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Blazing Hot!! 120G Dell Hard disk, 142 shipped!(seems like WD120JB)

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woo hoo, got mines today. Had a little problem partitioning the drive, but all is set now. Now my only concern is that the drive does really have 8mb cache in it. Only the label on the drive say it is the JB version. Is there a program to test the drive to see if it really has the 8mb cache?
 


<< Capn - try actually talking to a csr to get the right tracking number
As for my hd problem...i can't get it to format under win2k disk management...
and when i fdisk the sucker...it only show 48XXX MB...but after i formatted it, it show all 120GB...i used a win98 boot disk...then when i check under fdisk...drive still show as 48XXX MB and with FAT 16...ahhhhhhhhhh...anyway to format the drive with FAT-32???
Takes FOREVER to format...can i reformat it using quick format into FAT 32?
OH yeah...i have the lastest BIO from ASUS - MB - P4B266-C - BIO ver. 1002 beta 005 >>



Try getting a version of win98se. You should be able to get it to format in FAT32.
 
I did some checking, and I have found my dell OEM WD1200JB HDs to have about 30MB less storage than my Retail WD1200JB drive. The LBA printed on my retail drive is 234441648, while on my Dell drives it is 234375000. If all of the drives are set up as NTFS in WinXP with default cluster size my retail drive is 120,031,477,760 bytes and my OEM dells are 119,998,574,592 bytes. Could you check and see what yours are, and let me know if they match? I want to find out if this is a difference on all retail and OEM drives, or just different on Dell drives.
 
I just got the drive yesterday, and the packaging was excellent. I booted with a winme bootdisk and do the fdisk and then a format. it's formated pretty quick for a 120gb,, it took ~30min to finish. On to windXP, partition the drive to a 25,60,35 and reinstall windows XP and just do a quick format for the 60 and 35 partition and I'm set..

This drive is pretty quiet and it runs alot cooler than my Segate,,, I don't notice the harddrive sounds at all.

Very happy with the drive.
 
I was wondering if the differing LBA parameters had any significance. I've got the same discrepancy as swapfile.

Glad to see you got the capslock problem worked out supermanCK. As for the drive, FAT32 is a dying technology -- I wouldn't use it for anything over 20GB. Remove all your existing partitions either with fdisk or Disk Management (double check and make sure they're really gone), re-partition with Disk Management, then format NTFS. If that fails, run FDISK /MBR from a boot disk (note, nothing will happen) then try Disk Management. B.T.W. Bill asks that you do a long format whenever changing file systems or partitions, the only way around his "advice" is with a 3rd party program like Partition Magic. If all of that fails, you could always try a low-level. And you thought regular formats took time!

 


<< I did some checking, and I have found my dell OEM WD1200JB HDs to have about 30MB less storage than my Retail WD1200JB drive. The LBA printed on my retail drive is 234441648, while on my Dell drives it is 234375000. If all of the drives are set up as NTFS in WinXP with default cluster size my retail drive is 120,031,477,760 bytes and my OEM dells are 119,998,574,592 bytes. Could you check and see what yours are, and let me know if they match? I want to find out if this is a difference on all retail and OEM drives, or just different on Dell drives. >>



One of mine has: 119,969,185,792 in 2 parts default clusters in fat32
The other I haven't finished parting out yet.
One of them says LBA 234375000
The drive size CAN vary sometimes. Its because all hard drives have bad sectors on them (i.e. places on the platter that just dont take data), but they find those when they manufacture them and mark them as off limits to the drive, so some drives have a few more spots than others.
I don't know why the dells have a differant LBA on the label... strange.

BTW that fat32 comment, I like to be able to access my drives from DOS, there have been plenty of times that's been nessasary when windows is playing around, plus I use both win98 and winXP. fat32 isn't dead yet 🙂
 
My second order is on it way. Shipped on the 29th, expected on 5/6.

I'm still having RAID trouble with these drives. I have them set up cable select. I deleted and recreated the RAID stripe. Formatted and tried to install windows, still same studdering/locking problems.

