Advantages: Lots of space, cheap, reliable
Disadvantages: Can't hoenstly think of any

...If we look at the name of this device, 'Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250 GB', we can infer a great deal of information. 'Western Digital' is the manufacturer, 'Caviar' is the produce line, 'SE16' tells us that this is a special edition device with a 16Mb (1Mb = 1024Kb, 1Kb = 1024b) cache, 'WD2500KS' is the model number and 250Gb is the device size in raw data format. Western Digital are a good company and in fact I buy all of my hard drives from them because they have never failed on me. The Caviar device line has been in operation for about six years and has included IDE devices as well as the newer SATA and SATAII devices. The special edition bit of that means effectively nothing, it is simply a marketing thing, but the 16Mb cache is very important. Normally hard drives have an 8Mb cache and used to have a 2Mb cache... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, reliable & high size.
Disadvantages: Over heated alot when put threw its paces.

...I god this drive as I trust western digital as all my drives but 1 or 2 are all there brand and with no issues. However, apart from the high capacity, the speed it offers & technical support with some utility tools on WD website, I must rate this as adequate. The reasons are. Due to the high storage size, the head it generates is much higher than most hard drives. I was currently decoding & re encoding audio to video on the drive where it suddenly froze.. just the drive, nothing else.. Then for a good 5 minutes it would not show in boot up & really slowed down the boot up process because if it. The reason I found out was, it really overheated. Now, hard drives do overheat if you don’t keep them clean & maintained, such as disk keepers & so forth to keep the drive running in its prime. But its new, so this was not the cause... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Large Storage, Cheap, Clever, Reliable, Easy install
Disadvantages: n/a

...helps this drive compeet with faster drives (WD raptor 10krpm) but for around £50-60 knock 2 of them in Raid-0 and you will most likely have a very large, very fast drive setup for £40-50 less than a faster drive! I would suggest if you're in the market for a large, reliable, quitet drive you realy do need to look at Western Digital's 250GB SE16 Drive as this drive ranks at the top of the hard drive food chain, and is industry standard coming from WD who are renowned for their quality and the life span of their products. Western digital SE (special edition) is another way of stating that this drive has 16mb of cache instead of the usual 8mb (overall faster performance for sustained use, ie network storage) The drive spins at 7.200RPM (rotations per minute) which is usualy classed as the norm for higher end hard drives, where... Read review

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Advantages: Reliable, cheap
Disadvantages: Can't think of any

...not for there are settings on the back that allow the device to slow down to SATAI speeds. So if your using a SATA system and your thinking maybe you will upgrade to SATAII in the future this would work for you. Western digital are great company, I always buy my hard drives from them because I have never had one fail on me. This particular device is an 80Gb derivative and will contain a maximum of 74Gb of data when formatted using NTFS. When a drive is made it is not formatted. The idea of formatting is to allow your computer to know where it has stored its data on the device. As such a large table is made which compares the location on the hard drive to the data stored there this takes up about 8% of your overall space. NTFS is just a file system standard and doesn't need to mean much to most people. I have shown the sequential read/write speeds... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Value for Money, Quiet, 5yr warranty
Disadvantages: none that i know

...to transfer data between pc's without using a network, or for backup storage on many pc's. Also with external hard drives from seagate you only get a 1yr warranty, instead of 5yrs for internal drives like this one. The formatted usable size is 298gb, not 320gb, it is very quiet I do not notice it at all. It is lightning fast thanks to its 16mb cache which helps make windows and programs load up quicker. The downside with the low price I paid was that as it was OEM (original equipment manufacturer) hard drive, this means that it is for computer manufactures and the hard drive is the only item incuded, so there is no instruction manual, or the sata cable to connect your hard drive to the motherboard. I had to buy the cable seperatly, but this was only a couple of quid. However nnon OEM drives come with the cable included. Although... Read review

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Advantages: Great Quality
Disadvantages: A bit old and slow now

