If you create a partition does it automatically make it on the outer, fastest part of the drive no-matter what? A) Only if the drive has no previous partitions will the new added partition be added to outer, fastest part of the drive. If it has the outer part used, it will allocate the furthermost ...

It's called short stroking. Basically you just create a smallish partition first on the drive and leave the rest unused. Or create a second partition and only put infrequently used stuff there. Stuff that is not accessed when performance is needed (i.e during boot-up, application loading, or doing ...

LCC is masked in WD GP 00D6B0 variant (333GB/pl) and probably 500GB/pl generation as well. The old 250GB/pl 00ZJB0 displays LCC correctly. So do the more recent 500GB/pl 4-platter variant (2TB) WD GP. So it definitely is not a universal change of policy. WD20EADS is more closely related to first gen...

If good performance is needed, a low RPM HDD might not cut it. But an SSD for system and apps, and a low RPM HDD for storage might. If performance is a concern. To most, it is not. To some, it is. If you however spend big bucks for SSD, do at least pick the quietest possible mass storage, like low-...

There's nothing wrong with local SSD + local HDD. For silencing (not considering performance), why is SSD+HDD better than just one HDD? I do understand coupling a low-rpm laptop drive with SSD for performance reasons but not for silencing. To silence with SSD, the HDD needs to be externalized. It's...

jtcp: You're looking at a silver bullet. There is none. There's no such thing as fastest AND quietest HDD. The fast ones spin fast and seek fast. Greenpower spins at 5400rpm, Ecogreen spins at 5400rpm, Caviar Blue and Black 7200rpm and Spinpoint 7200rpm. All Hitachi and Seagate (Maxtor) desktop driv...

What about windows 7 and does it matter if it is 64 or 32 bit? Windows 7 64-bit supports GPT, thus bigger than 2.2 TB HDDs or RAID arrays. I don't know if it supports non-512 byte logical sectors, but it doesn't matter if it supports or not, since it can access beyond 2.2 TB anyway, and WD Advanced...

Its interesting that you have variance in the whooshing sound between inner and outer tracks. Interesting, yes. But not anything to be sceptical about. After all, even though the airflow inside the HDD (caused by the platters spinning) is almost non-changing, the actuator arm position does affect a...

In my experience drives get slightly noiser during search/load with age (gradually after say 2+ years) when used heavily/daily. Never dramatically so, though. Actuator arm is still equiped with ball-bearings, unlike spindle which has fluid dynamic (self oil-lubricating) bearings. Reason why actuato...

it looks like the original XP (prior to SP1) was limited to seeing 127GB. The later versions of XP in 32 bit form with 512 byte sectors appear to be limited to 2TB per partition, though this in theory may blow out to 16TB with Advanced Format. Nope. The HDD has 4096 byte physical sectors but they a...

With my old drive (Fujitsu MHW2160BJ) I'd hear a constant but not very loud air whooshing (disk spinning?) sound. With the WD3200BJKT, I hear it too. All HDDs whoosh more or less. Typically 3.5" whoosh more than 2.5", though the heavy-weight casing of 3.5" does attenuate the noise a bit. 5400rpm 3....

One possibility could always be WD MyBook prebuilt external HDDs. They're quite plasticky so their heat dissipation properties and the best around but the 5400rpm HDDs used (both for 2.5" and 3.5" form factors) are so cool they don't really need any all-aluminum case. WD MyBooks should probably be p...

I know that Western Digital is moving to 4096 byte, will all 600+ platters need to move to the new form that is xp incompatible? You're obviously meaning 4096 byte sectors (instead of de-facto standard of 512 bytes used for the last few decades). 4096 byte sectors isn't required for higher areal de...

from my own experience most of my drives are noisy, the only one that was less noisy is my 2year old 1tb mybook but even that has noise. I'm going to install a 40gb SSD I'm hoping it to be completely noiseless. 1) Your anecdotal evidence is utterly worthless as you don't specify what drives you are...

Is it fair to say any ecogreen is very quiet? If you had actually read what you quoted, you would have noticed I've only got good samples of Ecogreens and 1 good and 1 bad sample of Spinpoint. I have no idea how good a bad sample of Ecogreen is, or if they even exist. Thus, I cannot answer your que...

