Posted 04/23/2008 at 03:02:28am

Is WD planning to make them in a smaller capacity? 300GB is really too big for a boot drive and too small for media storage (for me, anyway) It would be nice to update my 5-year-old Raptor with a modernized, speedier version around the same capacity.

Posted 04/18/2008 at 11:36:33pm

I know these things are fast, but have you heard about the supposed high rate of failure and data loss with them? Did that factor into the review at all, or would you give it a lower score now?

Posted 03/19/2008 at 01:18:14am

Like the posters before me, I think it would be nice to get a prize which can be used in Canada. NCIX.com would indeed be a great place.

Posted 03/19/2008 at 12:54:29am

Not sure what to think about SP1. No outright conflicts or problems (good). Performance seems unchanged (meh). You can now choose which drive(s) to defrag (good), but there's still no indication of defrag progress (bad). The "Search" function is also gone from the start menu, which is annoying for those like myself who do mostly "advanced" searches (bad).

Posted 02/12/2008 at 02:18:56pm

Are we in the hate or the hype cycle for Vista now? I've lost count. Anyway, I couldn't help but do a double take when Will mentioned the one thing he liked about Vista was its search. Everyone is entitled to their opinion , of course, but we must just want totally different things from our search. I frequently do "empty" searches in XP; meaning that I search for all files with a certain size or that were modified on certain dates without entering a specific filename. Doing this on Vista is incredibly cumbersome. You have to manually open the search pane (which sometimes isn't available) in explorer's "organize" menu, then open "advanced search" and finally I can search without a filename. You're also limited to only 5 specific (or generic, depending on how you look at it) file types such as document, e-mail, picture, or music. If you're not sure which category Vista will put your obscure file type under, you have no choice but to search "All" types or risk having to do multiple searches. XP had the option to choose from what seemed like hundreds of specific file types; even different types associated with the same program. I also find Vista's indexing incredibly slow. My hard drives are reasonably fast (a WD Raptor and a Seagate 7200.10) so I find it really annoying that I have to wait anywhere from a couple seconds to a couple minutes for Vista to finish indexing a directory every time I add files to it. And if I get impatient and cancel the index, my new files may not even show up! Ok, rant over. Overall, Vista is nice to use. The things I miss the most from XP are the "Tasks" and "Places" shortcuts in explorer, the ability to do "blank" searches as ranted about above, and the photo viewer's ability to play animated GIFs.

Posted 01/15/2008 at 01:13:54am

I have to say I was a little surprised by your response to Mike's TF2 question; and not just because Will revealed he doesn't use anti-virus or firewall. You guys spent the whole time talking about your anti-virus preferences but failed to address the root of the problem; Mike's low paged pool memory. Wouldn't it have been better to offer advice as to what he could do about this error? I mean, you guys (except for Gordon, I think) play TF2 all the time. Would you not have encountered this error before through first or second-hand experience? I must confess that the reason why I'm so worked up about this is I have the same error; only it's with Episode 2. "Warning! OS Paged Pool Memory Low" appears in the top right corner and when the game goes into a loading screen, it never comes out (CRASH! Please try again). Clearly it affects the Source Engine, not just TF2. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think disabling applications we use regularly (as Valve advises) is an adequate fix. Since this is a memory error, would adding more RAM fix it (I only have 1GB)?

Posted 01/09/2008 at 04:36:37am

This would be ideal for my desktop rig! The way I have it set up now is with a 74GB Raptor for my games and applications, and twin 750GB drives for my media, photos, etc. The only reason I figured I needed the 74GB main drive is because I dual-boot XP and Vista; otherwise I would likely get away with a 40GB. If they can release a 60-80GB drive with similar performance numbers in the near future and keep the price under $1000, I'll be all over it! Since they're designed for laptops, they'd be easy to keep cool in a desktop rig AND free up some wattage for the black holes they call graphics cards these day

Posted 10/29/2007 at 08:16:00pm

Any suggestions on where to buy this thing in Canada? Hammer Storage doesn't have an online store of its own and most of the retailers it lists are US-only.

Posted 10/11/2007 at 03:41:30pm

Yep. Halo 3 finally shows us today what Halo 2 would have been like three years ago, had it been designed for PC and ported to X-box instead of the other way around.

Posted 08/28/2007 at 08:17:47pm

Good article, but you forgot to mention how we actually play these files or reburn them into CD-Audio again (ex: if we need a playable backup). None of the programs I use recognize .flac files (WMP, Nero, etc.) Perhaps this stuff is all general knowledge to the majority of the MaxPC crowd, but I'm not finding a lot of use in this since I can't play or burn the files I create. What utilities do I need to play/burn these files, preferably with the TAG info intact?