WD Caviar SE Drives

Just wated to say that I just aquired a 120G WD /w 8M cache, and that thing ROCKS.... The only problem I had was that 98se does NOT see the drive properly, which meant I had do go d/l a patch for win98, fdisk with the new patch on the floppy, format and blindly hope it would come out at the full 120G instead of the 48.6G it was reporting. Worked like a champ, and now, win98 boots in 4 seconds flat. I have not yet benchmarked it, but I will soon and post, if any are interested.

Holy Crap:

Non-cached:

Copy C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\1-14512.zip to c:\1-14512.zip
Size: 111135026
Time: 2660 ms
Transfer Rate: 39.845 MB/s

Cached:

Copy C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\1-14512.zip to c:\1-14512.zip
Size: 111135026
Time: 1207 ms
Transfer Rate: 87.810 MB/s

That's astounding!

Must have freaked you out the first time it came up with 48 gig!

You have no idea... And you should have seen the fdisk screen... Since the numbers are so large, it totally screws the formatting. All the numbers are then trash, so you're really doing it blind.

And that's WITH the MS fix!

Ack. I want one. I've been wanting one. Dammit. Stop teasing me!

200gb drives now exist from WD with the 8megs of cache goodness.

I have the 120 in my Shuttle system and I love it. Been using the space to get around the stupid CD copy protection modern games enjoy using. I despise needing to haul CDs to LAN parties, and simply cracking the EXE isn't foolproof. Some patches require the CD to be applied, and others actually need game data off the CD. So I use Blindwrite to snag an image of my leagially owned CD, toss it in a directory, and let a program called DameWare mount the images as virtual CD drives. So far, it's worked on all my games, and gets around having to swap CDs in and out when I want to change what game I'm playing.

cached and non-cached? Is there a switch you flipped, or was that the before and after numbers?

I have a 120SE as my main drive, with Win2k loaded ont eh C partition. It's been norton optimized and all that stuff, and it still seemingly takes forever to boot. I suppose this is just how 2K is when you have lots of programs on it, eh?

Personally, i didn't notice a difference switching to that drive other than the obviously huge amount of file storage I have now (320Gig or so).

Do you have another, slower, drive on the chain with it? You won't get it's full speed with other drives on the chain, unless they are also SE drives (or something faster, but I don't think any other EIDE drives ARE faster....at the moment).

Windows 2000 is a slow booting OS period. It took about as long to boot on my PIII 800 as it does on my P4 2.26. All seemingly for no reason with random delays while the bar progresses across the bootup logo.

XP on the 2.26 is up and ready about 30 seconds after I press the power button. That includes my network script and a few other startup processes. That is one nice thing about XP, the optimized boot.

Cached as in, I just performed the test, then performed it again, so the file was in memory. Almost doubled in speed.

And for the record, the 4 second boot speed was on a FRESH CLEAN install of 98 /w no software, drivers, networking, etc loaded. It now takes more like 11 seconds. Shutdown is instantaneous though.

Oh, and as a reference, I ran it on my old drive, and I was getting close to 1.5M/s transfer rates... so MUCH faster

Windows 2000 is a slow booting OS period.

My PIII 1GHz desktop boots in 47 seconds (timed it once) under Windows 2000 Professional (no Caviar drive here). It did boot faster under XP Professional when I tested it, however. As for other OSs - I would consider some form of Linux, but it's rather intimidating, and I think most of my software wouldn't run under it, anyway.

It's on an MSI RAID board, and I've got the board believing each of the two drives hooked to it over all are "single drive RAID" setups. So, no - there's no other devices on the channels.

Overall, the time to transfer large files from one drive to another (after say an afternoon of encoding MP3's) is really pretty quick. I'm guessing if I ran some Benchmarks that the drive would likely be very fast.

I think the idea that 2K is a slow booter is more like it. Thinking about it, my XP boot (dual boot off same drive {different partitions - 2K on C and XP on D}) is much faster. Since the 2K drive has about 40 gigs of "stuff" on it (mostly games though) it likely will take longer as well. Now that I think about it, I've got all PCI slots taken as well via various cards i.e. a DVD decoder, etc. can't be helping either.

I guess my initial reaction on it being slow might mean that instead of 60 seconds it only takes 50 now or something like that.I may benchmark it if I remember a little later tonight (via Sisoft Sandra).

I'd try the RAID the way it was meant to be, but don't want to go through the work. Formerly I had a pair of IBM drives running 98, and about once a month or so it'd get to the point where it almost wouldn't boot any more. I'd run the repairs and reload, and it would last about another month and die again. I finally gave up on the RAID idea and just used the channels to have extra drives. Since then I've changed boards and drive brands (to the WD SE's) but been too afriad of going through the same problems again. And at this point, I have no desire to reload my 40 gigs or so of games and everything else.

