Western Digital has done it again!!!
- Thread starter AMD_Man
- Start date
<b><i>"A penny saved is a penny earned!"</i></b> Lars_Coleman
Distinguished
- Feb 9, 2001
- 1,020
- 0
- 19,280
I guess everyone has to have their shine in the Market. If I'm not mistaken, this would be Western Digital's first few quarters of major shine. Don't you agree?
Unimpressed with the review. They didn't even bench that Firewire drive up with other drives of it's kind. For example <A HREF="http://www.maxtor.com/products/ExternalStorage/3000XT/images/3000DV.jpg" target="_new">Maxtor</A>.
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
Unimpressed with the review. They didn't even bench that Firewire drive up with other drives of it's kind. For example <A HREF="http://www.maxtor.com/products/ExternalStorage/3000XT/images/3000DV.jpg" target="_new">Maxtor</A>.
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
slvr_phoenix
Splendid
- Dec 31, 2007
- 6,223
- 1
- 25,780
WD has a good <b>IDE</b> hard drive. As the review quite clearly showed in benchmarks though, the Firewire external version of the drive sucks major cow pies compared to just about any IDE drive. (Dare we even bring in SCSI?)
And why would WD even choose FireWire? USB2 is backward compatible, so the squinteen-million people out there who have USB1 ports on their PCs could plug in this drive without having to purchase a new card (though admittedly at a much slower transfer rate). This would give the drive a <i>much</i> larger possible market. Instead though, they choose FireWire, which almost no PC actually has installed. Talk about a strange decision from WD.
So while WD has a great IDE drive, I consider their external drive to be one of the biggest letdowns I have ever seen. It <i>should</i> have been USB2 capable. They <i>could</i> have given it <i>both</i> a USB2 and a FireWire controller on the external drive, or at least given an option to purchase a version of either flavor.
Worse though, what is quite possible the best IDE drive out at the moment is completely screwed over by what must have been a <i>horrible</i> implementation of IDE to FireWire. The FireWire interface is capable of delivering 50MB/s. The highest read transfer speed of the WD1200JB is just under 50MB/s. So, the external drive <i>should</i> have been delivering nearly the same performance as it would have internally because FireWire is capable of providing enough bandwidth for the hard drive. (The only difference in performance should have been the cache bursting.) Yet, it is only delivering 25MB/s. This is <i>half</i> of what both the hard drive and FireWire are capable of. WD really must have screwed something up in the hardware to cause this.
So I find WD's external drive to be, well, a depressing product from WD that shows while WD might make a good internal hard drive, they're clueless about external interfacing.
Now, on to the article author himself. Once again we have yet another article which proves that Patrick Schmid is about as incompetent as a hardware reviewer as a person could possibly be. First off, he links to his very controversial article (written by himself no less) which claims that WD's IDE hard drive beats out SCSI drives, and yet provides <b>no</b> benchmark data on <b>any</b> SCSI drive to prove this ludicrous claim. Anyone running a top-end SCSI hard drive will know without a doubt just how delusional Patrick's claims were back then, and still are now.
Then in this new article he proves that the external drive's perfomance sucks big time compared to IDE. But yet he seems to consider it a success. Well, if he wants to, fine. I think the majority of readers will at least question some of his article though, if not all of it.
Further, he shows his ignorance about hard drives by continually referring to the 1 year warantee as though this was somehow unexpected. Well, what <i>would</i> you expect for a 3.5" hard drive in a portable version? It doesn't have all of the shock resistance that a notebook's hard drive would have. Of course it is going to have a shorter warantee when you turn it into a portable product where it is assured to be bounced around regularly. Did he write this article with common sense disabled or something?
Yet worse, he claims that "<font color=red>DVDs are still out of the question because the corresponding burners are still too expensive.</font color=red>" This again shows his incompetence. On Pricewatch.com, I can easily find a Creative Labs PC-DVD RAM SCSI DVD Burner with software for $249 plus $12 S&H. So, for 250 bucks I could be burning DVDs, or for a hundred bucks more than that, I could be using WD's external Firewire 120GB drive. He can claim that DVD burners are out of the question for being too expensive with a straight face?
