Western Digital WD3200JBRTL Caviar 320 GB EIDE Hard Drive

Other products by Western Digital

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4 x 6 x 2 inches ; 1.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• Note: Gift-wrapping is not available for this item.
• ASIN: B0007VNGLC
• Item model number: WD3200JBRTL
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 19, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The new 320 GB WD Caviar SE drives are perfect for desktop and enterprise storage applications where high performance and reliability are vital. WD's biggest drive yet, the 320 GB WD Caviar, is suitable for the most data-intensive environments. One drive can hold approximately 100 hours of high-resolution digital video, thousands of high-resolution images, and has plenty of space for the latest programs and games.

• Cool-running: Cool drive operating temperatures help increase long-term drive reliability. WD achieves the lowest operating temperature of any hard drive in its class.
• Fast: WD, the first to introduce an 8 MB buffer, has advanced the caching algorithms of this new and improved WD Caviar SE hard drive, resulting in performance that matches the speed of most 16 MB cache drives.
• Data Protection: Data LifeGuard automatically detects, isolates and repairs problem areas that may develop over the extended use of the hard drive.
• Quiet: WD minimizes WD Caviar noise to levels virtually below the threshold of human hearing.
• Easy to install: Data Lifeguard Tools software makes hard drive installation, management, and diagnostics simple and worry-free.

Quick Specifications

• 320 GB
• 7200 RPM
• 8 MB cache
• EIDE
• 1-year warranty
• Complete kit includes:
  • 320 GB WD Caviar SE hard drive
  • Drive installation and management software
  • Illustrated installation instructions
  • Installation hardware including jumpers, screws, and a 40-pin, 80-conductor IDE interface cable
• Product Model Number: WD3200JBRTL

System Requirements

• IDE-ATA interface (40-pin connector)
• Ultra ATA-capable system

Additional requirements for Macintosh users to utilize the full capacity of hard drives over 120 GB:

• Mac OS X v10.2 or later
• Mac G4 or greater (may require additional hardware)

Product Description

Cool-running, quiet operation, superior performance and industry-leading reliability make these next-generation WD Caviar Blue drives the perfect hard drives for desktop and enterprise storage. WD, the first to introduce an 8 MB buffer, has advanced the caching algorithms of this new and improved Caviar family of hard drives, resulting in next-generation high performance - performance that matches the speed of most 16 MB cache drives.Heat is a major contributor to hard drive wear, and cool drive operating temperatures help increase long-term drive reliability. WD achieves the lowest operating temperature of any hard drive in it's class, including slower drives spinning at 5, 400 RPM, by lowering the drives' power consumption through advanced design of electronics and firmware.Today's PCs, digital video recorders and gaming machines are increasingly operated in environments where noise is less tolerated. WD minimizes WD Caviar noise to levels virtually below the threshold of human hearing with its WhisperDrive technology, which features a highly efficient power driver design. And to cut seek noise, Soft Seek technology streamlines read/write seeking algorithms, resulting in the drive operating more efficiently when accessing and writing data.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent drive, August 11, 2005

By	Brian Fuchs (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this drive to replace my measly 30GB boot drive that came with my Dell. In order to replace your boot drive, you need to MOVE your OS to the new drive, and make it bootable. Simply dragging files won't do it at all.

After unsuccessfully using Norton Ghost 9 to try to clone my Win XP boot drive, I decided to use the FREE Lifeguard utility that came with the WD drive. Among other tools, it has the ability to image a drive to a WD disk.

It worked on the FIRST TRY!

Here are a couple of hints:
* During the following process, I always had the WD utility disk in my CD-ROM drive. The system would boot to this disk when all else failed. I also made sure the utilities were installed to my old Boot Drive (C:)
* Connect the new WD drive as your SLAVE (your old boot drive should still be a Master).
* Launch the Lifeguard tool, and go to the Set Up Drive option. Tell it you want to make the WD be a NEW BOOT disk (NOT just a drive for additional space), and have it copy over all of your old C: drive.
* Once it completes (can take hours), it says it needs to reboot to finish the job. That scared me to death, since the PC will start up with an old Boot drive as master, and a New Boot drive as a slave. I was terrified it would ruin my registry. I crossed myself a few times and did it. XP booted on my old drive, then the tool re-launched and completed the process.
* At this point, the tool simply says it is finished - and nothing else... I shut down the system, disconnected the old master, configured the new boot drive as a Master, and connected it to the IDE Master. Upon powerup, Win XP came right up! The new Boot Drive automatically came up as C:.
* NOTE: I had a slave drive originally. During the cloning process, I removed it from the system. Once the new drive was configured as a master, I put the slave back, and it came up like nothing happened. It retained the same drive letter as well.

Bottom line: For $150 (after rebate) for a 320GB drive with a very nice toolset, you can't go wrong. This also would make a nice TIVO upgrade drive for Series2 TIVOs.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Warranty rip-off., September 3, 2006

By	Constant Reader - See all my reviews

By reputation Western Digital drives are very good BUT this retail packaged drive's warranty is for one year FROM DATE OF MANUFACTURE. There is nothing on the packing to indicate this and I only found out about it when I went to WD's website and entered my drive's serial number to buy an extended warranty. My brand new drive was manufactured 2/05 so I'm out of luck. You might want to look at other brands if the warranty is important to you.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a price for a 320GB!, July 15, 2005

By	Han Solo (MN) - See all my reviews

I could not beleive what a great price this was for a Western Digital drive. 320GB is a huge amount of space, and I use the drive to manage my increasing MP3 and photo library. My computer was bogged down and slow due to the increasing demands of the content these days. This WD drive solved my problem, and most importantly, the installation was hassle free and simple. What a great deal for a premium brand!