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Rating: 
Summary: No Card with Western Digital
Review: 200GB is the unformatted size. You'll get 186Gb of usable space after formatting and partitioning, and I withheld the final star for that reason alone (I'd rate any hard drive with unformatted sizing the same way). By the way, this is a Western Digital 200Gb SE (Special Edition) drive, meaning it has the 8Mb cache instead of the usual 2Mb. It makes a real difference, as you'll shortly see.After losing 14GB of space, I looked at its performance and I must conclude that this drive is an overall success. The 8Mb cache is essential for moving data between the drive and your system, and in truth it makes for a hard drive with exceptional performance. Short read/write operations are greatly assisted by the larger cache, and subsequent reads of data less than 8Mb means you hit the cache, not the drive. In reality, this means you get a nice performance boost. The 7200 RPM drive speed means it can transfer your data in bulk very quickly, so while short read/writes are assisted by the cache, the rotational speed makes for sustained read/writes that are very fast as well. The Ultra-ATA/100 connection means you have a wide transfer path, so more data can come across the wires at one time. It has a tiny (industry-leading) effect on your CPU, too, and low CPU utilization means that you see little slowdown in read/writes. In fact, this drive regularly competes with SCSI hard drive costing twice as much for CPU-utilization and performance. The sum of all these specifications leads to one fast, cavernous drive. Even the new SATA drives can't match it for sustained read/writes as yet, so you can future-proof your system today with a Western Digital 200GB SE, and save some serious bucks in the process.
Rating: 
Summary: In truth, it's a 186Gb drive.
Review: 200GB is the unformatted size. You'll get 186Gb of usable space after formatting and partitioning, and I withheld the final star for that reason alone (I'd rate any hard drive with unformatted sizing the same way). By the way, this is a Western Digital 200Gb SE (Special Edition) drive, meaning it has the 8Mb cache instead of the usual 2Mb. It makes a real difference, as you'll shortly see. After losing 14GB of space, I looked at its performance and I must conclude that this drive is an overall success. The 8Mb cache is essential for moving data between the drive and your system, and in truth it makes for a hard drive with exceptional performance. Short read/write operations are greatly assisted by the larger cache, and subsequent reads of data less than 8Mb means you hit the cache, not the drive. In reality, this means you get a nice performance boost. The 7200 RPM drive speed means it can transfer your data in bulk very quickly, so while short read/writes are assisted by the cache, the rotational speed makes for sustained read/writes that are very fast as well. The Ultra-ATA/100 connection means you have a wide transfer path, so more data can come across the wires at one time. It has a tiny (industry-leading) effect on your CPU, too, and low CPU utilization means that you see little slowdown in read/writes. In fact, this drive regularly competes with SCSI hard drive costing twice as much for CPU-utilization and performance. The sum of all these specifications leads to one fast, cavernous drive. Even the new SATA drives can't match it for sustained read/writes as yet, so you can future-proof your system today with a Western Digital 200GB SE, and save some serious bucks in the process.
Rating:
Summary: No Card with Western Digital
Review: Be very wary of various reviews stating a card comes with 160, 200 or 250 gig Western Digital drives. Unless your computer is high end and made after mid 2003 you will need to purchase a $30 card. Western digital stopped including cards in units manufactuered after early October 2003, and did not change product numbers. So you will see reviews stating..."worked perfect with included card" etc. Problem is you get no card now. Good drive but you will probably have to put your machine back together, order a card and spend $35 with shipping and wait or hike down to circuit city etc and buy a card. just be wary of this.
Rating: 
Summary: Only 1 year warranty says it all
Review: Drive went bad in less than two years and their warranty is only good for one year. The kind of company that makes hard drives they expect to fail after one year is not the kind of company I want to trust with my data.
Rating: 
Summary: Great drive, even better software
Review: I needed to replace a failing Seagate hard drive and was unsure of how to duplicate the contents of the old drive on to the new, higher capacity Western Digital drive. I was extremely impressed with the included data lifeguard software. It could not have been easier to use. It even created customized instructions that detailed how to set the jumpers on the old drive to use it as a secondary unit. Since it was factory installed I would otherwise not have known the correct configuration. A fast and easy upgrade. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Short-lived
Review: This drive was great for the three months it worked before it crashed. I will not trust WD with my data in the future.
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