Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS
by Western Digital
|
List Price: Our Price: $151.21 You Save: $18.78 (11%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS
Customer Review: Good Shipping, Fast Drives
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered three of these 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives from Amazon.com. I don't usually order computer parts from Amazon but their prices, especially combined with free shipping anywhere in the US, have made them a much more economical option than other online computer part stores.
These drives arrived in one box containing three smaller boxes -- each drive was secured in the smaller box by two black plastic form fitted "guards" to immobilize the hard disk and provide cushion. I was very pleased with the packing especially considering some other reviews and pictures I've seen here on Amazon.
I installed the drives in a new PC and configured them for RAID0 using the Intel Raid Controller on an ASUS P7P55D Pro motherboard. I get very fast transfer speeds with these disks compared to my old 160GB SATA drives with 16mb of cache. In Windows 7 x64 Professional using HDTach, I record a burst speed of 320MBps and an average transfer rate of 120 MBps. The most stunning part to me is that the average transfer rate stays steady across the entire platter, whereas my old hard disks would see performance drop off as the "end" of the disk was reached.
I have never had heat problems with hard drives, and that holds true for these as well. I have one 120mm intake fan in front of the drive cage that pulls air over them and the temperatures seem perfectly normal, even under load.
It should be noted that these drives are not intended to be used in RAID1, RAID10, or RAID5 configurations due to some deep recovery state settings that Western Digital has enabled. Your options around this are to spend the extra money for the RE (Raid Edition) drives, or dig around online and find the utility to disable the correct setting. Also, they're a little bit loud, but not obscenely louder than any other hard disk.
All in all I highly recommend this drive.
Customer Review: Low Price For High Performance WD Drive!
Summary: 5 Stars
I needed a high performance backup drive for additional storage. I do video editing of large video files and needed more storage to replace an existing backup drive. The Western Digital HD fit the bill. Amazon offers this great performing drive for a low price. I've used it for about 30 days without any installation or operational problems. It works as advertised.
Like other reviewers have commented, OEM means cables, rails, screws, and install software are not included. Being a replacement HD meant no problems other than formatting, which Windows does for you. Check the BIOS for set up and you're good to go after formatting the HD. But if you need these installation hardware items, order an HD install kit from Amazon or the mfr. It may be cheaper to order the WD HD retail kit which has these items included. If you have any install problems, go to WD's website for help on installation issues including free drivers, if needed. You may need to go to your computer mfr's website for latest updates on BIOS. And don't forget if you have older versions of Windows xp or Vista, get their service pack updates as well.
One last item, Amazon received lots of complaints on their shipping problems with these OEM HDs for the last several months from past reviews. I requested their FREE shipping option and wasn't disappointed. WD sends their HDs in a box that has thick foam padding around the HD. The HD is shipped in WD's standard electrostatic bag. Amazon ships the HD inside their box with the usual air filled plastic filler as an insulator. If I notice any external box damage or compressed insulators, then possible shock and damage to the HD may exist. If you notice damage, let Amazon know! In my case, no damage was noticed, so I proceeded with the installation without any problems.
I'm happy with the WD HD product performance and Amazon!
Customer Review: Caution! Amazon's Packaging: 1 Star.
Summary: 4 Stars
This review is moreso about the way Amazon shipped me this OEM drive as opposed to a review on the drive itself.
Amazon quite literally threw this drive into a cardboard box and mailed it to me. No joke. No protective padding, nothing. This is an OEM drive so it does not have a retail box of its own. The drive is wrapped in a plastic bag and that's it.
Someone at Amazon's shipping department figured this hard drive would be fine on its own inside a huge cardboard box with a few other items I ordered, fully and completely unprotected, flapping about in transit.
I am entirely and utterly appalled.
I haven't even opened or used the drive yet, so sure am I about its flawed physical, internal condition. It's going right back to Amazon for exchange.
I gave the product 4 stars because I believe the product itself is most likely worthy of the review. However, the way Amazon mailed this drive to me is astonishing and needs to be pointed out to potential buyers.
As for Amazon: Shame on you. I think some additional training is in order at your packaging facilities. I could make an argument regarding the precious materials and resources it takes to create these hard drives, and what a waste it is to "throw it away", quite literally, by packing such a delicate piece of hardware and technology into an unprotected container. Wow, I still can't believe it...
Finally, I think it's hilarious Amazon bills this item as "Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging. This item is delivered in an easy-to-open recyclable box and is free of plastic 'clamshells' and wire ties". Ha! Yea, Amazon. You got that right. It ships in AIR.
Customer Review: 100+ MB/s
Summary: 5 Stars
I have an application that needs very fast streaming reads, almost continually, over a multi-TB dataset. Write performance isn't that important, but straight-line speed and data integrity are. Oh, and it's cost-sensitive too. Good luck, right?
I settled on a RAID 6 array of eight WD1001FALS disks connected to Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 controllers, housed in a RPC-4020 case. I plan to add another 2-4 disks in a month or two. Write performance isn't critical, so software RAID will do -- instead of spending a thousand bucks on a RAID controller, I'll buy some simple SATA controllers, an extra quad-core CPU, more RAM, and still have saved enough money to buy five more disks. At maximum write speeds, parity computation uses almost an entire processor core; of course, I have seven more. Turns out Core 2 chips are really good at parity computation, even RAID 6.
Typical large file reads:
3498999611 bytes (3.5 GB) copied, 6.04208 s, 579 MB/s
3999941908 bytes (4.0 GB) copied, 6.56308 s, 609 MB/s
Despite being software RAID over dumb SATA controllers, performance is excellent. (For comparison, Gigabit Ethernet has a theoretical maximum speed of 125 MB/s.) Throughput often reaches 100 MB/s per disk.
Really, I'm not sure you can go wrong with these drives. They're reasonably quiet, very fast, and don't run any hotter than their competitors. Sounds like a winner to me.
Customer Review: Dead Drive. Horrid Service. Noisy--Very Noisy
Summary: 1 Stars
Two drives purchased. I partitioned one and copied 2-3 GB of extremely sensitive data to it. After the copy operation, computer crashed and would not reboot with the drive mounted. Not with Windows XP SP3 (would not boot), not with Western Digital's diagnostic boot CD (black screen), not with Ubuntu Livedisk (did not see the drive), not with a fully installed Ubuntu OS (same). Ok, the drive is bad. It happens. But WD should at least be willing to take responsibility. I spoke to three Sorrybots in Bangalore. They wanted to charge my credit card for $250 pending receipt of the bad drive while I tried to find a way to get my data erased from the drive. I paid less than $250 for two of these things. Absurd.
Now, I understand it's not their fault in Bangalore and there's nothing they can do except say "sorry" over and over again. Each asked if I wanted to be transferred higher up the line. Each time I said yes, the next sorrybot came taking a turn saying "sorry". Finally I got California. After 20 min of WDC's lovely hold music I got someone who could make it right. Should not have taken that much time or effort on my part.
Oh yeah, the 2nd drive which was treated exactly the same, works fine. But is is noisy. Noisier than any HD I've ever had. Like a jackhammer. If you're looking for something to store media files on, don't even think about this one unless you can tolerate a lot of background noise. I don't know, but I'm told that Seagate's 1TB is much quieter.
Two stars for product quality. Zero stars for service.