| Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB Hard Drive
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The battle for bragging rights related to the biggest and baddest desktop hard drive began to heat up in 2006 as capacities of 750GB became a reality, and the thought of 1TB loomed on the horizon. While Seagate was first to 750GB, others soon followed and eventually passed them, as 1TB drives are now a reality.
Western Digital has been manufacturing hard drives since 1988 and they are definitely one of the top players in the hard drive game. While they may not have been first to market with a 750GB (or larger) hard drive, they are there now and they have provided a sample of their flagship desktop drive to Bigbruin.com for review. The Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS is a SATA hard drive with a capacity of 750GB, 16MB of cache memory, and a transfer rate of 3 Gbps, among other interesting features.
Before taking a look at the Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS and the performance it can bring to your system, let's take a look at the features and specifications as taken from the Western Digital website...
Features:
Top performance for Windows Vista - WD Caviar SE16 SATA and EIDE drives are certified for Windows Vista and are top performers on the Windows Vista Experience Index.
16 MB Cache - Bigger cache means faster performance. A massive 16 MB cache combined with advanced acoustic and power-reducing technologies make these ultra-fast drives the perfect solution for the fully loaded PC.
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - The latest generation of WD Caviar SE16 drives employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.
IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
SecurePark - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non- operational shock tolerance.
StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
Ideal For - Designed for use in the fastest PCs on the market, including high-performance business computers and multimedia or gaming systems. Perfect for Windows Vista.
How this WD hard drive protects your data:
Data Lifeguard is an exclusive set of data protection features, including shock protection, an environmental protection system and real-time embedded error detection and repair. WD's Data Lifeguard technology automatically finds, isolates, and repairs problems that may develop over the life of a hard drive.
Data Lifeguard Tools are software utilities designed for WD hard drives that work with the embedded Data Lifeguard features to make hard drive installation,diagnostics and repair both simple and worry-free.
ShockGuard instantaneously protects the hard drive against damage from bumps and vibrations while it is running. This technology enables WD Caviar drives to achieve industry-leading shock specifications.
While the bulk of these key features can be found on all Western Digital Caviar SE16 drives, two of them are specific to only the 750GB model being reviewed.
PMR, which is Western Digital's implementation of perpendicular recording technology, allows for a theoretical increase of 4 to 5 times the storage capacity of a longitudinal drive. While other manufacturer's use perpendicular recording on drives of various capacities due to the other benefits provided (greater shock tolerance, reduced power consumption, increased reliability), releasing a 3.5" drive at 750GB pretty much requires it due to the areal density required.
The other feature only found on the 750Gb version of the Caviar SE drive is what they refer to as "StableTrac". The description above makes it sound like a great idea to include on any drive, but it is most likely a related component of PMR.
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