Western Digital markets this drive as a special edition drive for higher performance needs, but in our labs, not only has it been beaten by all other SATA drives, but its own IDE counterpart.
Its transfer rates and access times held fairly strongly against its competitors, and were consistent with our expectations, but the WD2500JD was severely penalised in the Sysmark2002 real-word tests. We found this a little surprising as the WD2500JB IDE drive performed better.
It is also expensive. At $589, it is the most expensive drive in the roundup, both on its raw price and gigabyte-for-dollar value.
Don’t lose sight of the capacity though - drives are still primarily important for their size, and this drive is the largest SATA drive in our roundup.
When testing, we noticed something rather interesting - the drive got so hot that it could not be picked up until left to cool down (powered off). We quickly powered up the IDE WD2500JB drive to find ourselves burning again. This would be directly related to the drive mechanics, as the larger Maxtor 300GB remained cool throughout its test. So be cautious when you’re handling this one, especially if you’re hot-plugging SATA drives.