WesternDig. Hardrive "Spec Edition" vs regular?

[TygGer]

Does anyone know the difference between the Western Digital "Special Edition" hard drives vs the non-special edition?
Thanks!

 

[JetBlack69]

The special edition has 8 MB of cache and the non-special only has 2MB.

 

[ElFenix]

the special edition is faster. by quite a bit. try storagereview.com

 

[BentValve]

8mb cache and 3 year warranty vs 2mb cache and a 1 year warrany which can be made into 3 years for $15.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Note that WD are the fastest drives, and the special editions are among the very few to offer 3 year warranty, but they are also the loudest & hottest drives. If performance is your goal go with WD, if building a quiet box then go with Seagate.

 

[Corporate Thug]

since we are on the topic, can one see a performance increase when using SATA setup with a WD special edition?

 

[BentValve]

Note that WD are the fastest drives

YMMV, my Maxtor 80gb 8mb drive is faster than both of my Western Digital 80gb 8mb drives.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Note that WD are the fastest drives, and the special editions are among the very few to offer 3 year warranty, but they are also the loudest & hottest drives. If performance is your goal go with WD, if building a quiet box then go with Seagate.

That's a generalization, IMO. I have dual 800JBs, and they are both quiet and cool.

 

[TygGer]

gotcha... thanks!!!!!

 

[Merethrond]

Please excuse my stupid question but what is cache?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Merethrond
Please excuse my stupid question but what is cache?

its a little bit of memory on the drive, in this case

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: BentValve

Note that WD are the fastest drives

YMMV, my Maxtor 80gb 8mb drive is faster than both of my Western Digital 80gb 8mb drives.

Same here. My Maxtor 80g outpaces my WD 80g as well (both 8mb cache). I suspect that's because the Maxtor came out almost a year later and has a few more advancements.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Merethrond
Please excuse my stupid question but what is cache?

In this case, cache is memory located in the hard drive to speed up data transfer, since cache memory can be read from hundreds of times faster than physically accessing the disk. However, you will not see an improvement in certain applications that just require a long continuous stream of data from the drive. You also won't see a difference in benchmarks like HD Tach because HD Tach measures the ability of the drive to physically read from the disk. Cache has nothing to do with that.
The way cache speeds up transfers is by predicting what data will be needed soon, reading it from the disk and putting it in cache memory before it's called for. The ONLY reason extra cache helps is because it allows the drive to put more data it thinks might be called for soon in cache increasing the chanced that something need will be in cache, and allow it to be read a lot faster... that being said, the software used to predict this needs to be good, or it won't matter if you have a 100 MB cache, if there's no data in the cache you need, it'll still have to physically read from the disk.

 

[TygGer]

What could be the explanation for some of you experiencing Maxtor drives to be faster than WDs when storagereview.com claims otherwise?

 

[addragyn]

Maxtors have tended to have low access times. As have IBM drives. More cache cache *may* benchmark very well but in actual use lower seek times will always feel snappier.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: TygGer
What could be the explanation for some of you experiencing Maxtor drives to be faster than WDs when storagereview.com claims otherwise?

I would guess a better caching algorithm is responsible for it... there may be more room to improve for WD by improving their caching algorithm... however, I think it would be smarter of them to focus their attention on their Raptor drives, and create one for home use, and optimize the caching algorithm for desktop use.