Western Digital's JB series
 

Found out today (hey, I'm out of the loop :D ), IBM is indeed pulling out of the HDD market. My two favorite companies (Quantum, IBM) have slipped away.

I was hunting around and found high praise for Western Digital's JB series of drives. They run at 7200rpm and use an 8mb buffer instead of the typical 2mb. Performance has been comparable to 10k rpm drives.... and reviewers have noted they scream when used in a RAID 0 config.

When I worked as a PC assembler, I got to know Western Digitals quite well - slow, noisy, and often came back for repair. but that was 4 years ago, maybe WD has finally produced something decent with these JB drives. They are also quieter (or so they say).

Does anyone here own one of these 8mb buffered drives? Your thoughts on them?

I've had a WD1000BB for over a year and love it. I test out at an average 38Kb/s. VERY quiet, too.

i have 3 of the 120's w/8mg , and 1 120 w/2mg cache ...
both work ... the only time i can see any difference is when i TEST them - the 8mgs cache ( 48mgs read/writes), the 2mgs ( 44mgs read/writes) plenty fast enough for DV

keep your eye out on SALES .. the WD 120/w8mg cache has been selling for around 129 after rebates ...

are those peak or average scores? they look like peaks

I assume 38 Kb/s should be MB/s...

Indeed, rob.

With the 120 gig 8meg of cache WD caviar hd, I get 60mb/s sustained thruput.

-Eric