Western Digital drives

[4745454b]

Not that this thread hijack isn't interesting, I decided I should let you guys all know what I'm getting. Looking at the retails ads in this Sundays paper, I saw the bestbuy ad. They have a Seagate 320GB drive for $60, no MIR. $60+tax will get you a Seagate 320GB drive. I'm not sure if its the 7200.10 or the 7200.9, as I've said before it doesn't really matter to me. I've already got a 7200.10, so getting an older drive to hold my data files is fine. I don't mind the thread hijack either, its good information, thanks for the education.

 

[4745454b]

D@mnit! Sold out! The guy told me they will get another shipment in Wednesday, but would probably be Thursday due to the holiday. (he also wouldn't tell me if it would be thursday morning, or more like thursday evening.) Sorry to have interrupted your conversation with your coworker, BB is starting to turn into CC...

After I got home, I went online. After looking at newegg and the other newegg, I realized I probably don't want to shop there. Because I live in California, taxes would be added to either. Tiger was simply to expensive, as were most others I was looking at. I eventually found a drive at Directron. I'm getting a WD drive, 320GB. Its an AAKS drive, so I've even got the 16MB cache. My wifes DVD burner went out on her also, so I'm getting one of those for her to. Together with shipping I just spent $113. The drive was $78, more then BB, but cheaper then anything else I found. Their site wasn't the easiest to use, but overall I'm pretty happy about it. I'm also glad I posted this thread, Kyle's first thread was a big help.

 

[godsizesnakeyes]

Be aware that WD drives are shipped with something called 'acoustic management' enabled. To get the full performance of the drive you have to download Hitachi's Feature Tool to disable acoustic management. The difference in noise is miniscule, the difference in performance is noticable.

In the Feature Tool's manual Vista isnt listed as one of the OS that it works with. Have you or anyone tried it with Vista? And would it work to make a bootable CD instead of floppy? I dont have a floppy drive and I really dont want one.

 

[tamalero]

the acoustic tool, only seems to work on PATA drives (IDE)

also, I remember the older "intel application acelerator" did the same, but for only intel chipsets.

 

[tamalero]

In the Feature Tool's manual Vista isnt listed as one of the OS that it works with. Have you or anyone tried it with Vista? And would it work to make a bootable CD instead of floppy? I dont have a floppy drive and I really dont want one.

if you check carefully, you can burn it into a CD IMAGE..
ie, a CD

 

[4745454b]

An update for anyone who cares.

The drive FINALLY showed up today. Ordering from Directron has been such a comedy of errors that I will probably post a review of my experience with them once I finish getting ALL of my order. (how hard is it to ship a hdd and a DVD drive???) I have the 320GB in my machine right now, I've almost finished formatting the last partition.

Once I get everything moved around, I'll see about checking whether the noise feature is on or off for both of my drives. (if tamalero is right, then it won't matter seeing as these are SATA drives.) So I now have a Seagate 7200.10 250GB drive, and a WD AAKS 320GB drive in my machine. Sweet!