer edge faster. Curious about the 80 gb platter in a 120gb drive what is the other platter, an 80gb but restricted to 40gb used ?

 

[WackyDan]

I've only had one bad WD ever. I've owned at least 8 wd's and the one that I sent back under warranty was only due to it making some odd noises.

I own one Maxtor - A 30gig 5400rpm jobby that is now about three years old.

 

[ponyo]

I only have one rule in new harddrive buying. No Deathstar. I don't care Hitachi bought them out.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: tallman45

Originally posted by: Goi
tallman, the old 120GB HDDs are 3x40GB, mine are too. The later ones come with 60 and 80GB platters, and I think even fluid dynamics. The 100GB platter one is reserved for the 200GB version IIRC.

fireontheway, do you mean the 7K250? If so then that's the current king of the hill.

Thanks I was not aware that the newer 120's used 60 or 80gb platters. Definately would make the outer edge faster. Curious about the 80 gb platter in a 120gb drive what is the other platter, an 80gb but restricted to 40gb used ?

Yup pretty much.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Goi
tallman, the old 120GB HDDs are 3x40GB, mine are too. The later ones come with 60 and 80GB platters, and I think even fluid dynamics. The 100GB platter one is reserved for the 200GB version IIRC.

fireontheway, do you mean the 7K250? If so then that's the current king of the hill.

The 7K250 is the only IBM/Hitachi to come in 200 GB models, the previous line, 180GXP, maxed at 180 GB.

 

[Goi]

Thought as much, but had to make sure

 

[Gamingphreek]

If you are going SATA and can live with 36.7GB of storage than go with the Western Digital Raptors. They are the absolute fastest drives on the market. (10,000RPM 8MB cache)
If you are going IDE that board is probably the best.
As for Western Digital they are arguably the best maker of Hard Drives.
___________________________________________________________________________________


My Rig:
Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2700+ (2000Mhz)
A7N8X-E Deluxe
1x 512MB Kingston Value RAM
Nvidia Soundstorm Audio
(*cough*) Geforce 2 TI

 

[BlvdKing]

I love Western Digital hard drives. They fast, reliable and quiet. I have a 40 GB 2mb cache that is more than 2 years old now and I just bought a 160 GB 8mb cache drive this week. I got it for $80 after MIR from Circuit City.

 

[StageLeft]

I'm looking at this now from best buy. Seems like a good price and a big harddrive for the price

 

[BD231]

They're loud. I'd go with the Cuda any day.

 

[Cerb]

WD has the best performance of any PATA drives (until you hit 200GB), even if the gap is now too fine for most people to notice.

$70 1yr BB
$88 1-yr Egg
$87 3-yr Egg
$17 for 2 more years of warranty if you buy from Newegg. That $17 savings is all you should be concerned about. Nobody's IDE drives are that much more reliable since Seagate stopped with the 'cuda IV and V. I'm using a 20GB, about to get a 120GB myself, so still on a 20GB, I consider that $17 well spent (though I'm going 'Cude for noise, myself--the prices go up every time I have time to order, though...arg!).

Originally posted by: Arkitech
If you had to choose between a 80 gig Seagate Barracuda for 99.99 or a 120gb WD Caviar for 129.99 what would you choose?

...I'd choose to buy either cheaper from Newegg, which has better support to boot.

 

[StageLeft]

Heh, I just got back from BB with this

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Xplaya91
If you are going SATA and can live with 36.7GB of storage than go with the Western Digital Raptors. They are the absolute fastest drives on the market. (10,000RPM 8MB cache)
If you are going IDE that board is probably the best.
As for Western Digital they are arguably the best maker of Hard Drives.

Uh... I can name 5 drives faster than the Raptor.

 

[StageLeft]

I'm now running on this with a 20 gig partition for win2k. Given my other problems today I imagine that I'll have to rebuild this a lot, but it sure is faster than my old 6 gig as an OS drive :heart:

 

[Kaieye]

I purchased two from Dell(the $80 special after the WD rebate fiasco) about one and a half years ago and one of them did fail after about 9 months of use. I did RMA it and got another one back. But I would purchase another one right away!

 

[pdn]

I've got two WD drives and they are running great so far. One 40GB I've had for over 3 years in my kids pc running with no problems and it has even taken a good round of hosing from Win ME (only 1 year running ME) then I formatted and installed XP-Home (much better). The drive is still kicking just like new even from all the lock-ups ME put it through. My second drive is a 120 GB, had it for only 1 year, but it seems to be running fine in my other PC.

Originally posted by: BD231
They're loud. I'd go with the Cuda any day.

My WD drives are very quite.