"Special Edition"? No Big Deal!!

Last weekend 2/17 Office Max had a special $89 price on the Western Digital 80 gigabyte 8Mb cache 7200rpm Hard Drive. In addition, mail in the extra $50 rebate and the thing comes out to $39. Good enough deal. Plus, i'd been wanting to upgrade my Wd Protege 5400 40 gig for a while, seeing that the Monster access speed of a SE WD 800JB could be crucial to faster benchmark speeds. Installing the drive was a cinch using the datatools disc, I was up and loading OS in ten minutes.
I ran Aquamark 3, 3D Mark 2001SE and analyzed things using Sandra 2004.
Very sorry to report that the drive is actually slower on all benchmarks compared to the Protege 5400 2mb cache EB Hard Drive.
And the clicking? Out Of The Box. The 80 JB was ticking the whole time, and the Protege makes not a single click. Quietest drive I've had so far.
The Protege 5400 (WD 400EB) is just as fast as the "Special Edition" if not only quieter, and just because the access speed is 3.5 seconds longer, it makes NOT ONE HAIRS BIT OF DIFFERENCE in the apps that I run. Using the 80 GB JB, my scores on Aquamark went down over 100 points, as did 3D mark 2001SE, and SiSoft Sandy did not seem any different really
Don't fool yourself into a more expensive Hard Drive. The Protege EB by Western Digital is as good as anything else they make, and it's damn quiet too.


AM37 2200+XP Thoro
WD 40.00 54
640mb Kingston
PNY(MSI)GeForce 4 Ti4600 128mb
Xtacy ATI Radeon 9100 64mb(mothballed)

Are you sure you have DMA mode enabled? The cable you are using is ATA100 isnt it?

[Insert witty comment here]

Yes I did! But I figured it couldn't be because it worked just fine. It did not malfunction, it just didn't blow me away. It didn't improve my scores.
It wasn't that "Special."

AM37 2200+XP Thoro
WD 40.00 54
640mb Kingston
PNY(MSI)GeForce 4 Ti4600 128mb
Xtacy ATI Radeon 9100 64mb(mothballed)

The problem stems from your hard head, not the hard drive. Your loss.

<font color=red>_________________________________________</font color=red>
<b><A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">I am watching you!</A></b>

Again with the hasty conclusions. It might be working fine right now, but it might also fail one day soon. Can't really confirm it, but the clicking might be the cause of this slight performance gap you're noticing.

Do yourself a favour & replace it immediately, if only to prevent drive failure.

And rofl to RobD .

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Jack jacks Jacks jerking jack.

This is one of the funniest post I've seen yet today, a 40Gb 5400 Rpm 2mb drive, Faster than an 80Gb with 8mb cache and 7200 Rpm. Whatever you are smoking can I buy some?


Or better yet I'll take that slow ass HD off u since the WD is no good. And I do it for free!

Well markgun I can't believe it took this long for someone in the thread to come up with this idea.

A new hard drive will do JACK for your 3dmark score. JACK. As in NOTHING. Any 3d app is limited to the video card, cpu, and ram. That's about it. The only time the hard drive is accessed is to load the program into ram initially. It is THEN run and never touches the hard drive again. In fact, if you could find a way to boot windows and 3dmark off of a cdrom, you could run 3dmark with no hard drive at all.

Benchmark your drive with something like hdtach, or bonnie++

I put new windshield wipers on my car, but it doesn't go any faster...

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

hard drives often click when they are dieing. they might work perfectly, but if its clicking your drive is on a one way road to death

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<A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">please dont click here! </A>

Really? You've seen my system have you? Tested performance before and after? I don't think so. Do you not think, that, as <i>it is my system after all</i> I can tell if the performance has increased? Methinks you sir, are talking from between the cheeks of your arse. Bye-bye now.

<font color=blue>"If Little Red Riding Hood shows up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the bitch." - Sean Pertwee</font color=blue>

I think that's an insult to retards.

<font color=blue>"If Little Red Riding Hood shows up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the bitch." - Sean Pertwee</font color=blue>

JB you mean? Yeah, I have one and it's great. So far at least. I've had it for a probably close to 2 years now.

<font color=red>___________</font color=red>
<b><A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=39826#39826" target="_new">Sexual Poll!</A></b>

I've got the 120 GB WD SATA drive. It's great. Quiet as a whisper.

s signature has been formatted to fit your scr

either of two species belonging to the horse family, Equidae,
especially the African wild one, Equus asinus (also Equus africanus)
often referred to as the true one. The related Asiatic wild one,
often called the half-one is usually known by the local names of its various races.

who are you?

LOL


<i>if <b>you know</b> <font color=white>you don't know</font color=white>, the way could be more easy ...

The family Pomatiopsidae may have evolved in Gondwanaland and were introduced to Asia on the moving Indian plate. The collision of India with Asia, and the subsequent Himalayan orogenic event, caused stream captures that initiated the great river systems of southeast Asia. The pomatiopsid fauna was introduced from the Indian plate into the virgin evolving river systems of the Yangtze and Mekong via the northwest corridor of the Brahmaputra River.

</font color=red><i><font color=red>GOD</font color=red> <font color=blue>BLESS </font color=blue><font color=red>AMERICA

Wow...
This was an OLD post.(Feb. 04)
That other Hard drive went back to the store 2 days later.
I kept the WD 5400 going until July,
Now I have a Maxtor 160Gb 7200/8mb (6Y160P0)
and it's been flawless and very fast.
I got it for $79 at Comp USA.....NO REBATE.
Now THAT was the DEAL!
No Complaints Now!

AM37 2200+XP
Maxtor 160 Gb 7200/8mb
640mb Kingston
PNY(MSI 8872)GeForce 4 Ti4600 128mb
(E-Machines W2247 mod'd)

Those drives are too noisy.

</font color=red><i><font color=red>GOD</font color=red> <font color=blue>BLESS </font color=blue><font color=red>AMERICA