Yeah, and how many Caviar SEs have you used in your life? 4? 10? 20 maybe? Perhaps you can tell me how that compares to a sample size of over 1000? I used to bring them in by the box full when I was an authorized dealer.
Dell uses WD almost exclusively, and I service several of them a week, the last one two days ago. I have the invoice sitting here on my desk... But... You've never had a problem.. I guess that I'll tell the next batch of clients that it's all in their head because somebody on a message board gets the occasional WD for Christmas or because PC eye did a Google search and determined that the seek time is 3/10th of a millisecond faster than the Samsung and is thus a better drive.
God.. Sometimes one can't help but want to knock some sense into people. Maybe not even so much the people like PCeye who profess they know something about things they have no clue or very, very little real life experience (but damnit all they worked in tool and dye for 50 years), or the people that actually assess these clowns any sort of credibility.
I do have a couple of fried WDs here though.. That would, in fact, be the ones that were the better buy because of that millisecond that nobody will notice or the half a dozen Christmas presents someone is using.
The reality of WD Caviar SEs is this. It is fine for light duty home use (and I mean very light duty). For any other environment, they are crapola. That's why I can only think of how retarded the person is who brags about Caviar SEs in RAID 0 in their signature. I know, 100% for sure, what's going to happen.. Then they'll be the ones bursting zits and blood vessels, posting in the forum about how to rescue their porn collection because the drives corrupted themselves.
In my lifetime I have probably had 10-12 different hard drives... Right now I am running an SE16 and an Ext. My Book on my desktop, an SE in my laptop, an SE in my other desktop, and 2 RAID 0 SE's in my server.

I have a crap load of dead Maxtors, but they're IDE so I could just build a house with those bricks. (To the subject) I could careless how many you've brought home, what you think about them, or your disagreement with my opinion. I gave my opinion, next time do you want me to send you a PM about it, then quote it in a post under my name?
I don't care what Dell uses are you trying to make some connection there, "crap computers use crap HDD's"? They are probably the most common to breakdown because HP might use them and Dell uses them, and Dell & HP are the two larger brands of prebuilt.. Thought about that?
PC eye obviously used his resources better than you did to find that information, what is it, are you jealous?
What did the #OP# say he was gonna use it for? I don't see a server OS going on it, do you? I see Windows XP.... You've just contradicted yourself. I've never had a problem out of WD...
If you were half the IT person you wouldn't reside on this forum, if you know as much as you think you do, you wouldn't bitch and gripe about product flaws all the time. But, oh wait, you're some form of IT, right?
I suggest you try to become less full of yourself, they have doctors for this sort of thing. Sounds less like WD's problems and more like your personal problems...
And on a side note, what is your problem with the average, computer building, gaming teenager? Hell, you tried to rip [-0MEGA-] a new one because of his choice of the 2900XT, when you were trying to pick up a 3870, which is just barely over the 2900XT. You didn't even know what the 8800GTX was when you bought it and then were mad when you found out there was an 8800GT that is just as good for half the price.
In that 8800GTX vs. 8800GT thread you made 1-10FPS look like a lot but now you're putting down 3ms? WHOA!