...Frankly Western Digital Hard drives are some of the best in the world if you ask me. I have had 8 of them to date and have only bought more of them for either more space or different computers. I even plan to buy another 2 or 3 depending on how I want to reogranise my PC. All the western digital drives I have had, have always had excellent performance but possibly more importanly than that they have all be very reliable. The 200gb caviar in this review is no different at all. I've been using it for 2 years now and it not shown a single fault and has always responded with good transfer speeds to any other media format. I have just run a disc drive test to check on the drives write speed I have gotten a speed of 41.2MB/sec from a simple disc right/read program. Baring in mind though that this HDD is also currently running my... Read review

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Advantages: Sturdy. Good Quality.
Disadvantages: Compatible with SecureConnect hard drives only.

...I recently bought one of these cables to connect my hard drive (also WD – Western Digital) to my motherboard. I had never used SATA before and was only familiar with IDE cables – the annoying thick ones that are a pain to connect. Unlike IDE cables, SATA leads can only be plugged in one way at both ends. This cable holds the power connection stable too. This cable can only really be used on Western Digital hard drives, but they are a leading manufacture and highly recommended. Both WD Raptor and WD Caviar SE Serial ATA drives use this unique connection, but there are also other SecureConnect compatible hard drives out there. The main reason you would buy this rather than any old SATA cable is because of its SecureConnect design which holds it in place nice and tight. I have a WD raptor drive, and following the usual hard drive... Read review

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Advantages: Stylish, easy to use, solid
Disadvantages: Sync capabilities lacking

...The 'WD Passport' series of portable hard-drives are a solid option for anyone. They look good, they are small and robust, and have good capacities that read and write at an acceptable speed. Connecting via USB they should pose no problem for people running a modern machine, and are overall just extremely useful for transfering large amounts of files between two computers, or otherwise backing up data or maybe a music collection. The Passport looks great. It is a smooth shiny black slab, with opposite edges curved in opposite directions, making it seem very slick indeed. The top face has an embossed WD logo which is unintrusive, and is otherwise featureless. The underside is matte black and has 4 small rubber stands so that the hard-drive won't slip around the surface it is placed on. The rear edge houses the USB connections which can... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, tidy cables, silent, runs cool.
Disadvantages: More money-wise to buy a 500gb drive?

...I purchased this drive about 3 months ago from eBuyer, taking advantage of the £10 off offer they had going with Google Checkout. This was my first SATA drive, my existing two being IDE. I figured a hard drive was just there to store data, so I didn't care about the interface or speed. How wrong I was. So for looks, well, they're all the same, until of course you come to the cables. The thin SATA cable instantly frees your system of the clutter made from intertwining IDE strips. If you like to show off, with a windowed case, or if you just like to have things organised then move to SATA just for this reason alone if you've yet to. So after plugging in, the drive is recognised straight away in POST, and once loaded the Windows Setup, the drive is formatted to 298GB (298 Gigabytes = 319,975,063,552 bytes). The format process... Read review

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Advantages: luxury, smmothness, stunning looks, power, comfort, space, driving pleasure
Disadvantages: small glove box, low mpg on urban cycle.

...My wife spotted the Jag on a day trip to Manchester. It was for sale outside some flash offices and we had a look at it as the price - £7995 in May 2008 - was very tempting and well within our budget. She fell in love with it right away. It is a 2.5 SE 4wd in metallic light blue and has the very light tan leather trim - absolutely gorgeous hardly does it justice !!! The owner saw us looking at it and came out to talk to us. He was getting a Lexus the folowing Sunday so wanted shut asap. He was a real gent - one of the old school - and so we arranged a test drive the following day as we both had no time to spare there and then. It was superb to drive - I had borrowed a similar one some 6yrs ago and this one seemed even better. 2 owners from new, FSH and utterly, utterly immaculate. The only faults being a steering wheel wobble... Read review

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