Reviews for WD Caviar SE16 SE16 250 GB Internal Hard Drive

Great Price, Awesome Performance, Quiet, Solid...

Strengths: Price/GB; Great Manufacturer; Amazing performance

Weakness: Access times can't compete with the WD Raptors

The WD2500KS comes from a long line of amazing drives put out by Western Digital they refer to as the Caviar Series. So when it came time to increase the storage of my gaming pc it was clear what drive I would purchase. The only question came down to whether what size drive to get. The 250Gb clearly was the best bang for buck sitting at $68.50 from ZipZoomFly.com. I bought 2 and set them up in a Striped Raid-0. Here's the results of my HD Tune for this array:

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Quiet as a church mouse, as reliable as a bible -...

Strengths: 250 Gb. storage with 16 Mb. buffers

Weakness: Takes a while to fully format 250 Gb. ?

What? Quiet, you bet! I bought two a while back for use in RAID 1 on an older computer. They performed so well, I decided why not again for my newest computer build, and I bought two more.

The increased responsiveness of the older 2.2 MHz. Socket A computer running XP Pro 32 bit was immediately apparent, although the drives were only used in a mirrored storage array and not for the OS. No matter, I could spot the improvement over the older PATA drives I had been using for storage on the Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 motherboard - with transfers between drives taking place at greatly enhanced speeds. A slight change on mine was all that was needed from the start - with a jumper for SSC (an electronic FCC change made necessary by some chipsets and allowed for on the WD2500KS - check the manufacturer of your SATA chipset for the need), and the drives were instantly ready for operation at 1.5 Gb. While they are 3.0 capable, this older SATA chipset only met the 1.5 capability. This too can also be set manually by jumper if the automatic sensing cannot set due to some older SATA chipsets. Molex connections are provided with another for SATA power, but you only use one and SATA only for "hot swap" capability.

The new ASUS M2N32-SLI needed nothing set or changed with its brand new chipsets, and my second set of two new WD2500KS were "plug 'n play" with Windows loaded to one after partitioning a 20 Gb. Windows partition for XP Pro 64 bit to install on. 3.0 speed was available and the speed with a single core Athlon64 3800 was immediately noticeable over an earlier used 7200 rpm 80 Gb. PATA drive with 8 Mb. buffer.

One more thing to pass on. The WD2500KS drives run fairly cool and their threshold is similar to other good name brand drives, but just like any others - be sure to keep them cooled below 40 degrees Centigrade for long life.

What more should I say? Operation on both machines has been flawless and the price is fantastic for this entry level Enterprise class drive. All that was needed on both computers was a quick format of the drives using the Windows repair feature at boot (drive: /Q /FS:NTFS).

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Quiet Drive

Strengths: 1. Quiet 2. 16mb cache helps if you do a lot of memory accessing applications. Such as BT. 3. WD warranty is reputable as everyone knows. 4.SATA II for future upgrade possibilities.

Weakness: More expensive than others, but you get what you paid for, so this is not really a weakness.

I have been using western digital hard drives for a long time. All of my past experience told me that WD is a reputatble company that makes good HD and they stands behind their products.

Many friends of mine use WD hard drive and so far we have no problem. Same with this hard drive. This hard drive runs great as my data storage drive. Larger size cache makes the system runs less memory accesses for applications. More cache size makes the system runs faster since there is less need to go into the main memory for data, thus, improves the performance and prolongs the drive life (in theory).

The SATA II interface is a great thing to have (if your motherboard supports it or if you have adapters for it). The throughput is improved quite a lot with SATAII. This is a great to have for future motherboard upgrades and sooner or later, all newer HDs will have SATAII as well.

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Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB Review

Strengths: Very Fast Transfer Speeds, Large 16MB Cache, Quiet

Weakness: None

I purchased this drive around a month ago. It has worked wonderfully. It is much faster than my previous 8MB 7200RMP 160GB PATA Drive. I have experienced absolutely no problems with it thus far. Paired with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice Core) CPU, and 1GB of RAM, my system boots in 12 to 15 seconds, and loads applications (Office 2003) within seconds. I am very happy with my purchase, and again, the difference between my old PATA 8MB cache and this drive is huge. I would greatly recommend this drive.

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Excellent Drive, Nothing to Complain About

Strengths: Very quiet, fast, and reliable. It also has 16MB of cache, which is good.

Weakness: None!

I have had this drive for over 3 months and have not had any problems with it. I would definitely reccomend this drive. If the price is within range of other drives with similar specifications, I would choose this one over the other ones.

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WD Caviar SE16 250GB Hard Drive

Strengths: Quiet, Fast, 16mb cache, Installation

Weakness: N/A

I bought a Dell Dimension about a year back and my Maxtor 250gb hdd started randomly clicking out of the blue one day. I immediately bought this hdd (My Dell warranty expired a few months after it failed) just before if finally failed.

The installation of this drive was extremely simple compared to other things that I have replaced in other computers. The supplied driver cd was simple to use and I encourage you to use the Advanced Installation only because there are a few settings that might need to be changed depending on you hardware configuration.

One thing I did notice was once you press the power button you hear the hdd click once. And when you shut it down you hear it click again. (I was told this is normal, something to do with head alignment) Other than that this is the only noise you'll ever hear!

This drive is really fast compared to my previous 8mb cache hdd. Another thing i recommend is once you install your OS, antivirus, antispyware, programs, games, etc. run a disk defragment program (not the one that came with your OS) like Diskeeper, it will increase you boot time and increase the loading time of programs, etc.

