One Hard Drive Thread to Rule Them All...

[KenAF]

What's the fastest ATA drive for the desktop? Most here know the answer already, but for those that don't, here's the answer.

What's the quietest 7200rpm ATA drive for the desktop? Here's the answer.. Note there is an effective doubling of sound with every 10dB increase (thanks Neuro).

 

[JellyBaby]

...and in the darkness bench them?

That WD JB looks quite nice. The only oddity is a severe case of "up/down"age in HDTach as shown here and at other places.

Can't wait to see it go head-to-head with the 120GXP.

 

[Rand]

<< ...and in the darkness bench them?

That WD JB looks quite nice. The only oddity is a severe case of "up/down"age in HDTach as shown here and at other places.

Can't wait to see it go head-to-head with the 120GXP. >>



The benchmarks I've seen put the 120GB 120GXP as being slightly above the WD1200BB in most cases, and considering how badly the JB beats the BB I'd say it's pretty safe to say the WD1000JB/1200JB is still easily the fastest IDE drive available.

 

[Neurofreeze]

<< What's the fastest ATA drive for the desktop? Most here know the answer already, but for those that don't, here's the answer.

What's the quietest 7200rpm ATA drive for the desktop? Here's the answer.. Note there is an effective doubling of sound with every 6dB increase. >>



A 10 dB is a doubling of perceived sound. Two uncorrelated sources of sound of equal dB produce a 3dB increase in total sound (doubling of amplitude), and two correlated sources of sound of equal dB produce a 6dB increase.

 

[John]

JellyBaby, here is my 80GB 120GXP. Was that pic you posted the 1200JB? If so then it isn't very impressive.....

 

[KenAF]

Neuro,

Thanks for the correction. That's good to know...


John,

From a quick search on the Storagereview forums, HDTach on the 1200JB starts at 52500 to 54000 kbps, with an average of 39000kbps to 42000kbps, depending on the system (and perhaps partition configuration?). Here's another short comparison of the 120GXP and 1200JB.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Was that pic you posted the 1200JB? >>

Yes. Link to actual review page here.. No idea why there are so many dips. I think overall performance means the most and the JB looks like it is the performance leader. My only gripe is increased cost vs. the BB but WD is not making many of these....yet.

With IBM's rep. tarnished of late and with WD's rep. back to "decent" this is the premiere drive to get right now.

 

[astroview]

Bump for a funny thread title, and because people always want to know this information!

 

[KenAF]

Another bump, for those that missed it...

 

[SinNisTeR]

duhh.. me picks nose..

whats better? NTFS or FAT32?

 

[Pariah]

"The only oddity is a severe case of "up/down"age in HDTach as shown here and at other places."

It looks like GamePC was running something while they administered that benchmark. Don't ever go to their site for HD benchmarks, they always get them wrong. Assuming the drive is not faulty, it should not dive like that unless the drive is doing something else. I own a regular 1200BB and a 1200JB and neither one exhibits the same problem GamePC's does. SR's review has an STR graph that is clean as well. The access time for the GamePC drive is also about 1ms too slow which is further indication the drive probably wasn't run under clean conditions. Further more, the write BM's for the WD drive are bogus as well. 68MB/s for writes? Don't think so. Cache is the reason for the absurd write performance? Uh huh, those cache bursts onto the platters are always a crowd pleaser. For this exercise we'll ignore the physical limitations of the read/write heads.

The WD1200JB should be faster than the 120GXP, but nothing anyone is going to blind identify.

 

[Paulson]

Do you work for western digital KenAF? It sure sounds that way...

Anyways, I do like western digital, even after I've had 2 drives fail on me while a maxtor had outlasted them both, it's just you seem to be infatuated with this hard drive... let me ask you... HAVE YOU BOUGHT IT?

For someone who recommends it so highly, I really do hope you at least have 5 in your system, so you can drool over them and be so happy in your little world...

 

[JellyBaby]

<< For someone who recommends it so highly >>

Lay off he's only trying to be helpful. Every review of the JB I've seen highly praises this drive. WD used to have quality control issues (much like IBM has now) but from all I read they're OK today.

Now Pariah does own the unit and if he endorses it, you know it's good. 'Nuf said.

 

[ToBeMe]

Well.....I don't know about that............I've heard all the raves about the "JB" series WD, but, after having 3 WD's fail in short succession and all were fairly new, I have a hard time bringing myself to buy one...........

 

[KenAF]

Paulson,

I'm just saying what every other review, and reviewer has said before...When a new drive offers 50% better performance than drives that are only several months old (Barracuda IV, D740X), obviously it is going to get rave reviews. In reviews of the drive, you see comments like "breathtaking performance," "crushing performance," it "crushes the competition," etc.