[quote=QuietOC]The tiny caches on hard drives are mostly irrelevant. It would be fun if some company made a hard drive with a SODIMM slot. Maybe if we could stick 4GB on a drive it might make a difference.[/quote] I guess you're one of those people who think adding cache to system RAM is the same as...

Unfortunately, one arrived DOA and the other one makes strange seek noises when starting up. If it's just during start-up, it's probably alright. Both of my F2 Ecogreen 1TB makes it too. Of course there some differences between 1000 and 1500GB models but I don't know if the differ in the aspect of ...

[2.5" HDD] vs [3.5" HDD + SDD] is an odd comparison. 500GB 5400rpm 2.5" vs. 1000Gb 5400rpm 3.5" + 16GB SDD. Really, why the SDD for the latter option and not the first? 3.5" HDDs (even the 5400rpm models) are faster than laptop drives (or possibly on-par with 7200rpm laptop drives but those aren't a...

From my experience, I have not noticed noise level increase on any of my FDB equipped HDDs. The fact that I have not noticed it may be because: - I don't have a non-changing point of comparison (because HDDs that are point of comparison are also in more or less regular use, and even extrended non-op...

is there a consistent label for a more quiet ecogreen vs more noisy ecogreen that is sort of like NIDCEC vs JVC? First, I cannot answer about consistency, I have only one noisy sample from Samsung. Second, I have 2x Ecogreen and 2x Spinpoint. The noisy one is Spinpoint, not Ecogreen. The noisy one ...

"SATA is IDE as well. PATA is the right term imho." If we looked at what IDE is abbreviation of, Integrated Device Electronics, SCSI and Serially-Attached SCSI (SAS) would also be called IDE. IDE is not defined that way, though, even though with the meaning of the words it should be. Integrated ele...

"Is NIDEC vs JVC still an issue?" I dunno if they have NIDEC or JVC printed anywhere any longer but there is variance especially in vibration. (NIDEC vs. JVC was difference in high-pitch IIRC). I don't have a decent batch size but I've bought two 1TB F1 Spinpoints (7200rpm) and two 1TB F2 Ecogreens...

"If there is only a few bad sectors you should try running the manufacturer's diagnostic tool. Do a full scan and see if it lets you "repair" the bad sectors. Usually this is just remapping them to spare sectors." There's no reason to do that. You can run extended SMART self-test in Windows. It's e...

Instead of doing extensive initial testing, I tend to fill the drive up with data right away... but NOT deleting the originals. Then I keep the new drive as an online back-up and run extrended SMART test weekly (or more often) for a period of month or two. If the drive is still in perfect condition,...

If there's no data on the HDD, zero-fill it like you did before. If it's a secondary HDD and has no OS, boot to Win and run HDDScan Erase scan. Only writing over will either reallocate or validate uncorrectable sectors back into normal use. After zero-fill, you will have to re-partition and re-forma...

"from your experience, how long does an extended self-test run take?" I don't remember exactly. It takes the same amount of time as verify pass (+ one or two minutes to do mechanical testing) because that's basically what extended self-test is. For 1TB GP (1st gen) it takes roughly 5 hours to self-...

Download HDDScan. Run "extended SMART test", then check for SMART values. You can do full format but extended SMART test does the same (and a bit more). Manufacturer diagnostics isn't necessary as if you run manufacturer's diagnostics (which usually requires you to boot to DOS) all the utility does ...

Theoretically the WD Green drives with the 64mb cache should be quieter for a different reason. They are the first of a new generation of drives that have 4kb sectors instead of the traditional 512 byte sectors that were a hangover from floppy disks! (this needs vista or newer). Larger sectors = re...

1st vs 2nd gen? Nope. More like 1st vs 3rd gen (when it comes to peak current measurements) and 3rd gen vs 4th gen (when it comes to comparison of EADS vs EARS and their sector size). 1st gen = 250GB/pl 2nd gen = 334GB/pl 3rd gen = 500GB/pl 4rg gen = 500GB/pl with 4K sectors Do note that while 3rd/4...

New Greenpower generations are better than the old ones. 1st generation GP used to pull a ridiculous power spike from 12V line on power-up. Totally ridiculous, that is. 28.1 watts for WD10EACS (1st gen) as measured by Storagereview. WD20EADS need only 11.5 watts. Both are mechanically similar, 4-pla...