Western Digital Special Edition, worth buying?

[Sokkan]

I mean, 120gb 7200rpm 8mb cache, about $160. Sound pretty good to me or did I miss anything? Almost sounds TOO good... Suspicious.

 

[PLtNmHeLiX]

Don't know why you're worried That's a reasonable price for a kickass drive. Definately get it

 

[SlowBurn]

I have the WD 120 GB and it's probably one of the best drives I have ever owned. Definitely recommend it!

 

[Spec_Ops2087]

ditto....it a very fast and quiet Hard Drive...so far my fastest one that I have ever owned...got them in RAID, they flyyyyyyyyy




Spec

 

[pauldriver]

The only buggaboo is that the WD drives do not like high PCI bus speeds.

My Maxtor allowed me to run a FSB of 166 with no problems (41.5 Mhz PCI) whereas my WD only allows me a FSB of 153Mhz (38.25)

Bummer.

Paul.

 

[SlowBurn]

The only buggaboo is that the WD drives do not like high PCI bus speeds.

My Maxtor allowed me to run a FSB of 166 with no problems (41.5 Mhz PCI) whereas my WD only allows me a FSB of 153Mhz (38.25)

Bummer.

Paul.

Just out of curiosity were you using the 1/5 divider? The reason I ask is because I'm running my Abit KD7 at 170 FSB and I'm using the 1/5 divider, and so far have had no problems. I even ran Prime95 for 10 hours with no errors whatsoever.

 

[pauldriver]

Just out of curiosity were you using the 1/5 divider? The reason I ask is because I'm running my Abit KD7 at 170 FSB and I'm using the 1/5 divider, and so far have had no problems. I even ran Prime95 for 10 hours with no errors whatsoever.

My board does not support a 1/5 divider.

 

[The Revelation]

I'm running 4 WD1200JB's, and I love it. The 8MB cache is great. I'll never go back to a 2MB cache again.

Oh, and RAID 0+1 owns.

 

[Sokkan]

Thanks a lot

I always get suspicious when something seems too good

 

[WyrmMaster]

The only buggaboo is that the WD drives do not like high PCI bus speeds.

My Maxtor allowed me to run a FSB of 166 with no problems (41.5 Mhz PCI) whereas my WD only allows me a FSB of 153Mhz (38.25)

Bummer.

Paul.

Hmm, my WD will let me go to 169, i havent pushed it any farther than that, but it may go even farther.

 

[pauldriver]

Hmm, my WD will let me go to 169, i havent pushed it any farther than that, but it may go even farther.

It’s a question of PCI speed, what's the divisor use to generate your PCI bus?

If you have a /5 divisor then that's the answer, if you have a /4 divisor, then you are lucky, or you are not using the chipset IDE controller.

My motherboard only does /3 and /4 divisors. At a /4 divisor I get FSB 133 MHz /4 = 33.25 MHz PCI bus, FSB 150 MHz /4 = 37.5 MHz PCI bus and FSB 166 MHz /4 = 41.5 MHz PCI bus.

If you have a /5 divisor, then you can get FSB 150 MHz /5 = 30 MHz PCI Bus, FSB 166 MHz /5= 33.2 MHz PCI bus, and FSB 170 MHz /5 = 34Mhz.

As you can see, with a /5 divisor the PCI bus will not exceed 36.66 MHz (10% over PCI Spec) until a FSB of 183.33 is achieved. And since almost every PCI device will tolerate a 10% over-clock, I would expect the WD drives to perform admirably up to 183Mhz FSB when a /5 PCI divisor is available.

Some boards/chipsets also support an asynchronous PCI bus. This means that the PCI clock is not derived from the FSB clock, therefore your FSB speed becomes irrelevant.

Paul

 

[WyrmMaster]

nope, my mobo is oldschool. no 1/5 devisor here. usung onboard ide controller.

 

[SlowBurn]

I have an Abit KD7 and it has a 1/5 divisor, and as we speak I am running my computer at home (at work right now) at 175 FSB which would put my PCI at 35 MHz. I can't remember what is the highest you should run it. Anyone know?

 

[Doc_Skurlock]

I've got the WD 120 with the 2mb cache, and its awesome. Definitely worth buying. I plan to go and get the 200 GB WD with 8mb cache soon.

 

[oops]

I don't know why you still cannot make your mind while the price is only $160. I got one months ago when it was $210.

 

[pauldriver]

I have an Abit KD7 and it has a 1/5 divisor, and as we speak I am running my computer at home (at work right now) at 175 FSB which would put my PCI at 35 MHz. I can't remember what is the highest you should run it. Anyone know?

Problems usually show up around 38Mhz

 

[KerryrreK]

I've got an Abit IT7 and I run 161 FSB on my WD 80 gig special edition, and its a great drive, VERY quiet, TOO quiet.....almost suspiciously quiet....but anyway, my question is, I think I have a PCI lock because I pick my PCI/AGP speed in the BIOS and I dont see a divisor, am I confused about what a PCI lock does?

Kerry

 

[Emericana]

my wd will do 200mhz fsb fine (40pci)

100gig 8mb cache

 

[pauldriver]

The point of my post was the the WD drives won't handle as high of a PCI bus as others, my Maxtor drives are fine at a 45Mhz PCI bus speed.

Those of you with a PCI speed higher then 38Mhz are either lucky, or not yet noticing your errors, the WD drives will sorta work for me at 40Mhz. Most of the time they are fine, but I would get the occasional disk lockup, most notably in disk benchmarks.

Paul.

 

[64026402]

The point of my post was the the WD drives won't handle as high of a PCI bus as others, my Maxtor drives are fine at a 45Mhz PCI bus speed.

Those of you with a PCI speed higher then 38Mhz are either lucky, or not yet noticing your errors, the WD drives will sorta work for me at 40Mhz. Most of the time they are fine, but I would get the occasional disk lockup, most notably in disk benchmarks.

Paul.

It sounds like a problem with you controller. The HDs don't connect to the pci bus. Your controller may get a little twitchy when being overclocked. If your controller does't like the WDs at higher PCI speeds then it is a problem with the controller.
I have more problems with my Maxtors than my WDs but on some controllers the Maxtors are just fine.
The drives don't do anything different with increased PCI speed.