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It seems as though Hard Drive manufacturers will never rest until they absolutely drive me insane. A few weeks ago, I was able to review a hard drive by a company named Western Digital that sported 250 gigs of space and a speedy interface. Recently, they decided to tease my with a new drive that slams 400 gigs of space in your face and a tad bit slower interface. Rhyming unintentional. Enter the WD4000KD, a SATA drive with a whopping 400 gigs of space and a 16 MB cache at a not so whopping price of $234.99 (WD's website price - Bare Drive); that's only .59 cents per gig.
This drive sports many similarities to its siblings. It pounds out a quick little 7200 RPM's, a 16 MB cache and the ubiquitous 8.9ms read seek time. The interface is a bit slower than the last WD drive we thrashed, the WD2500KS. This drive rides on a standard SATA interface at 150MB/s instead of its speedier cousin cruising past at 3.0Gb/s. Hey, where is my NCQ, again? Granted, I have it disabled on the drives that rock it, but I would rather have it and not use it than want it and not have it.
I know what you are going to say to yourself next, and I will battle that question right now. You are going to ask yourself "Why would I buy one of these at 234.00 when I could by two 250gigers at a higher transfer rate and end up spending less money?" My response is; UH??!?? I can offer only two things, and they aren't even that good … space and power. You buy 2 hard drives you need power to run them; you need space to hold them. In my case, I am running out of both. I have 2 raptors in RAID, a few DVD Burners, and a bunch of other crap.
Accompanying this drive is the WD standard. You get the Data Lifeguard tools, a quick install guide, a neat cable that keeps from being accidentally unplugged (I love this thing, I just wish they made it longer), some screws, and of course, the drive.
The SATA cable provided is called SecureConnect. Here is a WD blurb:
WD's Serial ATA cables with SecureConnect™ provide a stable, secure attachment between the hard drive and SATA interface and SATA power cable. With SecureConnect, the drive to cable connection is strengthened by more than 500% compared to standard SATA cables. This cable is for use only with WD SATA hard drives.
Here is a Joe blurb:
500% on one end, and normal on the other! But some is better than none, right?
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