For those who think that the writable media will make up the cost difference, on Pricewatch.com I can also find 4.7GB DVD RAM disks for two bucks each. So for that hundred dollars more that the external drive costs over the DVD burner, I could pick up fifty disks for a total of 235GB of storage space. This is just shy of <b>double</b> the storage space I could have gotten with the external drive.
My absolute favorite though is when he shows his technical ignorance when he claims that "<font color=red>400 MBit/s is approximately 33 MB/s</font color=red>". I'm sorry, but the common-day standard is 8 bits in a byte. Simple math will tell you that 400 MBits/s = 50 MB/s. In fact, for his math of 33MB/s, you would need not only 1 or 2 error correction bits, but <b>four</b> error correction bits per each 8 bits of data in order to have 400 MBit/s = 33MB/s. This is, of course, ludicrous.
So not only has WD let me down by taking an excellent drive and turning it into a PoS, but Patrick Schmid has once again brought into question just why THG even continues to employ him.
Today, my friends, is a day of idiocy. Be sure to carry an umbrella.
<font color=red>Bob knew he was screwed when he saw the label actually read 'Tactile Nuclear Device'.</font color=red>
And why would WD even choose FireWire? USB2 is backward compatible, so the squinteen-million people out there who have USB1 ports on their PCs could plug in this drive without having to purchase a new card (though admittedly at a much slower transfer rate). This would give the drive a <i>much</i> larger possible market. Instead though, they choose FireWire, which almost no PC actually has installed. Talk about a strange decision from WD.
So while WD has a great IDE drive, I consider their external drive to be one of the biggest letdowns I have ever seen. It <i>should</i> have been USB2 capable. They <i>could</i> have given it <i>both</i> a USB2 and a FireWire controller on the external drive, or at least given an option to purchase a version of either flavor.
Worse though, what is quite possible the best IDE drive out at the moment is completely screwed over by what must have been a <i>horrible</i> implementation of IDE to FireWire. The FireWire interface is capable of delivering 50MB/s. The highest read transfer speed of the WD1200JB is just under 50MB/s. So, the external drive <i>should</i> have been delivering nearly the same performance as it would have internally because FireWire is capable of providing enough bandwidth for the hard drive. (The only difference in performance should have been the cache bursting.) Yet, it is only delivering 25MB/s. This is <i>half</i> of what both the hard drive and FireWire are capable of. WD really must have screwed something up in the hardware to cause this.
So I find WD's external drive to be, well, a depressing product from WD that shows while WD might make a good internal hard drive, they're clueless about external interfacing.
Now, on to the article author himself. Once again we have yet another article which proves that Patrick Schmid is about as incompetent as a hardware reviewer as a person could possibly be. First off, he links to his very controversial article (written by himself no less) which claims that WD's IDE hard drive beats out SCSI drives, and yet provides <b>no</b> benchmark data on <b>any</b> SCSI drive to prove this ludicrous claim. Anyone running a top-end SCSI hard drive will know without a doubt just how delusional Patrick's claims were back then, and still are now.
Then in this new article he proves that the external drive's perfomance sucks big time compared to IDE. But yet he seems to consider it a success. Well, if he wants to, fine. I think the majority of readers will at least question some of his article though, if not all of it.
Further, he shows his ignorance about hard drives by continually referring to the 1 year warantee as though this was somehow unexpected. Well, what <i>would</i> you expect for a 3.5" hard drive in a portable version? It doesn't have all of the shock resistance that a notebook's hard drive would have. Of course it is going to have a shorter warantee when you turn it into a portable product where it is assured to be bounced around regularly. Did he write this article with common sense disabled or something?
Yet worse, he claims that "<font color=red>DVDs are still out of the question because the corresponding burners are still too expensive.</font color=red>" This again shows his incompetence. On Pricewatch.com, I can easily find a Creative Labs PC-DVD RAM SCSI DVD Burner with software for $249 plus $12 S&H. So, for 250 bucks I could be burning DVDs, or for a hundred bucks more than that, I could be using WD's external Firewire 120GB drive. He can claim that DVD burners are out of the question for being too expensive with a straight face?
For those who think that the writable media will make up the cost difference, on Pricewatch.com I can also find 4.7GB DVD RAM disks for two bucks each. So for that hundred dollars more that the external drive costs over the DVD burner, I could pick up fifty disks for a total of 235GB of storage space. This is just shy of <b>double</b> the storage space I could have gotten with the external drive.
