more cool than hot: Western Digital Special Edition (?) hard drives?

[yodayoda]

check this out:

http://store.westerndigital.com/product.asp?sku=1863605
not a hot deal at almost $400, but this drive was an 8 MB buffer!

get it here for $270 instead:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=22-144-112

here is what they claim:


<< Western Digital Unveils 'Super Fast' Special Edition Hard Drive First-Ever EIDE Hard Drive With 8 MB Buffer Delivers Data Faster to Users Than Ever Before, With Performance Rivaling 15,000 RPM SCSI Product, According to Industry Press >>


if this really is as fast as 15K U160 SCSI hard drives, then for almost $400 this is a steal!

 

[aug1516]

This certainly does sound interesting but I doubt its true. I dont see how that drive could equal performance of one of the 15k scsi drives.

 

[dp004i]

Colder than liquid nitrogen; newegg has the same drive for $305 shipped. They also had it in the refurned section for around $200 a few days ago.

 

[AndRand]

Storage Review

 

[Jen]

sounds interesting


Jen

 

[Engineer]

AndRand...Wrong Link....That's for the 120G regular (2meg cache) drive...

Here's SR's link to the 100G SE model (8 meg cache) and some tests..

oops....must have done this one bad too....

See below for link (I had that link...must have clicked on the top one again and copied it...so sorry )

 

[fragarific]

almost $400. Argggggggg.

Info on above post...

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=14&manufactory=1306&DEPA=1

-- Newegg.com

-- $270, free shipping, no tax(excluding CA), in stock

-- "WESTERN DIGITAL WD1000BB-SE "SPECIAL EDITION" 8MB CACHE BUFFER 100GB 7200RPM - OEM Ultra 100, 8.9ms Average Seek Time - Drive Only - 3-year Manufacture Warranty"

 

[Zwingle]

Toms Hardware rated this the fastest IDE HD on the market.

 

[Mixxen]

Okay let's get this Storage Review link right....

3rd time is the charm...


http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200110/20011008WD1000BB-SE_1.html

 

[iluvdeal]

Personally I'd just buy two 100GB drives with the same money.

 

[krackato]

Is this just 8megs of regular old ram? If so, it's really sad that they don't just add 8 megs to all their IDE drives. Of course, it would probably put a dent in the SCSI market. But an additional 6 megs of ram is probably about $5-10. In bulk, it's probably even less. I'm guessing the only reason they don't do this is because the performance would be too close to scsi performance.

 

[Engineer]

Thanks Mixxen....that's the link I went to, but in my double checking to see if the first link was indeed wrong, I guess I copied it by mistake. Thanks and we'll just use your link


So sorry....

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

Really upsetting if it's a simple addition of 6MB to get this increase. How hard would it be to add 6MB yourself to another brand HD if you had the tools (like the Maxtor D740X or new IBM 120GXP)? or would it require some firmware updating also?
This reminded me of a CD-Rom Burner I just saw a couple days ago called the Mitsumi CR 4809 TE that has a 16MB buffer.

 

[CivilRightsLawyer]

with ram so cheap, why not a 1gig ram buffer!! now that's fast!

 

[exisle]

it would take a lot of soldering skill to solder a sram chip onto the hard drive, and thats assuming that it even has an extra slot for memory

 

[yodayoda]

yeah, i think newegg is the place to get it... $270 + free shipping is definitely better than $379. i don't think i have ever seen this in the retail channels though.