I see where you're coming from. Win2k is a slower booting OS, so that probably accounts for most of it, not to mention all the other stuff you mentioned.

Just wated to say that I just aquired a 120G WD /w 8M cache

<paul hogan voice>Strewth, mate, that's not a drive! That's a drive!</paul hogan voice>

And dabs.com are knocking them out for £140, which seemed like an utter bargain to me...

Peter

and let a program called DameWare mount the images as virtual CD drives

Dameware lets you mount virtual CD drives?

Dameware rocks - we use it at work for all of our domain admin duties. It freaks users out when we remote into their computer when they have problems.

Oh, and as a reference, I ran it on my old drive, and I was getting close to 1.5M/s transfer rates... so MUCH faster

I must say I am very pleased with my 120 gb SE drive. I picked it up last March, and I haven't even filled it yet... I can be downloading crap or burning a CD and capturing something from the tv tuner and the drive won't hiccup. It is very quiet too. Western Digital - who knew... I wouldn't have even considered WD not that long ago...

w2k is somewhat slow to boot, but at least it is much more stable than 98 was. I can't remember the last time I had a crash, lock, or a BSOD.

Dameware lets you mount virtual CD drives?

Damnit, no it dosen't and I keep getting the two mixed up. I ment Daemon Tools

About every time I go to get an update, I stare at the Dameware homepage wondering where the CD program went :-)

I tried a WD instead of Maxtor for the first time, and I was happy until my 100 Gb non SE drive went kapoot after 9 months. I'm now using the 120 Gb SE drive I had as my secondary drive.

Well at least their RMA system is quite good. I returned a drive that went bad (mostly my own doing), and they had my serial number in their system and everything. The drive was 2.5 years old and I was doing some crazy formating to it so I had no complaints. Now I have a new one!

Damnit, no it dosen't and I keep getting the two mixed up.

D'oh, and I thought there was some feature that I didn't know about, I started to get all excited.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.asp?Sku=A0009295&spagenum=1&category_id=864&keyword=&mnf=&prst=0&prEnd=0&mnfsku=&orderby=&SearchType=&customer_id=19&Pageb4Search=&page=productlisting%2Easp&icompatid=&instock=0&refurbished=

Dell appears to be selling them for cheap - well under $100 after rebate, with free shipping.

There is an issue about the broken link for the rebate itself, but - what I know about Dell is that it's valid and the rebate pdf should be up soon. If not, I still believe a phone call will take care of it.

I'm getting a second one (well I ordered it, we'll see), hooking it up with my other 120SE on my RAID board, and then timing how long boot up takes

Holy hell!!

That is cheap! I think I'm gonna buy another even though I don't need it!

saweeet! Thanks for the link. Perfect timing, i was about to go to Fry's and pick one up tomorrow!

If you go through the techbargains link on this page, you can also get 15% off through the Dell Small Business section.

Ok, ordered me one. Now I need to go get a ATA100 Controller card...or a new MoBo.

If anybody can get a copy of the rebate, please post it or send it to me. I'll be really pissed if they purposely keep it unavailable, then ship the drive after the 30-day limit.

You guys should probably get the retail version (search for A0060210) because the rebate terms clearly state it's on the retail version. Better to spend an extra 10 bucks than to miss out on the deal entirely.

argh. Now that this new shit has come to light, man, i'm trying to cancel my first order and get the retail boxed version with the 15%... i'm now on hold while they try and sort this out.... now on my third transfer.... no one knows what anyone else is doing of course.... apparently this is a common call as one guy asked if this was about the hard drive rebate.... LOL... i'm now on my 6th transfer... this is absurd.... no one can cancel the order apparently, nor can anyone verify that that rebate will apply...

AAHAHAH. On my 6th transfer, i was sent back the exact same person i STARTED WITH!! Wow. Unfarkingbelievable. I'm now on hold again while she tries to sort it out.

OKAY. To save everyone else the headache. IT DOES APPLY to the OEM version. They are working on fixing it at the moment.

Dell is pretty notorious for REALLY bad customer service. Whenever they do deals like this, they can't handle the call volume. This is often a result of not having enough product to support all their sales, which is just bad. I've heard about them cancelling orders because they didn't have enough product. Hopefully this won't happen.

Found this on another site. It's an email from Dell support:

Thank you for contacting Dell Customer Care

I apologize for any inconvenience this matter may have caused.

Please be advised that currently the site is temporarily unavailable; please contact our customer service at:

800-624-9897 to request the copy of rebate form to be faxed


Please note that as per our website $100 rebate is applicable for both items no. A0009295 (WD1200JB) and A0060210 (WD1200JBRTL) and this is a retail version.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please visit us
at:

DellCustomerCare.com

Thank you for contacting us and have a nice day.

Respectfully,

Greg
~DTC48320
7:00pm-3:30am CST Sun-Thu
Dell Customer Care


Anybody got a fax machine?