I moved the drives to IDE and noticed one drive is clicking. I ran the WD util and all checks came back ok for both drives. Installed Windows on both drives and things are running ok for now. The one is still clicking a little once-and-a-while.
 


<< In 1999-2001 I resembled that remark. Worked 5 months, vacationed the rest. God Bless this forum. >>


hey greg, how exactly did you manage this?? those must have been some AMAZING deals so you could resell them at a much higher cost to make enough money to live on.

seems like most deals lately, while good, only save you like $20-50 depending on the price of the product, which -- unless you can buy 500 of the product and get the full $50 difference when you resell them --doesnt really lead to substantial income.

just curious. 🙂
--wayne
 
You gotta be a consistent ebay seller to fully understand how the profits work. You will be really suprised how much money you can actually make. 😉
 


<< UPDATE!

My drives are DEAD!

They ran for a little while, but now I'm getting BSOD in WinXP and they don't get detected by the controller half the time! Dell is going to get my foot up their ass tommorow morning! :| >>



I'm getting BSOD in Win2k too. When I reboot, my controller could not detect my drives. 🙁 THis is not good. Anyone else having these problems? I think it might be a lose wire.
 


<< I'm getting BSOD in Win2k too. When I reboot, my controller could not detect my drives. 🙁 THis is not good. Anyone else having these problems? I think it might be a lose wire. >>



Oddly enough, my drives appear to work now. I put them in another computer and ran scandisk on them. Try them in another computer.
 
Win98SE has a problem with FDisk reporting above 64GB.

Borrowed from the IBM site:

The Fdisk function shipped with Windows 95 and Windows 98 contains a problem which causes the Deskstar 75GXP (DTLA-307075) drive to be reported with a maximum capacity of 7768 MB. This is only a display error and does not affect correct operation of, or access to, the full capacity of the drive. Contact Microsoft to obtain a fix for this issue.

A detailed description of the problem is available in the following Microsoft Knowledgebase article:



Microsoft Knowledge base (if that make sense 🙂 ) link
 
Stupid Dell! I called and cancelled my order last week thinking I got in too late and I really didn't want to spend the money. Today it shows up on my online credit card statement! What idiots. Oh well, wonder what these are selling for on Egay 🙂
 
im2smrt4u, I tighten the connection of the ports to the hdd and everything was resolved. These drives are really sensitive.

And for those having problems with FAT32, the only way to get all your 120gb is NTFS. Sadly but true. 🙂
 
NTFS under XP, used PowerQuest drive image to move from a WD30GB to this 120GB. It took like 4 hours, but all is good.
 
this may sound like a n00bie question, but what kind of partition will give this drive the best performance? Also i've heard stuff about how cluster size effects performance... anyone have any ideas on how to make this already great perfoming drive perform at it's best? (besides placing 2 of them in a raid array)
 
axia I'll take it off your hands, or anyone else who bought one extra or one they don't need for that matter.

Pm me
 


<< What are the advantages and disadvantages using NTFS or FAT32? >>



FAT32:
+ everybody knows it, everybody (mostly) can read/write it
+ simpler, => slightly faster (you won't notice though)
- no per-user permissions
- there are size limits? cluster size is fixed (?) at 32 k

NTFS v5.0 (winxp's ntfs):
+ per-user permissions, quite flexible
- slow to index and search for files unless you turn on some setting in winxp
- poor read/write support from non-MS OS's (linux)

i really like NTFS for a lot of reasons... crap on it all you want but it's a pretty mature filesystem...
if any of the above is false, please correct me!
 
I've also noticed this difference between FAT32 and NTFS, although I'm sure this probably won't affect too many people...

I recently purchased Norton Ghost Personal Edition, and it doesn't seem to work well with NTFS partitions. You can't see the NTFS partitions in Norton Ghost, which means you cannot ghost images onto it. I looked up this problem on the Norton website, and it says this is by design. Apparently The Corporate Edition has more features when dealing with NTFS.

I ended up converting part of my HD into FAT32 with Partition Magic and then making the ghost image with it.

So I guess more simply put, FAT32 might offer more flexibility if you deal with more DOS or DOS-like applications.
 
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