Joined on 04/25/05
Works!
Pros: Cheap.
Cons: Needs a pin cut off on the 40 pin side for keyed IDE connectors. This is what needs to be done, but do so at your own risk - I'm not responsible for misinterpretation or the wrong pin cut: Looking straight on at the 40 pin header with the power connector on your left, counting from the lower row, right side, cut the 10th pin from the right. This has worked fine on two of these adapters I've purchased.
Beware LGA1700 owners
Pros: Great cooler - quiet - love the on-pod display.
Cons: If you are thinking of this for an LGA1700, be forewarned you may be waiting a while. I bought one under the assumption that "Contact NZXT for an LGA1700 bracket" would result in me getting a bracket. It took 3 back-and-forth emails (providing proof of motherboard and NZXT Z73 cooler), and I thought they would send me one. Instead, I got this: "Thank you for submitting your request for an LGA 1700 bracket. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the brackets in stock. You have been placed on a waiting list and we will be shipping the brackets in the order the requests were received. Once your bracket is ready to be shipped you will be notified with a tracking link. We appreciate your patience." There's no ETA on it. It could be a week or months at this point. So I'm forced to buy another cooler (likely a Noctua) while I wait. Be forewarned!
Overall Review: Love the product, hate the open ended wait for an LGA1700 bracket, rendering it useless until then.
Barf
Pros: None
Cons: Dead on arrival. More expensive to ship back and get replaced than to just junk.
Does the job!
Pros: Small/cheap - decent read rates (getting 66MB, that's MEGABYTES) a second under FreeBSD 7.1 on an Intel D945GCFL2 motherboard.
Cons: Doesn't support multi-block DMA. Sustained write rates under FreeBSD are 15-20MB/sec, so write speeds could be better.
Overall Review: I have not encountered any of the aforementioned pauses under FreeBSD 7.1. Understand there are MANY factors that can contribute to spurty transfers - the OS, the motherboard, the BIOS, drivers, and system configuration all can have an influence of behavior. It would be useful if people posted their system configurations so buyers could at least see the context in which it's being judged. While I wouldn't deploy this drive on a high performance system, it's perfectly suited for my needs for a cheap/quiet server/router.
Great capacity, expect failures, buy more
Pros: Very fast drives - significantly faster than 500GB 7200RPM drives, and great price!
Cons: Flaky! Installed in a 4 drive system. The first drive started timing out occasionally. Replaced with another purchased drive, and it was all better. 3 Weeks in to using the array, one drive completely died - not recognized by the 3ware controller at all. Replaced that drive, and my array was saved.
Overall Review: When you buy this drive, it's going to be flaky. Buy at least 2 more than you expect to have, and definitely don't do RAID 0 with these drives unless you don't care about losing the contents.
VelociRaptor - BELIEVE!
Pros: Installed easily. Very fast drives (running ~130MB/sec average reads). They run considerably cooler than the 7200RPM drives I had before. Less heat == good thing!
Cons: Wish they were bigger!
Ordered CPU 11/22, wasn't shipped until 11/28. Delivered as described for a price that was ~$100 cheaper than everywhere else.