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Very good HD

Strengths: Fast, huge capacity, good price

Weakness: none

Very good HD for the price. I'm very impressed with the speed. It almost reach my WD Raptor. This unit don't have NCQ or TCQ but it's designed to work best without them.
The installation on Win XP is very easy and smooth. This drive runs very cool too, no heat problems. Great choice.

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Hard driving hard drive!!!

Strengths: Very fast, easy installation, SATA II

Weakness: None

This hard drive is the best hard drive for the price! So since my motherboard supports SATA II, and with the awesome reputation of Western Digital, i figured i couldnt go wrong. It fit effortlessly into my ATX case. Another plus is the 16MB cache.

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Great Drive

Strengths: Capacity, Speed, Price

Weakness: None

I think this is one of the better drives out right now. At the capacity and speed it has there is not a better value out there right now. Buy it!

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RAID 0+1 Array

Strengths: Extremely Quiet, Installed without a hitch. Well, Except for the F6 Floppy Disk Nonsense when installing the Driver. New SATA Connectors Lock securely. Nice !

Weakness: None so far. Redmond Needs to Integrate SATA Into Vista Which I am Sure they will Do (Fingers and EYES Crossed here. >;~)

I Recieved the OEM Drives at a special Price of about $79.00 so i bought 4 of them . Installation was real fast without having to Wrestle the Darned EIDE cables.The Serial ATA Cables Connect 1-2-3.

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WD 250GB HD

Strengths: SATA II... nuff said

Weakness: None so far.

Easy install, but be forewarned that if you need cables or a utilities disk, get the retail version.

Had this up and running almost immediately. Windows XP recognizes it after install.

Using it for storage primarily. I've been a loyal Western Digital buyer for the last 5 years and my new system features this drive complemented by two 74GB Raptors.

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Great Hard Drive

Strengths: Fast, Quiet

I bought two of these and have them set up in a redundent raid array for my data. I also have 2 74 GB WD raptors in a striping array.

These drives run very quiet. I cannot detect any audible noise from my case while in use.

They are fast too. The NVidia benchmark program that came with my mobo benchmarked them at 353 compared to the NVidia 100 baseline.

I've had many WD drives and have yet to have a problem with any of them.

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decent size decent price

Strengths: quiet and as fast as expected.

Weakness: didn't include the jumper that has been in included in the other oem bare drives that i've purchased

This is a pretty decent hard drive for the price. It is comparable to the other 250GB drives out there. As far as reliability goes, i own and or have installed other wd, seagate, maxtor, and hitachi drives. I like seagates reliability the best, hitachi or wd raptors for performance, and wd for a good mix of quality and performance. maxtors.... seen way to many of them die within a year to like them atleast the newer ones, i have a 6 year old 20GB drive still running 24/7. Don't know if i'm supposed to review the seller too, but chiefvalue.com had excelent service.

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great product

Strengths: it is fast.

Weakness: none

it is a really nice drive for its price. I hightly recommand it if you are looking for a simple upgrade. So far, the drive is working the way it should be.

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Very fast drive but a bit noisy

Strengths: Very fast and quite reliable.

Weakness: Noisier than expected.

I read some very good reviews on this hard drive, and was very excited to purchase it for my high-end system. It turned out to be as reliable and fast as everyone said it would be, but I was disappointed that it made quite loud noises when the PC was booting (sometimes). I returned it for another one just like it to see if the problem would dissapear, but the replacement drive is still quite loud one in a while. Maybe I have really bad luck and received two defective items in a row... I guess I can try it again!

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Fast drive with top specs

Strengths: Fast, 16mb buffer, SATA 3.0Gb/s (i.e., SATA II), quiet.

Weakness: None.

A top quality drive. A bit more expensive than others but with every right to be. Users wishing to keep up with the modern/new specifications should look to this drive as a model. Practical size for mainstream and enthusiast users.

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Bad Reliability

Strengths: Fast, quiet.

Weakness: Reliability

I had two of them in RAID 1. One failed a little after two years and another failed 6 months later. The warranty service is simply and quick but I had to pay the shipping cost to send the defective drive back.

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HD

Strengths: Fast-Quiet Operation- A+ Performance

Weakness: Zippo

Rock solid performing HD's for what i use my rig for. built this puppy back in the first quarter of 2006 and still going strong. i have them in Raid Zero and not a single corrupt file to date :)

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Great hard drive

Strengths: Alot of storage... Fast... Whisper Quiet

Weakness: None so far

I bought this Hard Drive to fill up what of my hard drive slots on my mac pro. I was looking at Drives from other manufacturers..but after reading many reviews , I gladly purchased this Western Digital Hard drive. It was exactly what I needed, a Fast, Quiet, Relaible Drive to match my Fast, Quiet, Reliable Mac

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RAID1 setup

Strengths: 16MB cache and easy datalifeguard software for setup

Weakness: none so far, HD failure happens to all brands.

Bought 3 of these for RAID1 plus one extra. One drive did fail on my RAID mirror but Western Digital had great warranty and sent one before I sent mine. This was the only one out of 5 WD's I had.

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Best Performance Hard Drive with Price Under $5000

Performance is Excellent according to 4 Hard Drive experts. -- "A massive 16 MB cache combined with up to 300 MB/s transfer rate make these ultra-fast drives the perfect solution for the fully loaded PC with a fast processor."-tigerdirect.com -- "pure speed"-pcstats.com -- "Performance was strong with roughly a 80MB/s throughput which was very close to the 600GB RAID 0...

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Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA300 WD2500KS

Testseek.com has collected 6 expert reviews for Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA300 WD2500KS and the average expert rating is 60 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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