The Mobile Storage Giant: A FireWire Hard Drive From Western Digital – THG.RU

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Mobile 120 GB: FireWire Hard Drive From Western Digital

Western Digital’s 120 GB hard drive has been available for a while now, and it has been striking for its high performance. A special version with a fat 8 MB cache ensures that Western Digital currently offers the fastest hard drive. Someone in the development department must have asked, “What now?” And the answer was simple: A mobile version of this top-seller.

Essentially, the recipe is quite easy: of course, Western Digital uses a hard drive from its own production, creates snazzy casing for it, and equips it with an interface so that the IDE drive can be run with a FireWire controller (IEEE1394). The result is a mobile storage solution that offers a tremendous 120 GB of space and also has a connection that’s fast enough, thanks to its bandwidth of up to 400 MBits/s.

There is indeed a demand for such fast external storage solutions: users who need to carry large quantities of data with them can hardly be satisfied with CD-Rs or DVDs; even the alternatives such as MO drives and their derivatives are stuck with only a few gigabytes. Take the administrators, for example, who need to have a multitude of programs at hand, or may need to quickly make a complete backup of the server or transfer other data.

USB or FireWire?

This question should not be answered too hastily. Just a few months ago, FireWire, with its 400 Mbit/s, was much more superior to the USB interface. In this respect, the fact that you have to by a FireWire controller is actually not too painful, especially considering that the drive itself sets you back about $350. The current USB 1.2 standard, however, has no future when it comes to the gigabyte area – the data transfer rate is much too slow.

USB 2.0 could be the alternative because it offers up to 480 Mbit/s, and is backwards-compatible, as well. Up till now, however, even though its future success as a standard is already ensured, USB 2.0 is not yet widely established. So at this point, if you’re in the market for an external drive, you’re going to have to by a corresponding controller, whether you opt for USB 2.0 or FireWire.

This is where Western Digital steps in: controller cards for FireWire cost about the same as those for USB 2.0 cards. Also, FireWire is the undefeated champion for videos, and it still offers the ambitious user the better advantage. We can also expect that, starting from the end of this year, almost all PCs will come equipped with a USB 2.0 controller. So, if you opt for FireWire now and plan to buy a new PC soon, you’ll have both of the interfaces to play with in the future.

The Drive: High Quality

With a size of about 22 x 15 x 4.5 cm, the FireWire drive is as big as a tupperware container, and it weighs approximately 1.3 kg. These are quite acceptable figures for this much storage space.

The Drive: High Quality, Continued

Underneath the drive, there’s a label indicating the type, and there are also some ventilation slots to prevent the heat from building up within the hard drive casing.

FireWire Drive: Accessories

Included in the package are: a CD with drivers for all of the typical operating systems (Windows 98 SE and higher; Mac OS 8.6 and higher); a power supply plus cable; and a FireWire interface cable.

FireWire Drive: Technical Data

Note that the guarantee covers only one year (source: Western Digital website), which is a relatively short amount of time. In Europe, the manufacturer guarantee has to cover a minumum of two years, according to a law which has been in effect since the beginning of the year. So in Europe, Western Digital (or the retailers) will have to comply with this rule.

In the hard drive sector, the guarantee usually covers three to five years; here, the FireWire drive deviates from the standard.

The inner workings of this drive are from the well-known WD1200BB, which offers 2 MB cache and runs at a speedy 7,200 rpm. Happily, this FireWire drive has a very low noise level; it’s only when it is used with a notebook that the noise is somewhat noticeable. However, this is not bad, considering that the average PC system is generally louder than this external drive.

Additional information about this drive can be found at the Western Digital website:

http://www.wdc.com/products/firewire120gb.asp

Test Setup

Benchmark Results

Read Performance

Write Performance

Read Burst Performance

Disk Access Time

Application Performance

CPU Utilization

Temperature

Drive Idle Noise

Conclusion

$349.99 is certainly not a bargain-level price, but it’s appropriate for the amount of storage capacity you get. If you try to put 120 GB of data on MO disks or other storage media, you’d end up spending significantly more. DVDs are still out of the question because the corresponding burners are still too expensive.

The 120 GB hard drive used here is currently one of the fastest, and it is actually slowed somewhat by the FireWire interface – but this is not a real disadvantage, considering its performance of 25 MB/s. The drive is still a bit far from attaining its theoretical maximum (400 MBit/s is approximately 33 MB/s), however, based on past experience, it still gives a respectable showing.

In this regard, the use of USB 2.0 might possibly bring it one step forward (480 MBit/s); Maxtor, for instance, already offers external storage solutions for this new interface. However, according to our estimates, it’s hardly possible to achieve more than 30 MB/s, so in practice, this makes very little difference.

For users on a more modest budget, versions with 60 GB and 80 GB are also available. Their performance is about the same, since these smaller drives are only insignificantly slower than the top model, and anyway, the interface is actually the bottleneck.

All in all, this drive makes a positive impression. Western Digital has taken a good product and successfully exported it over to another market segment. Hopefully, the extremely short period covered by the guarantee (in comparison to desktop drives) is merely a precautionary measure from the manufacturer, and not indicative of the product’s quality.