WD Caviar 320GB Hard Drive

mikeywl

Member Since
Sep 2006

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User has 1 Day of experience with this product

Western Digital 320Gb Hard Drive Excellent for Storing Your Files

Strengths:

Huge amount of space. Only 1 of these hard drives is needed to store tons of pictures and files. 8Mb cache speeds access of files.

Weaknesses:

Only a 1 year warranty. Seagate drives are 5, and Seagate recently bought Maxtor, so WD is now on the bottom of the pile as far as warranties go. Only Ata 100.

Posted Sep 4, 2006 - I bought 3 of these drives to use in my external backup enclosures. I had a pair of 160Gb drives in a network raid 1 configuration, now I've got 2 360Gb WD drives in the array. Doubled my storage, plus the cache is 4 times larger. The 3rd drive is for separate stand alone external usb backup drive. The only real drawback to these drives would be if you needed an ata 133 drive (for internal pc use) since these are only ata 100. For what I'm using them for, it's just fine. WD's warranty is a little lackluster too, but I've had several other WD drives of various sizes for years and have never had any problems with them. I've got 4 pc's with about 10 drives between them.

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CRMMechanics

Member Since
Jun 2007

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User has 30 Days of experience with this product

Good value

Strengths:

WD quality at an affordable price.

Weaknesses:

There aren't enough of these at this price.

Posted 1 month ago - One of the benefits of purchasing older drives is the fact that they are proven products. It's so difficult to "buy in" to the 1TB SATA craze especially when the manufacturer chooses to "test" the product AFTER it's been released to market. Each time I've purchased a 1TB drive, I've had to return half the drives for replacement. Not so with IDE drives, and certainly not the case with WD SATA or IDE products. You can't go wrong when going with WD.

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mryoo

Member Since
May 2009

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User has 3 Days of experience with this product

Not fully compatible with SONY VAIO.

Strengths:

Big & pretty fast.

Weaknesses:

Can only install as SLAVE in a 2 drive system. Can only install as MASTER in a 1 drive system. Must use alternate jumper setting in that case.

Posted 1 year ago - Got in touch with Western Digital & Sony tech support and got the runaround. Don't risk putting this in a VAIO unless you like seeing the "Primary master drive fails" message. Mine is a VAIO RX850.

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blantyr

Member Since
May 2008

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User has 30 Days of experience with this product

The Warranty period seems to have been increased.

Strengths:

Lots of space for the price.

Weaknesses:

Lacks SMART status support. I run Micromat's Tech Tools Pro, which uses SMART status to predict future problems.

Posted May 15, 2008 - After many years of service, the 40 Gig drive that came with my Mac G4 died. In a fit of overkill, I replaced it with a pair of WD3200JBRTLs. Playing with jumpers wasn't a lot of fun. If I had known about the 128 Gigabyte limit on the old G4's internal IDE busses, I might have looked for a smaller disk under the limit, but I've looked for small disks since and drives smaller than 128 Gigs just aren't on the market. For a while I ran both WD3200JBRTLs as 128 Gig drives. OS X Tiger ran them just fine on the old IDE bus, but just couldn't format them as more than 128 Gigs. I have since added a new IDE PCI card, and have reformatted the drives to their full 320 Gig capacity. It's never fun to be playing around inside one's Mac, but the install and various reconfigurations went smoothly, and the disks did everything I expected of them, and even ran on the old bus, which I didn't really expect. They've only been in there for a month or so, but they've done fine in that month. I agree with other reviewers that they run quieter than I'd expect. But I recently registered them on the Western Digital web page. The warranty expiration date is 5/18/2011, which today shows as 1098 days left. It seems the common complaint in these reviews -- the one year warranty -- has been addressed. They seem to have gone to three years.

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SPENDING_les...

Member Since
Mar 2007

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User has 7 Days of experience with this product

Works on a Mac G4 but be you'll have to install an Ultra ATA100 controller card on older G4's

Strengths:

The extra space is great; 30 day free installation supportThe extra space is great; 30 day free installation support (although they are probably better with Windows machines)

Weaknesses:

Had to add an Ultra ATA 100 controller to make the drive work in my system (wish WD had told me this to begin with and I would have bought a smaller HD)

Posted May 22, 2007 - My 20G HD that came with my G4 was running out of space so I decided to get a bigger drive before I had significant problem (I kept on getting warnings from Safari telling me that I was running out of space). If you're going to buy this drive (or any drive over 128 G) make sure that your Mac can support these supersized drives; if it can't you'll have to add an Ultra ATA controller -- at an additional cost of between roughly $70 (SIIG Ultra ATA 133/100 pro) to $130 (Sonnet Tempo Trio). If I had known this in advance I probably would have bought a smaller drive. To install the drive into the Mac, find the "Setting Up Your Power Mac G4" manual that came with your G4. And be sure to configure the drive correctly with the jumpers (follow the directions in the WD 320 manual). Yes, the drive only has a 1 year warranty but if you have a charge card that offers an extended warranty, you can get an extra year of coverage (check with your credit card company). A 5 year warranty would be great but who knows how we're going to be storing data in the future.

