Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD

Western Digital Caviar WD2500JD Capacities Model Number Capacity WD2500JD 250 GB Lowest Real-Time Price: Introduction Back in StorageReview's infancy, manufacturers would announce a doubling of data density (and thus drive capacity) at an astonishing rate- once every three or four months. Despite the experts continually warning of an inevitable superparamagnetic limit, those heady days of virtually infinite growth seemed as if they would never end.

Things have changed. It has been nearly a year since 80 GB/platter units such as the Barracuda 7200.7 and Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 were announced. Though it seems we have yet to hit a real magnetic limit per se, lower-than-expected yields on the platters themselves, and especially on ancillary parts such as heads able to read and write data packed so closely together, have stalled the capacity growth that we have come to expect. The furious pace of ATA capacity innovation has slowed into a sedate period where the most significant announcements center around previously-released models retrofitted for the serial ATA interface.

One such drive is Western Digital's Caviar WD2500JD. To ease their entry into the SATA market, WD (like Maxtor) has opted to incorporate PATA-to-SATA bridge chips on their latest lineup. The firm's parallel ATA Caviar WD2500JB has been available for some time now, leading the pack in most 7200 RPM performance measures.

Like the JB, the serial ATA WD2500JD incorporates three 83-gigabyte platters to achieve its roomy 250 GB capacity. WD specs the drive's seek time at 8.9 milliseconds. A performance-standard 8-megabyte buffer rounds out the offering. As is the case with WD's JB series, the WD2500JD features a 3-year warranty.

The WD2500JD is actually just one of a few new drives that the manufacturer has or will introduce shortly that may be identified by their suffixes. Interestingly, WD's PR department has not quite been able to provide an "official" key to what each suffix entry denotes. Unofficially, however, the lineup more or less appears like this:

As an SATA drive, the JD includes a newer 15-pin power connector that supports hot-swap functionality. It also, however, includes the legacy 4-pin molex power connector that assemblers have all come to love and hate. Either may be used to power the drive.

Some readers have expressed concern with drives such as the WD2500JD that utilize PATA-SATA bridge chips rather than incorporating a "native" design as, say, Seagate's drives do. Converters usually exact a performance penalty- the concern is, how much? In the end, such concerns remain irrelevant. Frankly, we are a bit surprised that users would eschew a disk based solely on the inclusion of a bridge. High-level performance should remain the ultimate arbiter. All other things being equal, if a bridged design outperforms another that uses a native setup, it should be the obvious choice- as always, its bottom-line rather than module-level performance that matters.