Western Digital Unveils 'Super Fast' Special Edition Hard Drive First-Ever EIDE Hard Drive With 8 MB Buffer Delivers Data Faster to Users Than Ever Before, With Performance Rivaling 15,000 RPM SCSI Product, According to Industry Press

WD Caviar 320GB Special Edition, the latest addition to Western Digital’s reliable, award-winning hard drive family, is designed to maximize desktop computer performance for activities requiring high performance hard drives such as computer gaming, digital video editing, and file server applications. The WD Caviar 320 GB Special Edition is equipped with an 8 MB buffer-the largest buffer available today in a 7200 RPM desktop EIDE hard drive, delivering data to users faster than any hard drive in its class.

The Special Edition hard drive provides a higher percentage of cache hits and significantly faster time to data than industry-standard 2 MB versions. Within the complex operations of hard drives, the buffer is used to hold the results of recent reads from the disk, and also to "pre-fetch" information that is likely to be requested in the near future. The use of an increased buffer improves the performance by reducing the number of physical accesses to the disk and allowing data to stream from the disk uninterrupted by mechanical operations.

IMPORTANT:
Due to system BIOS limitations, your motherboard may only be able to detect up to 137GB max. Any capacity above this limit will neither be recognized nor displayed. If you have not yet acquired one of these drives, contact your motherboard manufacture to determine if your BIOS will support drives greater than 137GB.

If you motherboard does not support drives larger than 137GB, controller cards with an onboard BIOS that supports drives larger than 137GB are another option. Western Digital recommends the Promise Ultra100TX2 for breaking the 137GB barrier.

For more information, please check Western Digital's FAQ:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_cat_lvl1=78