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MORE4MY$

Member Since
Oct 2005

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User has 7 Days of experience with this product

Works well

Strengths:

The extra space is great; 30 day free installation support

Weaknesses:

none

Posted May 22, 2007 - Quick and easy to install. The 30 day free installation tech support was a blessing - came in handy. Make sure to take advantage of it especially if you're having problems installing it or fixing the jumpers.

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km1tch from VA

Member Since
May 2006

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User has 1 Week of experience with this product

Space Galore

Strengths:

Plenty of space

Weaknesses:

Only a 1 year warranty

Posted Mar 25, 2007 - This drive has enough space to handle just about anything you throw at it. I was surprised at how quiet this drive was, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it in an HTPC. I was also surprised how cool this drive runs when compared to my other drives. I can’t highly recommend this drive because of the 1 year warranty. I wish WD would warranty their drives for longer periods.

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jdrpal

Member Since
Feb 2006

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User has 1 Day of experience with this product

wd3200jbrtl

Strengths:

Good harddrive

Weaknesses:

N/A

Posted Mar 24, 2007 - I bought this hard drive the other day and it works splendidly. I've only had it for a month or so, but so far it’s working out very well. I highly recommend it.

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frankyinyan from CO

Member Since
Jul 2005

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reliable wd 320gb hard drive

Strengths:

large capacity, reliable, quiet,

Weaknesses:

na

Posted Mar 2, 2007 - I bought a western digital 320gb hard drive to replace a maxtor 100gb hard drive. It gives me more space. I can save movies, music on it without worrying running out of space. It's quiet and works reliably so far.

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pgonza02 from FL

Member Since
Mar 2004

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User has 1 Days of experience with this product

Reliable as always

Strengths:

Brand reputation, price, reliability.

Weaknesses:

None so far

Posted Feb 12, 2007 - I have always been a Western Digital fan and this drive delivers on their usual reliability. Nothing out of the ordinary with this drive. Bought it to use in an external enclosure mainly for backups.

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Techguy2006

Member Since
May 2006

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User has 90 Days of experience with this product

Runs Cool & Fast, Only 1 Year Warranty

Strengths:

Very cool, fast

Weaknesses:

Only 1 Yr warranty

Posted Nov 13, 2006 - There are no issues with this Hard Drive. It runs very cool and I am very pleased with the performance. There are no cons other than it comes with only 1 Yr warranty.

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yanmay from CO

Member Since
Jul 2005

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western digital 320gb hard drive

Strengths:

great hard drive; good price; easy installation

Weaknesses:

1 year manufacturer's warranty

Posted Oct 24, 2006 - My sister bought me the hard drive during best buy's promotion. Less than $100 for a great 320gb hard drive. I can install it easily into my computer without any trouble. It works great so far. The hard drive is big enough to hold my music, movies and pictures. The only weakness is the 1 year manufacturer's warranty.

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willygee

Member Since
Sep 2006

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User has 10 Days of experience with this product

Drive works great!

Strengths:

N/A

Weaknesses:

N/A

Posted Sep 20, 2006 - good overall drive from the ones i purchased in the past... Western Digitals are always pretty realiable... warranty is about the same as other manufacturers but probably wont need to exercise it...

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520

Member Since
Jul 2005

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User has 2 Weeks of experience with this product

A nice Hard Drive

Strengths:

Amazing fast speed, reliable brand

Weaknesses:

Obviously noisy when the HD is turned off. Only one year warranty.

Posted Sep 15, 2006 - I got this hard drive for less than $50. So the price is very good.I have nothing to complain about this price. I use this HD to store the captured HC3 high definition video. HD video is well known as HD speed demanding. This WD3200JBRTL has no problem at all writing datas in it and there is no drop frames. Only glitch is when the HD is turned off, there is an obvious HD turn off noise. I've listened to the same noise for 3.5 years cuz a WD 60G HD in my labs dell dim2350 has the same noise for 3.5 years, it is still healthy. All in all, it's a very good HD.

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yongyuan726

Member Since
Jan 2006

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User has 1 Month of experience with this product

WD 320gb Hard Drive

Strengths:

Drive size, quiet

Weaknesses:

None

Posted Aug 27, 2006 - I am very happy with this hard drive, it works great, quiet and fast. 320GB is a huge amount of space; I use it to store videos, music, pictures, and many more.

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Parallel ATA-100, 7,200 RPM, 8MB - MPN: WD3200JBRTL

Western Digital 320Gb Hard Drive Excellent for Storing Your Files

Good value

Not fully compatible with SONY VAIO.

The Warranty period seems to have been increased.

Works on a Mac G4 but be you'll have to install an Ultra ATA100 controller card on older G4's

Works well

Space Galore

wd3200jbrtl

reliable wd 320gb hard drive

Reliable as always

Runs Cool & Fast, Only 1 Year Warranty

western digital 320gb hard drive

Drive works great!

A nice Hard Drive

WD 320gb Hard Drive

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