WD Caviar SE16 SE16 250 GB Internal Hard Drive

Great Price, Awesome Performance, Quiet, Solid Benchmark Numbers

Strengths: Price/GB; Great Manufacturer; Amazing performance

Weakness: Access times can't compete with the WD Raptors

The WD2500KS comes from a long line of amazing drives put out by Western Digital they refer to as the Caviar Series. So when it came time to increase the storage of my gaming pc it was clear what drive I would purchase. The only question came down to whether what size drive to get. The 250Gb clearly was the best bang for buck sitting at $68.50 from ZipZoomFly.com. I bought 2 and set them up in a...
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The WD2500KS comes from a long line of amazing drives put out by Western Digital they refer to as the Caviar Series. So when it came time to increase the storage of my gaming pc it was clear what drive I would purchase. The only question came down to whether what size drive to get. The 250Gb clearly was the best bang for buck sitting at $68.50 from ZipZoomFly.com. I bought 2 and set them up in a Striped Raid-0. Here's the results of my HD Tune for this array:

By eigenVector - Apr 27, 2007

Quiet as a church mouse, as reliable as a bible - the WD2500KS

Strengths: 250 Gb. storage with 16 Mb. buffers

Weakness: Takes a while to fully format 250 Gb. ?

What? Quiet, you bet! I bought two a while back for use in RAID 1 on an older computer. They performed so well, I decided why not again for my newest computer build, and I bought two more. The increased responsiveness of the older 2.2 MHz. Socket A computer running XP Pro 32 bit was immediately apparent, although the drives were only used in a mirrored storage array and not for the OS. No matter,...
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What? Quiet, you bet! I bought two a while back for use in RAID 1 on an older computer. They performed so well, I decided why not again for my newest computer build, and I bought two more.

The increased responsiveness of the older 2.2 MHz. Socket A computer running XP Pro 32 bit was immediately apparent, although the drives were only used in a mirrored storage array and not for the OS. No matter, I could spot the improvement over the older PATA drives I had been using for storage on the Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 motherboard - with transfers between drives taking place at greatly enhanced speeds. A slight change on mine was all that was needed from the start - with a jumper for SSC (an electronic FCC change made necessary by some chipsets and allowed for on the WD2500KS - check the manufacturer of your SATA chipset for the need), and the drives were instantly ready for operation at 1.5 Gb. While they are 3.0 capable, this older SATA chipset only met the 1.5 capability. This too can also be set manually by jumper if the automatic sensing cannot set due to some older SATA chipsets. Molex connections are provided with another for SATA power, but you only use one and SATA only for "hot swap" capability.

The new ASUS M2N32-SLI needed nothing set or changed with its brand new chipsets, and my second set of two new WD2500KS were "plug 'n play" with Windows loaded to one after partitioning a 20 Gb. Windows partition for XP Pro 64 bit to install on. 3.0 speed was available and the speed with a single core Athlon64 3800 was immediately noticeable over an earlier used 7200 rpm 80 Gb. PATA drive with 8 Mb. buffer.

One more thing to pass on. The WD2500KS drives run fairly cool and their threshold is similar to other good name brand drives, but just like any others - be sure to keep them cooled below 40 degrees Centigrade for long life.

What more should I say? Operation on both machines has been flawless and the price is fantastic for this entry level Enterprise class drive. All that was needed on both computers was a quick format of the drives using the Windows repair feature at boot (drive: /Q /FS:NTFS).

By AlexanderAkulick - Aug 28, 2006

Quiet Drive

Strengths: 1. Quiet 2. 16mb cache helps if you do a lot of memory accessing applications. Such as BT. 3. WD warranty is reputable as everyone knows. 4.SATA II for future upgrade possibilities.

Weakness: More expensive than others, but you get what you paid for, so this is not really a weakness.

I have been using western digital hard drives for a long time. All of my past experience told me that WD is a reputatble company that makes good HD and they stands behind their products. Many friends of mine use WD hard drive and so far we have no problem. Same with this hard drive. This hard drive runs great as my data storage drive. Larger size cache makes the system runs less memory accesses...
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I have been using western digital hard drives for a long time. All of my past experience told me that WD is a reputatble company that makes good HD and they stands behind their products.

Many friends of mine use WD hard drive and so far we have no problem. Same with this hard drive. This hard drive runs great as my data storage drive. Larger size cache makes the system runs less memory accesses for applications. More cache size makes the system runs faster since there is less need to go into the main memory for data, thus, improves the performance and prolongs the drive life (in theory).

The SATA II interface is a great thing to have (if your motherboard supports it or if you have adapters for it). The throughput is improved quite a lot with SATAII. This is a great to have for future motherboard upgrades and sooner or later, all newer HDs will have SATAII as well.

By bluejeff - Dec 18, 2005

Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB Review

Strengths: Very Fast Transfer Speeds, Large 16MB Cache, Quiet

Weakness: None

I purchased this drive around a month ago. It has worked wonderfully. It is much faster than my previous 8MB 7200RMP 160GB PATA Drive. I have experienced absolutely no problems with it thus far. Paired with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice Core) CPU, and 1GB of RAM, my system boots in 12 to 15 seconds, and loads applications (Office 2003) within seconds. I am very happy with my purchase, and again,...
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I purchased this drive around a month ago. It has worked wonderfully. It is much faster than my previous 8MB 7200RMP 160GB PATA Drive. I have experienced absolutely no problems with it thus far. Paired with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice Core) CPU, and 1GB of RAM, my system boots in 12 to 15 seconds, and loads applications (Office 2003) within seconds. I am very happy with my purchase, and again, the difference between my old PATA 8MB cache and this drive is huge. I would greatly recommend this drive.

By knightpatrick - Sep 26, 2005

Excellent Drive, Nothing to Complain About

Strengths: Very quiet, fast, and reliable. It also has 16MB of cache, which is good.

Weakness: None!

I have had this drive for over 3 months and have not had any problems with it. I would definitely reccomend this drive. If the price is within range of other drives with similar specifications, I would choose this one over the other ones.

By compotatoj - Mar 17, 2006