Western Digital WD1600AAJS: 160GB Served on Single Platter
by Gary Key on February 5, 2007 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Feature Set: Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB
The external design of the Western Digital SE series is basically the same as other WD offerings but features the standard brushed aluminum faceplate instead of the familiar all black casing on the SE16 and RE2 drives. The drive is based on the industry standard 3.5" form factor platform with pertinent part number and warranty information embossed on a white sticker on the top of the casing.
The new SE family ships with the Serial ATA data and power connectors but drops support for the 4-pin Molex power connector designed for use with older ATX power supplies. The reduced size PCB is openly visible on the bottom of the drive, and as in the previous WD drives the 8MB of cache memory and controller chips are located on the opposite side of the PCB.
To the left of the SATA data and power connectors is an eight-pin jumper block. This jumper block can be utilized to implement spread spectrum clocking or power up in standby operation. This drive ships with SATA 3Gbs operation enabled. While this feature was advantageous for burst transfer rates in our synthetic benchmarks, overall we did not see any measurable improvement in our real world benchmarks. Our test drive was manufactured in Malaysia.
The external design of the Western Digital SE series is basically the same as other WD offerings but features the standard brushed aluminum faceplate instead of the familiar all black casing on the SE16 and RE2 drives. The drive is based on the industry standard 3.5" form factor platform with pertinent part number and warranty information embossed on a white sticker on the top of the casing.
The new SE family ships with the Serial ATA data and power connectors but drops support for the 4-pin Molex power connector designed for use with older ATX power supplies. The reduced size PCB is openly visible on the bottom of the drive, and as in the previous WD drives the 8MB of cache memory and controller chips are located on the opposite side of the PCB.
To the left of the SATA data and power connectors is an eight-pin jumper block. This jumper block can be utilized to implement spread spectrum clocking or power up in standby operation. This drive ships with SATA 3Gbs operation enabled. While this feature was advantageous for burst transfer rates in our synthetic benchmarks, overall we did not see any measurable improvement in our real world benchmarks. Our test drive was manufactured in Malaysia.
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orenlevy - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
hi everybody i would like to say that i am a computer builder .latly i recived this hard drive 160G aajs with access time of minimum 20m\s
i am speaking for a wile with wd support. ill write soon for now i had 4 harddrive like that.
fendell - Friday, May 4, 2007 - link
Any chance you could update this with the WD5000AAKS ?It is a great bargain atm :)
DrMrLordX - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link
Any chance you could include the Hitachi T7k500 in reviews like this one?Gary Key - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link
Yes, we will have the new/old WD and Hitachi 500GB drive results up in two weeks.DrMrLordX - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
cool, thanksRike - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
You might want to put up pics that are consistent. When I saw the first pic on page one, the fist thing I noticed was that the four pin was still there, which surprised me. Pics on pages 1 & 12 show a four pin power connection on the drive while the page 2 pics clearly show a big hole where the four pin would be. Of course the text on page two says . . .You might want to clear this one up.
Gary Key - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link
The press photos that WD sent us had the old casing for the open drive pictures. We really did not want to use them and WD was unable to provide new pics. I thought it was important to show the new platter design but certainly was not thrilled with using the old pictures. I will change them up today.noxipoo - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
if i wanted low noise and performance similar to this drive?Accord99 - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link
The WD5000AAKS (The AA is the important designation):http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...tails.as...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
noxipoo - Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - link
boo, no 5 year warranty.