Customer Reviews

Western Digital WD1200JB Caviar Special Edition 120GB Internal Hard Drive

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Western Digital WD1200JB is a high-performance 120GB EIDE hard drive with a massive 8MB cache, that makes a fine upgrade for users looking for a good chunk of disk space at a reasonable price. I purchased one through Amazon and the order was fulfilled through OfficeMax/TechDepot; it arrived quickly and was well packed. It will fill my need for a lot of fast-access disk space for miniDV film work.

This drive is simple to install under Windows (I added it as a second drive to a Windows 2000 system), but as this is an OEM package you literally just get the drive in an antistatic bag, and nothing else. No little mounting screws, no instructions, no software drivers on disk, no cables, nothing. Before you cry foul however, this is not a problem if you are upgrading an existing machine. The cable already exists - your original drive will be connected to it already and your new drive just adds on to the second drive connector (but do change the jumper on the drive to make it a Slave first). As for software, under Windows 2000 I found nothing else was needed - the machine recognised the drive without a problem. Formatting under the Disk Manager was all that was necessary (although that took all night). If you are still worried or want more details on the drive before, during or after installation you can always look at the very helpful pages on the Western Digital website (www.wdc.com). There is plenty of downloadable installation instructions, information and software if you need it.

A fine drive at a great price, if you can handle the lack of consumer-friendly goodies and the fact they don't even give you a couple of mounting screws. If you are savy enough not to be put off by this, it's one time where being a bit of a hardware geek can save you some money over a more consumer-oriented package.

I have owned this hard drive for some time now and have only praise for it. Western Digital has set the standard for hard drives today.

i dont know about the negative reviews, but i have had nothing but great experience with western digital. i see that some1 posted that their hd died in a week. Sounds unusual, just for the fact that my computer is on for more than 15 hours a day, and sometimes its on for days straight at a time and its still running strong a year later. Overall i got a good deal on this product with a rebate and it was worth the buy.

drive I had fail shortly after 1 year and there is only a 1 year warranty. BUY SEAGATE DRIVES with the 3 year warranty you won't be disappointed!!!! I am waiting for my 3 other IDE WD drives to fail so I can replace these 3 drives also with Seagate drives... These drives are as bad as Maxtor!

my hard drive malfunctioned . I sent it back to the company and was sent a larger working hard drive.

Had this hard drive already installed in a computer I bought off an acquaintance. I immediately noticed the extremely high pitch loud noise, which turned out to be caused by this hard drive and another Western Digital 60 gb. It has been working great and is actually rather fast while playing games, so it would be very strange if both HDs had a fault that made them this loud, but were working perfectly in every other way. If I had the chance, I'd have gotten a different computer though, because the noise is almost unbearable at times.

The WD1200JB was desigened with the power-user/PC enthusiast in mind. When it came out ($379), it gave you desktop performance that rival's top SCSI drives of the times. Once the domain of high-end SCSI drives, 7200 RPM spindles are now standard on mainstream IDE/ATA drives.

While Western Digital and the Storage Device industry have moved on to faster drives and more convenient standards for such market, for example, Serial ATA (SATA) and 10,000 RPM, this is not the HD for the power-user anymore, but it certainly is the best bang for your buck out there. So the mainstream, normal PC users, is definitely recommended to invest on this baby.

I would like to point that unfortunately no product is infallible and that is why this drives bring a 3 year manufacturer warranty. For example I read of a guy having problems with his Western Digital and opting for an IBM. Do not let one bad lemon keep you away from this product. Furthermore, the choice of IBM is an interestingly ironic one. The Western Digital drive may have 'died' on this gentleman, and by the way, he could have recovered that data back most probably, but most customers that have bought WD1200JB have nothing but praise towards it; on the other hand, only a couple of years ago, IBM customers sought class action suit status and damages for allegedly crash-prone IBM Deskstar drives. I bought one of such IBM drive and it died, all my data had been backed up, like all users should periodically do. Then I returned it for a full refund, and bought another Desktar a few months later, it died again. Well to much of a coincidence I thought, that is when I discovered the class action suit, from now on I do a more thorough research before buying a Hard Drive or anything else, not only on performance but also satisfaction over time. And taking this research into account, the WD1200JB has been out for over two years now, I recommend it whole heartedly.

Finally, I would not buy it from amazon, their price is not the best, around 15% higher than what I have found elsewhere. For example, newegg and mwave carry similarly priced WD1200JBs and are just under $100 as I write this (you can google for their URL since amazon prefers that URLs are not part of reviews). To be honest, I am not sure if amazon will have a problem with this paragraph, but I suggest they lower their price if the do have such a problem. Do take into account that all the above mentioned prices, in this paragraph, will undoubtedly change with time.

~ Technical Info ~
* 7200 RPM spindle speed
* three 40 GB platters
* avg. seek time 8.9 milliseconds
* 8MB buffer
* 3-year manufacturer warranty

This EIDE is faster than scsi drives. The 8 mb cache along with the high density (gigabyte per plater) make this drive outstanding.

Get it!

OK, so when I built my machine in Oct, 2004 I bought 2 of these drives and never needed the 2nd one...never even formatted it. So a couple weeks ago my primary just dies with no warning...even Spinrite couldn't do anything with it after 2 weeks of running. So, at least I have the 2nd drive to use right? Wrong, the 2nd drive that was never used died too!!! My bad for installing the 2nd drive before I needed it, but I didn't realize that they spin constantly, whether being used or not. So 2 drives died at the exact same time?!?!? I'll never purchase another WD product.

It's a very fast drive!!!, I bought it after investigating on the Internet about very big and fast drives. I reached to the conclusion that I should buy an IBM or WD (performance in mind), so I went and buy the WD (despite of what I read in some customer reviews from other places about the reliability of the drive); I was amazed with the performance of it, but after I week of use it died (and by it i mean that the drive didn't start any more, it just make very ugly noises); all data on it was LOST!!!! So i sent it to WD and is has been 15 days and I'm still waiting for the replacement.

If I could go back in time I would buy an IBM