My absolute favorite though is when he shows his technical ignorance when he claims that "<font color=red>400 MBit/s is approximately 33 MB/s</font color=red>". I'm sorry, but the common-day standard is 8 bits in a byte. Simple math will tell you that 400 MBits/s = 50 MB/s. In fact, for his math of 33MB/s, you would need not only 1 or 2 error correction bits, but <b>four</b> error correction bits per each 8 bits of data in order to have 400 MBit/s = 33MB/s. This is, of course, ludicrous.
So not only has WD let me down by taking an excellent drive and turning it into a PoS, but Patrick Schmid has once again brought into question just why THG even continues to employ him.
Today, my friends, is a day of idiocy. Be sure to carry an umbrella.
<font color=red>Bob knew he was screwed when he saw the label actually read 'Tactile Nuclear Device'.</font color=red>
Though I agree that some of the comments in the review were questionable at best. The firewire 33MB/s comment in particular was completely retarded, you are just as clueless about external storage as this guy, if not worse. There are so many things wrong with what you said, not just interpretational, but factual as well, that I won't even bother to respond to them individually. Before you decide to rip into someone next time make sure you have at least a remote idea of what you are talking about.
Harisahmed
Distinguished
- Feb 21, 2002
- 203
- 0
- 18,680
I think you missed the comment about the market that this external drive is intended for. It's not meant for the masses that have USB, it's meant for the people that do alot of video work or need backup storage and want the portability of an external drive with 60-100GB of storage.
These people are more likely to already have a firewire controller. Don't forget that there is a faster version of firewire due out soon, so USB2 won't be able to keep it's claim of faster theoretical transfer rate either. Who knows, maybe a USB2 version is in the works and will be out within a couple of months.
They also never created this drive intending people to use this as a replacement for an internal drive either so drop the performance comments until it's compared to similar external drives.
Lars_Coleman
Distinguished
- Feb 9, 2001
- 1,020
- 0
- 19,280
IMO, USB 2.0 is way better then 1394/Firewire. Firewire has it's fair share of problems just like USB did when it was first released. I think USB has had it's time to mature and is now a better interface.
Another point in the driver support Microsoft put out is a joke. Their having problems with the sbp2port.sys file, which they have a fix for at this time, but you have to call them.
<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311430" target="_new">Article ID Q311430</A>
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
Another point in the driver support Microsoft put out is a joke. Their having problems with the sbp2port.sys file, which they have a fix for at this time, but you have to call them.
<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311430" target="_new">Article ID Q311430</A>
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
Harisahmed
Distinguished
- Feb 21, 2002
- 203
- 0
- 18,680
That's not completely true since USB2 is still relatively new. What if/when WD comes out with a USB2 external drive and there is a similar USB driver problem with <b>Windows</b>? Why is USB better and do you see many USB compatible Digital Video equipment?
Lars_Coleman
Distinguished
- Feb 9, 2001
- 1,020
- 0
- 19,280
I work with Firewire drives and USB 2.0 drives every day. I have a Maxtor Firewire and a Maxtor USB drive of my own and the USB drive is more reliable then the Firewire drive any day of the month. There aren't any USB driver issues for 2.0 at this time that I know of. Driver support for USB is strictly through the mfg. of the hardware at this point. Unlike 1394/Firewire driver support, which is done by Microsoft for OHCI compliant hardware.
Just because there aren't many pieces of hardware that are made for Digital Video, doesn't mean anything. The whole reason digital video equipment In My Opinion is firewire/1394, is because of Apple and Sony. To many Mac users out there that think a Mac is better at Video and Audio editing (Shrek & Monsters Inc. were both done on PC's btw) and Firewire is a Apple developed interface. Also because of Sony and their iLink that they integrate it on all their PC's and digital video equipment. **May not be true but that's why it's an opinion.
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
Just because there aren't many pieces of hardware that are made for Digital Video, doesn't mean anything. The whole reason digital video equipment In My Opinion is firewire/1394, is because of Apple and Sony. To many Mac users out there that think a Mac is better at Video and Audio editing (Shrek & Monsters Inc. were both done on PC's btw) and Firewire is a Apple developed interface. Also because of Sony and their iLink that they integrate it on all their PC's and digital video equipment. **May not be true but that's why it's an opinion.
<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram