Important info that Wd hides on 120gig WD SE 8mb drives!
WD is switching cheapo refurbished three platter drives on OEM'S and RMA drives. Only Retail gets good two platter drives. I found this out when I bought two retail box 120gig se drives, one was bad I RMA it . I called Wd tech line and the big cheif M=Tech manger lied to me and this is his statement- "There is no way to tell the difference between a three platter drive and a two platter Drive"- A total lie. I got back a dud bound to fail , LBA 23437500 three platter junk drive. The good retail drives are LBA 234441648 two platter new drives , I called WD tech line and was lied to by Wd'S Top Tech Manager-said ," There is no way to tell the difference between a three platter drive and a two platter drive"-bull shit -even the cercuit board is different-repeated twice because it shows a total lack of Wd's customer service on the Cheif Tech Manager's part. Look at those LBA numbers to tell them apart and look at the cercuit board- they are very different.I know its true because I have a 12/02 three platter refurbished dud and one 05/03 two platter new drive now. I might be able to get rid of this dud at the store. 
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Good luck.
mD
That is the meaning of repair or replace at mfr's option. In all HD warranties. Has been since 1990 when I sent my first RMA back. AND got a refurb.
Secondly, it is possible to swap controllers, have different block sizes, and have a different amount of LBA clusters yield a different total. The new drives use variable numbers of clusters per track the software does not. So you got a 6 head 120 GB, 3 platters boht sides, and more data can be placed closer to where the heads autopark as they seek and you actually might be startled to learn it performs BETTER that way. Platters do not wobble,smaller distances totravel with same motor means faster seek. Yes, more platters, yes more heads,so what???
Older tech is more debugged and statistically works better than new undebugged stuff. AND they have the same buffer sizes, same basic controller innards (diofferent layout, same logic).
I have a 60 GB new style, the older 80 GB is equally fast. The 60 GB is single platter, the 80 is two. I have 4 platter 40's -- all same access speed.
The reason they went to 60's on single platter is not cuz for 120's they suddenly got better-- in fact, they needed 180's in same form factor as the 120's to meet the need for MORE space. And because with new coatings they COULD and could save soem money by making fewer platters and coating them per drive.
Seek is still the same, because to track denser they had to slow down and make smaller the distance steps that the stepper motor moved the head arms. The only way you get any gain is with single huge files being most of your drive use that way. Normal use files are not that big-- not big enough that the density will increase productivity on average.
SHEEESH!
Your RAID 0 may match in STR, but I seriously doubt it has any true benifit over and above copying very large files. The seek time of the 15,000 RPM drives available today will hands-down make your RAID 0 look like a childs toy. The real world value of a fast hard drive is seen in seek time, not STR. How often have you launch an application only to hear your hard drive make some noise during the launch? How much of that do you think is STR vs seek? Don't get me wrong, STR has value, but it gets to a point where a drive can transfer files at 60-80 MB/s, but if it takes 13-15 MS to change tracks, that's some serious delay especially if the drive is seeking all over the place, basically making the value of that high STR useless.