Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD

[Davin 0]

Western Digital's WD2500JB, as usual, set the bar for 7200 RPM performance. The firm has recently released the Caviar WD2500JD, a drive that features the JB's specs combined with a serial ATA. How does it stack up against today's PATA drives? What sort of standard does it set against which other SATA drives may be judged? Read on and examine!

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2003...WD2500JD_1.html

[Big Buck Hunter 0]

I wonder what kind of performance we can expect after WD upgrades the 250JD to 'consumer' firmware? I look forward to seeing this drive reviewed again in 6 months.

sry, just venting about WD/Maxtor's habbit of releading more than a single drive with the same model number.

Frank

[StratovariuS 0]

I like speed,

but 46dB/A is just too loud... louder than my coolers altogether... this drive will disturb all audio output.

Sorry ball bearing drives, WD can sell them at half the prize but I won't pay - I am sticking to heavenly FDB motors.

Best Regards

[Guest Eugene]

but 46dB/A is just too loud... louder than my coolers altogether... this drive will disturb all audio output. 

46 dB/A at a distance of 18 millimeters. Its very tricky to compare sound pressure measurements to anything but other devices measured in the exact same way. I wouldn't automatically declare the WD2500JD louder than your coolers.

[Steel 0]

I know they're not considered in the final judgement of the drive, but do you have any thoughts on the huge difference between the JD and the JB on the Business Winmark? Is Winbench just not up to the task of benchmarking newer drives?

[Le Eliminateur 0]

no matter which drive, every time you put a translator, the performance WILL be lower, ALL the time.

until they begin putting native DSP with serial ata protocol, so that the drive starts using all the advanced scsi-like commands(tagged command queing for example) and we begin using native SATA controllers(i dunno if the promise used is native or translated) it's pointless to buy a SATA drive

[shreaker 0]

HI! This is a great site, lots of useful info here, but isn't it time to update the leaderboard? I'd be really grateful for some answers:

1) Could someone please tell me whether or not a SATA drive (i.e. WD000JD) acutally performs better (i.e. faster) than the normal version (i.e. WD2000JB)? Since it's SATA it should, shouldn't it? My main concern is speed. Noise, temperature isn't that much of a factor for me.

2) If I use a WD2000JD as my primary drive and a WD1200JB (non-sata)as my secondary drive, would the SATA drive then perform slower? (if it's supposed to be faster, that is.)

3) Is there any way to have a non-SATA device (e.g. DVD+RW drive) as slave to my SATA drive?

I'm asking these questions because I just bought a WD2000JD. After trying various configurations and not sleeping a night I had to settle on having my WD2000JD as my primary master, my WD1200JB as secondary master, and a DVD+RW as secondary slave. I had to remove my secondary CD-RW/DVD drive.

FYI In case you're wondering why I need two HDDs and two DVD drives... well, I don't, but the SATA drive was cheap (i got my WD2000JD at roughly USD128... whereas the 2000JB version was going for USD126. Same story for the DVD...

Well, i hope my questions don't sound too stupid!!! Thanks in advance for answering.

[Mickey 0]

1) Could someone please tell me whether or not a SATA drive (i.e. WD000JD) acutally performs better (i.e. faster) than the normal version (i.e. WD2000JB)? Since it's SATA it should, shouldn't it? My main concern is speed. Noise, temperature isn't that much of a factor for me.

2) If I use a WD2000JD as my primary drive and a WD1200JB (non-sata)as my secondary drive, would the SATA drive then perform slower? (if it's supposed to be faster, that is.)

3) Is there any way to have a non-SATA device (e.g. DVD+RW drive) as slave to my SATA drive? 

I'm asking these questions because I just bought a WD2000JD. After trying various configurations and not sleeping a night I had to settle on having my WD2000JD as my primary master, my WD1200JB as secondary master, and a DVD+RW as secondary slave. I had to remove my secondary CD-RW/DVD drive.

FYI In case you're wondering why I need two HDDs and two DVD drives... well, I don't, but the SATA drive was cheap (i got my WD2000JD at roughly USD128... whereas the 2000JB version was going for USD126. Same story for the DVD...

Well, i hope my questions don't sound too stupid!!! Thanks in advance for answering.

1. No. If the interface was the bottleneck for the drive's performance, then you would see an improvement in performance. Since no HDD saturates ATA100 at the moment, going with SATA isn't going to give a "boost."

2. SATA only allows one device per channel. The performance of one drive has no bearing on the performance of the other drive.

3. SATA does not have master/slave configurations. If you want to use a non-SATA device on your second SATA channel (I am assuming you have two SATA channels or more), you can use an adapter like the Serillel2. It will not improve performance, but it would allow you to use the thinner SATA cabling, for example.

[Spod 0]

A BIOS update may enable your motherboard to use both the SATA controller and the primary parallel ATA channel simultaneously. You'd then have to explicitly tell it to boot from the SATA controller, and possibly have to provide drivers during OS installation. (At present, it seems to be pretending to be the primary IDE channel to avoid this complication).

Serillel adaptors may not necessarily work with ATAPI (CD/DVD etc.) drives - check the websites for the motherboard/SATA controller, CD drive and SATA-PATA adaptor to be sure, or look for anecdotal evidence in forums & newsgroups.

[shreaker 0]

Thanks, I'll try it!

[sprockkets 0]

Errr, when is the review of the Hitachi going to happen?

I'm assuming since you use a adapter card for SATA tests, wouldn't that not be as good as Intel's sb integrated controller, not that it really matters.

Otherwise the Hitachi will use a bridge solution too.

[beretta79 0]

Does anyone know when the WDxxxxPD line of drives will be out?

[star_wars 0]

Hi, I got hold of the drive recently, mainly for video editting needs.

But before putting it to use, I decided to 'test' a little but to my horror, the access time is 21ms!!!

This is going to affect all my transfers for sure.

How did your drive manage 14ms+ ??

Used HD-Tach versions 2.5/2.6 and even tried a 2.7 from a friend.

Using 2GHz P4 on a Granitebay motherboard with a SATA controller card - forgot what brand, but it is defintely not a controller issue since it didn't work with an 875 mobo using on board SATA (still 20+ms). so I've swapped controllers, platforms, OS, drivers and I still can't get my seek time similar to your review or anywhere remotely to it.

Oh yes, I've even RMA'ed the drive for another one.

It's a completely differen serial no. and manufacturing date too, but I still can't solve my seek problem. What's the issue here?

[Spod 0]

Is AAM on? Bad cable? Or perhaps your benchmarking tool isn't up to scratch - are you using Sandra? Does it give realistic access time results for a different disk at your disposal?

Have you actually tried it in an access time limited situation, and found a significant slowdown compared to other drives? It doesn't matter what numbers you get if the drive feels fast.

Incidentally, this sort of query shopuld really be posted in the Computing forum.

[star_wars 0]

Sorry, what's AAM?

Nope, not a bad cable. Tried a lot of possibilities with relation to hardware and I can't seem to find the reason.

Sisoft Sandra?! That's crap

I'm using HD-Tach, at least that's all I can get hold that is similar to that used in the reviews. Yes, my other drives have reasonable access times and tranfers as well.

Sorry to post here, but I wish to query how did the reviewers obtain such good or normal access times when I've tried two drives from the retail and both give me crap results. This is a very low-level test I'm doing and if it can't give me the results I need, something is wrong.

I agree that I might not feel the difference, but it helps to assure that I'm running optimally so that it does deliver the speed when I most need.

[Spod 0]

Automatic Acoustic Management, or somesuch. Google for a definition, then search these forums for more specific info. It could cause the difference in access time, though I wouldn't expect it to be enabled by default on WD drives.

Other than that, I'm really not sure. I'd suggest a new topic in the computing forum, giving as many details as possible, including the controller, motherboard, BIOS version, drivers... the works. Hopefully someone there will be able to spot what's not working as it should - no modern drive should be suffering from 21 ms seeks.

[star_wars 0]

Automatic Acoustic Management, or somesuch. Google for a definition, then search these forums for more specific info. It could cause the difference in access time, though I wouldn't expect it to be enabled by default on WD drives.

Other than that, I'm really not sure. I'd suggest a new topic in the computing forum, giving as many details as possible, including the controller, motherboard, BIOS version, drivers... the works. Hopefully someone there will be able to spot what's not working as it should - no modern drive should be suffering from 21 ms seeks.

That's it!

AAM was on by default and as SR did in their reviews, I've used the Hitachi drive tool to disable it. Now it works perfectly

Thanks for the discussion/suggestion!

[RaioNz 0]

have anyone have experience with the wd1200jd?

noise/performance wise

thank you

[rafias 0]

How the performance of the WD2000JB compares with its little brother WD800JB ?

[cracauer 0]

Hi, folks,

I am going to choose between this drive (WD2500JD) and a Barracuda 200 GB, or respective PATA versions.

I have several questions for those in the know:

1) I know SATA(-1) doesn't have tagged command queueing, but do the PATA versions of this drive have it?

2) I assume the PATA-100 drives are not actually slower than the SATA versions, as long as I keep one on each channel, right?

3) from the reviews it seens the WD is a little faster for most tests, and while the seagate is quieter idle it is louder when in use. And a bit hotter which means it consume more power. So far correct?

I tend to the WD drive based on this

And to PATA because I often need to connect many drives to one motherboard and being able to temporarily connect multiple drives to one channel is a huge advantage. Also, I'd like to be able to use the drives on external USB/firewire enclosures and there don't seem to be SATA ones available, and even if, I already have PATA ones.

%%

Longer story/more info:

My requirements, in order of importance:

- reliability (I just had 2 out of 3 Maxtor 160 GB failing and will replace the whole array)

- capacity (want to keep number of drives low), and the WD has a 250 GB version

- low idle noise

- low power consumption/heat

- seek time

I use 3-4 drives in RAID-0 and RAID-5. Since the RAID-0 part will bring sustained throughput right to the PCI bus limit I don't really care for throughput, but there's still a noticable difference in seek times, especially in the RAID-5 parts of the array.

%%

If you are still with me, thanks for reading.

Do you think I'll be better off with the WD or the Seagate?

Thanks

Martin

[rafias 0]

Go for the WD hard drive

[Occupant 2 0]

1) No. PATA (EIDE) doesnt have TCQ or NCQ.

2) Right. Thier shouldnt be a large difference between sata and EIDE drives of the same generation and model. (minor difference are unavoidable)

3) Seagate has a 5 year warranty. WD has 3 years. I dont think any hard drive vendor is very far of the curve for reliability these days. With profit margins at all time lows, they simply couldnt afford a bad product. What effects the lifespan of a drive more than any other single factor, is how the drive was shipped and handled.

[cracauer 0]

I know some IBM drives back in the UDMA-33 days had TCQ, when used with the Intel BX controller. But it seems it never went popular.

I just re-read the reviews of the two drives in question and what caught me eye is that the reliability database showed the seagate to be better than 78% (97% for previous models) and the WD better than 3% of the drives (and 22% for the previous model).

I tean towards the Seagate based on that, but the missing 50 GB per disk will hurt me. I think I made up my mind on PATA for flexibility.