Fargh!

I ordered the OEM drive, and the confirmation came back with a November ship date. So I called them, and they advised cancelling it next week and ordering the retail version (sounded like stocking issues but I didn't ask). So I did - and the crapping confirmation comes back with Nov. 25 on it as well!

I'd like to get this deal, but - I'm sort of counting on it for a PC I'm making for a friend, and really need a big new drive for it. Sucks! Oh well, guess I'll get it figured out Monday or Tuesday, depending on if they have Columbus day off.

Well I don't think you have much choice then, unless you don't mind not getting the rebate. Even if you order it now, you have to send in the rebate form along with part of the packaging and it has to be postmarked within 30 days of purchase of the product. Obviously, that's not even possible with a Nov 25 ship date.

Well, if you have a Fry's near you, you can get the Retail box for $149. Here's the ad:

Fry's ad

Yeah, this is absolute bullshit. I'm pretty pissed... as my order says delayed until Nov. 25th as well.

Regardless, if someone gets the Rebate form faxed to them I'd GREATLY appreciate it if someone could email me a scanned copy.

They'd better ship the thing WAY before then.... i'm not in the mood to sit on the phone with customer "support" for another hour being passed around like a rag doll.

yeah, my sony dvd±rw is delayed til oct 24th. customer support said it had something to do w/ the port strikes.

strange. i ordered the retail boxed version as well, and got a ship date of "on or before october 16". we'll see, i guess.

--dan.

did anyone get the rebate form from dell? i still haven't been able to get a copy from customer service.

--dan.

ah, finally. here's the rebate form.

--dan.

Try forums.anandtech.com . Look under the "hot deals" section, and then for the post that started it all, it's title has a description of Dell / Western Digital / 120 SE / $68 or something similar. Buried in there around oage 7 or later, is a link for the correct rebate form.

Just remember that you don't just need the rebate form. You also need some sort of piece from the packaging of the drive. So you'll have to get the drive within 30 days of Sunday.

Actually, the new rebate that djc linked above says it must be postmarked within 14 days from the date of purchase, unlike 30 as previously mentioned.

Me thinks Dell is being sneaky, as I pointed out above.

Nevermind...I should finish reading threads before I post. Looks like Dell was stupid and mailed the wrong rebate to people. The 30-day one is for the non-SE drive.

Like I said...Dell is really tricky when it comes to things like this.

Yeah, i've pretty much accepted the fact that i ain't getting the rebate despite what the sales rep said. One of their managers is about to get a call.

I'd follow the anandtech thread, those guys are being pretty non-stop in their quests. I have a feeling that since Dell stated very clearly, for about 48 hours on their website, that each of those drives had a short lead time, and $100 rebate, that will happen. If not, they'll take them back or do something else. Personally, I'm not worried about it. SOMETHING good will come of it. Eventually...

http://www.dell.com/downloads/us/bsd/bsd_rebate_westerndigital_021029.pdf <-- is the link for the $100 OEM rebate. The retail version form is all over the Anandtech threads in case you need that one instead.

I got my OEM drive today! Now I wish I hadn't cancelled the retail one, perhaps I'd have two? Shouldn't be greedy I guess, a 120SE for $68 is pretty good for me!

That pdf is for an order date of Oct 8-13th only... Did you order during that time?

I ordered the 120 from Dell WITH 8 meg cache, but they sent me the 2 meg cache version...

I dunno if I trust Dell anymore for stuff like this!

- Jon

I ordered the retail version, and a few days later I got a call from a Dell CSR. They said they'd be honoring the rebate within 30 days of shipping my drive. Unfortunately, the target shipping date they quoted me is December 31st. Oh well, I'm in no hurry...

I finally sorted it out with their support in their support forum... and they said that they'd credit the $100 straight back to my credit card for the OEM version i ordered when it shipped. What a freakin' mess.

I ordered Oct 11th, so yep, works for me. AFAIK, that's the only time frame the deal was even posted on their page...

Cruddy on your actual piece - I did get a JB coded (8MB) version. Even for the 2, it's a good price, but still a bummer you didn't get what you wanted.

Funny thing is, I have a pair of 80's in RAID, and a pair of 120's with a DVD player and CD burner on the other main IDE channels so I'm all filled up in the PC already. I have a USB 2.0 60GB drive as well. I bought the 120 since it was such a great deal, now I don't know what to do with it. I know I could hook up a pair of 120's RAID and gain 40 GB of space - but I don't want to go through the work, and I don't NEED the space either. I'm considering throwing it into the USB drive though I also have thought about making a black desktop cased MP3 player with an old P166 I have (low-noise passive cooling), networking it to the main PC, and using it as a stereo for the house. I guess it's a good dilemna to have!

You could sell it to me for 100 bucks...!

:-)

- Jon