Western Digital WD205AA / WD273BA
Hard Disk Drives
Reviewed by CPU-zilla  (23 Nov 99)

Hard Disk Specifications
Model		WD205AA Caviar	WD273BA Expert
Interface		40-pin EIDE
Formatted Capacity		20,520 MB	27,373.7 MB
Number of Disks		3	4
Number of Heads		6	8
Bytes per Sector (STD)		512	512
User Sectors per Drive		40,079,088	53,464,320
Average Read Seek		9.5 ms (typical)	9.0 ms (typical)
Track-to-Track Seek		2.0 ms (typical)	2.2 ms (typical)
Full Stroke Read Seek		19 ms (typical)	15.5 ms (typical)
Average Latency		5.5 ms	4.17 ms
Rotational Speed		5400 RPM	7200 RPM
Data Transfer Rate	Buffer to Host	66.6 MB/s (Ultra ATA 4) 33.3 MB/s (Ultra ATA 2) 16.6 MB/s (DMA Mode 2) 16.6 MB/s (PIO Mode 4)
	Buffer to Disk	233.57 Mbits/s max	284 Mbits/s max
Read Cache		Adaptive
Write Cache		Yes
Buffer		2 MB
Average Power Requirements (Read/Write/Idle)		6.18 W	11.1 W
Weight		0.5 kg	0.63 kg

<Introduction><The Good><The Test><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating>

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Introduction

My dad is someone who never throws anything away, whether the item is useless or not. Because of this, my mom has crowned him as a "junk collector". However, my dad always attach a price to whatever he keeps, no matter how small or irrelevant they are. He keeps almost anything, from the smallest screw to a huge unworkable gear box he removed from his old Fort Escort he had years ago. Imagine the amount of space he needed to keep all these so called, "junk". His behaviour may seem weird to some, but he has very legitimate reasons for keeping them. To him, these items are spare parts for his future projects, which proved to be very handy in several occasions.

I guess I am somewhat like my dad as I do tend to keep quite a lot of garbage with me too. However, I keep very small items, and fortunately, they take up less space. To me, these "junk" can be extremely useful when you need spares for any repairs/projects. I remember once throwing away a gear I disassembled from a VCR, but regretted as I found use for it 3 months later. Things like these are very hard to find, and they are often not found anywhere.

In the same way, I try not to delete files that I think are useless as I always have this feeling that they would come useful some day. True enough, I've experienced the same problem when I deleted some of my files that I thought was useless some while back, but later discovered that I needed the data for another project. The realisation was painful and frustrating sometimes. However, with hard disk capacities becoming larger and more affordable, it is becoming less of a problem to keep extra copies of your documents just in case you accidentally lost them somewhere else.

Just more than a month ago, hard disk capacities have managed to hit the 70GB ceiling and it is very likely that we'll witness further increase in the next millenium. This gives us more and more flexibility on how we can choose to store our data. Most experts will tell you to keep an extra hard disk for data backup purposes, while others would partition their drives for multiple operating systems (OS). I do know some actually keep a secondary hard disk full of MP3s in order to supply a steady flow of uninterrupted music. The number of ways available to use your hard disks are just endless, and with the introduction of broadband internet, there's no doubt that you will begin to accumulate a lot more downloaded files from the internet. There's just no end to how much of hard disk space you'll need.

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The Good

There's really nothing much I can write over at this section. Just like to point out that these drives come with Ultra DMA/66 support. This is already a must-have feature considering that more and more motherboards have begun to support UDMA/66 transfers. It won't be long until all the hard disks we can find in the market are capable of UDMA/66.

The WD205AA Caviar is a low-end 5400RPM targeted at low-end desktop users. It is not the fastest disk around, but it does deliver pretty well, considering the cost of the hard disk. It is a good plug-and-play hard disk that will not need much maintenance. Since the disk rotation speed is low, there's very little thermal issue. On the other hand, the WD273BA Expert is a high-end 7200RPM drive that's made for high-end desktop usage. It is one of the fastest hard disk I've seen. Both hard drives come with a 2MB cache, which has become a standard for most hard disks nowadays.

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The Test

I tested both hard disks on a UDMA/66 capable motherboard. Here, I used the AOpen AX63Pro which utilises the VIA Apollo 133A chipset for UDMA/66 support. For users with older LX/BX motherboards, I've also benchmarked the disks using the AOpen AX6BC Pro as a reference. Both hard disks were benchmarked with ZDNet's Winbench 99 1.1.

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The Bad

The only annoying thing I find about Western Digital hard disks are the jumper settings. You can always find two different jumper settings for Master. You will find a jumper for Single and another for Master. Setting the jumper to Master, it is assumed that you have another drive connected as a slave to the same IDE channel. If you don't have a slave device attached, the harddisk may not be detected in the BIOS at all. In this case, it is always advisable to put the setting as Single. I find this a little confusing to new users. In addition, because of this, the drive did not work when it was installed on an Apple iMac. However, I did not try using the Single setting as it was too troublesome to re-install the harddisk in the iMac. Anyway, this is a small issue since you can find a lot of information on setting up the drive in Western Digital's website.

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Conclusion

The Western Digital Caviar and Expert hard drives reviewed here are certainly fast and impressive. I would certainly recommend the WD 273BA Expert to use as your boot-up drive, as it significantly reduces the boot time. The Caviar, although slower, is not too bad either, considering that it is made for low-end use. The attractive pricing should make you think twice before choosing another brand. However, do make sure you are using a UDMA/66 capable motherboard in order to take full advantage of the hard disk.

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HARDDISK DRIVE RATING

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