Looking at: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500AAKS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM From Newegg...Looking at the "reviews" it seems that every manufacturer has about 1%, or less, of DOA drives. Each angry customer places a curse on the vendor. I would guess that they are all about equal???I had asked this before, but just to confirm before I click the magic Purchase button - I have two IDE drives but thnew one is a SATA. Can I mix them? (ASRock Dual VSTA board)The reason for getting a new drive is that existing one has become very slow (about 1/4 of its "should be" xfer rate. Total reformat produced no change. This before the button click any last minute suggestions. Using Sandra and HD Tach for measurements.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

I got the same HD from NewEgg and have had no problems with it as well as with any other Western Digital drives. You can mix IDE and SATA drives as long as you have the SATA connectors on your motherboard.ArtBiostar TF560-A2+, Athlon 64X2-6000+, 4GB RAM, Geforce 8800GTS-320MB, 500W PSU, 250GB HD, FSX(SP1-SP2), Audigy SE sound, Vista Home Premium 32 bit, CH Yoke & Pedals, 22" WS LCD monitor

Thanks Art. Pushed the button to ring up a sale for Newegg. Nice to know that you can transition from IDE to Sata without an extra expense.I suspect that there is a failure of the 8mb buffer since simple non-sequential access are ok but larger, sequential ones are quite slow. Nasty when loading a large scenery BGL file.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

>Looking at:> Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500AAKS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB>Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM From Newegg...>>Looking at the "reviews" it seems that every manufacturer has>about 1%, or less, of DOA drives. Each angry customer places a>curse on the vendor. I would guess that they are all about>equal???>>I had asked this before, but just to confirm before I click>the magic Purchase button - I have two IDE drives but thnew>one is a SATA. Can I mix them? (ASRock Dual VSTA board)>>The reason for getting a new drive is that existing one has>become very slow (about 1/4 of its "should be" xfer rate.>Total reformat produced no change. This before the button>click any last minute suggestions. Using Sandra and HD Tach>for measurements.>>>>Regards,>Dick Boley>>A PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokeHi Dick I have the same board as you right now I have 2 Ides hard drives in there one 200 seagate and other 80 western digital with my main sata western digital 320 hardrive and it works fine no problems there always that chance you might get a doa, I have been extremely lucky over the years and I had never gotten a bad part.