But no, I don't own the 1200JB, but I do own two of the slightly slower 1000JB model. I bought them before I knew WD was going to offer a version of the 1200 model with 8Mb cache. I did get them at a reasonable price though, about $180/ea. These replaced an 80Gb Maxtor D740X and 80Gb Seagate Barracuda IV....although I still use the latter in my work system (for silence).

Also, on a related note, when you buy a retail boxed 1200BB or 1000BB, you have a reasonable chance of getting the JB version with 8 megs of cache, as Western Digital stocks the boxes depending on their current inventory. A month or two back, Fry's had a huge inventory of retail 1200BB boxes on sale for $299 with a $100 rebate (=$199 total), and virtually all of these boxes actually contained 1200JB's.

 

[goog]

Correction it's the coolest 7200 RPM drive not the the quietest, check the link again.

 

[Paulson]

JellyBaby, apparently you have a different idea of helpful...

ask Yield, the person who suggested a maxtor hard drive in another thread, who got told that maxtors weren't up to snuff... there's some help for ya... :|

I'm not dissing the product at all, western digital makes damn nice drives, I just don't agree with the way this dude pimps the stuff

 

[JellyBaby]

Paulson, KenAF seems quite knowledable and thoughtful at least from what I've read of his posts. I don't feel he's pimping product for anyone nor is he inaccurate in anything he's said. In fact he's quite sensible and objective which is a far cry from most of the ranting that goes on here.

I'm not sure what's got your undies all bunched up and tight about him.

 

[WyteWatt]

I can not believe anyone is thinking the IBM 120 gxp series is faster than the WD1200JB with 8 mb of cache HD because it is not. The WD1200JB is the fastest IDE out there right now. Plus Pariah is certainly right with all those spikes and 1 ms higher access time. You do not get that inless you are running something while you are running HDtach. Thats why when i always ask for a HDtach result i make sure i tell people to not run anything and close everything when they run HDtach. The WD 1200JB is faster than the IBM 120 gxp series HD. There is no ifs or buts about it.

 

[esc]

my friend's mother's family company had tons of WD HDs die at the same time after a year or so. fast doesn't mean reliable.

 

[johndoe52]

<< fast doesn't mean reliable. >>



Good point. Although sometimes it's hit or miss. Some people never have a problem with hard drives, and others curse certain brands cause of a bad drive.

 

[Mavrick007]

Now I know IBM has been getting alot of flak from consumers for their drives(hey, I have a 75GXP too, but it's still goin), but the 120GXP looks like a pretty good drive, even when compared to the WD 1200JB with the 8megs cache.. but the IBM only has 2Megs and is close in each of the benches.

That's still impressive to me. I wish some other companies would put drives with a larger cache. It would lessen the ide hd bottleneck and give some good competition.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< That's still impressive to me. I wish some other companies would put drives with a larger cache. >>

One reason they may not do that for a while is to keep IDE performance lower than any SCSI drives they may also produce.

 

[Pariah]

"but the IBM only has 2Megs and is close in each of the benches."

Each of which benches? I haven't seen any head to head comparisons except that Mac one in the thread below which didn't seem very thorough. GamePC reviews are worthless, so don't reference that one.

"I wish some other companies would put drives with a larger cache."

Western Digital doesn't have a high margin SCSI division they need to protect like the other companies. So it's not likely you will see another manufacturer do it in the near future.

 

[Mavrick007]

OK, I just checked that link again that KenAF put above "short comparison" and it was the Mac article with comparisons of the latest drives. That benches for the IBM 120GXP should still hold some relevance to the pc since the other drives(ie. the maxtor, seagate and WD) benches also followed trends that we have seen with the pc.

Here's another review on the IBM 120GXP that I found from X-bit labs. It's not including the WD 1200JB with 8Megs cache, but it does top the other drives, including two WD drives (1000BB and 800BB).X-bit review TargetPc also has a review on this drive as well. All I'm saying is that the drives are fast and perform good against the other competitors. No one can tell you the failure rate at this time for them. I'm just hoping that they are not like the 75GXP drives for reliability.



<< Western Digital doesn't have a high margin SCSI division they need to protect like the other companies. So it's not likely you will see another manufacturer do it in the near future. >>


I would like to see the manufacturers put more cache on though cause it's definitely a performance enhancement on the ide bus. They could sell alot more drives and create good competition between the companies if they did make their products better ie. faster. They could still run the other lines too, just like Western Digital does.