Finally, however, things are changing. Western Digital has recently began shipping the Caviar WD2500KS, the firm's first from-the-ground-up SATA design. WD actually labels the drive "SATA II" since it implements the 300 MB/sec transfer rates found in the SATA-2 spec. Regrettably, despite the "SATA II" moniker, the WD2500KS does not implement SATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Though competitors such as Seagate and Maxtor have commenced with NCQ inclusion even on desktop-oriented drives, WD claims that NCQ does not help and can even hurt single-user performance.



Link: Storage Review