Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD6400AAKS
by Western Digital
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Our Price: $1,551.20 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $68.95 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD6400AAKS
Customer Review: Well so far its working.
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this a month or two ago. I installed it, attempted to clone my Windows drive, it worked, however I booted to an error. The error turned out to be related to missing boot info. After formatting and cloning again, and some recovery console work I got it to boot. However to a Temporary User account. After digging for hours with no results pertaining to a fix, I again formatted. I resigned myself to use it for storage until I decide to do a fresh install of Windows. I moved some files from another disk(I have 4 including this) let the computer go to sleep while I was away doing other things, decided to move the contents of a smaller drive to it and came back and noticed it was missing from My Compter. Looked in Storage Management and it showed as raw. Partition Table got corrupted or disappeared. After fixing that issue, Its been running fine. A bit(about the same really) slow compared to my 320gb Seagate that I've had for a few years according to HD Tach.
I still have not committed to putting anything important on it, I guess I'm a little paranoid after the Partition Table incident.
Personally I have only had to RMA 2 hard drives since 2002 out of 12 or so.
All of that out of the way. I am very wary of hard drives lately, I've seen a lot more negative reviews from buyers complaining of DOA drives or drives that fail in hours or days than I did in the past. I accept that there's a fair chance my drive may die on me at some point either in or out of warranty, but to have it fail so early in its usage worries me. Quality Control is apparently declining in most of the major Manufacturers.
Customer Review: Run Data Lifeguard Diagnostic on the drive first
Summary: 1 Stars
Update 2/19/09:
Tried to do another exchange from Amazon, and here is what I got:
" ....I'm sorry to hear that you experienced the same problem with your replacement shipment.
As it seems that the problem with this item is more widespread than we originally thought, we are not able to send another replacement..."
Original 2/18/09:
The drive is a big disappointment. The first one was defective. After cloning my old hard drive, it worked for a few hours. Then the Windows became very slow and unresponsive. Windows failed to reboot, it reported bad boot sector records.
Contacted Western Digital customer support. Downloaded and ran Data Lifeguard Diagnostic per instruction. The tool reported the drive had too many bad sectors, also the write zeros was failed. Returned it to Amazon for an exchange.
Just in case my older power supply unit was the culprit, it needed a Molex to SATA adapter to work with the drive, I ordered a brand new 430W Themaltake PSU. After receiving the replacement drive, I first ran Data Lifeguard Diagnostic on it. Sure enough, it again detected the unused drive has too many bad sectors. When tried clone my drive again, it failed half way. Only one of the two partitions was copied over. I used Acronis True Image Home 2009 15 days trial version for the disk clone. Now, my trial period is about up, and I still don't have a working drive. What a joke! Also, the price of the drive just dropped by $5 since I ordered it.
It seems these OEM drive have very poor quality control. What is going on???
Customer Review: Western Digital 640GB Caviar SATA Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I build computers as a hobby. Why pay for someone else to build one (one size fits does not fit all) when building your own is not too difficult and you can build with quality parts tailored to your own specific needs. Case in point, the WD 640GB HDD. Large hard drive prices are economical right now. Generally speaking, the larger the drive, the less the cost per gigabyte (GB). At Amazon's prices the WD 640GB drive was about $10 bucks more than the WD Caviar 16 320 GB drive with the same cache. Western Digital has recently color coded their drives: Black (high performance), Blue (mainstream) and Green (no brainer: ecologically friendly-for a hard drive). Where does marketing get these ideas? The Caviar 16 640GB falls into the Blue category. It is amazingly fast and quiet, thanks to its 16 MB cache and 3 Gb/s transfer rate. The technology is interesting in that WD utilized two 320GB platters which gives this drive an edge as compared to say 750 GB drives with similar cache size. The drive itself is nearly silent and the quietest HDD I have used. Its rated over 90MB/sec read and write speeds, which is very fast. Yes there are faster hard drives, but for the money this drive is an excellent choice.
My only complaint: the drive is warranted for 3 years not 5.
Amazon had the lowest price I found, and shipped the drive quickly. Turn around time from placing the order to delivery at my door step was four days. Stable, reliable and excellent price to performance ratio, this drive is a great choice for everyday computing needs.
Customer Review: Western Digital Blue 640 GB SATA II: Great OEM Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking to replace a hard drive and want to get the best bang for the buck then this drive is for you. It comes in a nicely shipped box with full foam padding and in an anti-static bag. I have a mother board with built in SATA connections so plugging it up with the slim line cable that SATA drives use is so easy a 5 yr old could do it. I also have a 500wat power supply that has a single connector for a SATA drive which also is handy.
The best thing is that it's 640gb footprint when formated is still close to that size around 648.89, instead of getting a 500gb HD and having 4.5gb. The speed on this is supper fast for my needs and while it runs at 7200 rpm it is noiseless and runs very cool.
All things considered, I don't think you can get a better deal on a drive that is comparable in size, cost, speed and quality. If you are looking to jump into the terabite realm you might want to consider getting two of these and running them as a raid, rather than buying the $95 WD green tb drive listed on this products page. From what I understand Western Digital has three lines of these OEM hard drives, the green, blue and black (I think) where the green is on the slow side and the blue is a bit faster and the black is the fastest. Either way, for a few dollars more, you are better off with a raid setup that gives you something like 1.2 tb while the 1tb after formating will be just under that, thus denying you the rightful claim to say you have one terabite under the hood. Happy computing.
Customer Review: FYI for 2009 MAC PRO users
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all I want to mention that this drive, Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB, is the EXACT SAME MODEL that ships pre-installed with 2009 Mac Pro's. Trust me, i opened mine up and checked the model number on the drive in Bay 1. If you ever need an extra hard drive and just want the same one for your Mac Pro, DO NOT buy the "Apple Hard Drive Kit" from the Apple Store. It is the same exact one you can get here on Amazon, and for about a third of the price. You can install it yourself VERY easily (it took me 3 minutes and one small phillips head screwdriver). Its about as easy as inserting a Nintendo game cartridge into an NES game system. Actually it is easier, because you don't need to sit there and blow on it for 5 minutes.
That said, onto the review:
I swear by WD hard drives and have never been failed by them. They are fast, efficient and rugged. My only complaint is that it could be sometimes a bit loud to hear the drive spinning inside the aluminum Mac Pro housing. But nothing too distracting.
Do yourself a favor, if you need to expand your HD space in your Mac Pro get yourself a WD drive. I have 3 of them installed (one Caviar Blue 640 and two Caviar Black 1TB). You won't regret it.
I know some people have had nightmare situations with Amazon shipping drives carelessly packed, but the ones I have gotten from Amazon have all been shipped DOUBLE boxed and with plenty of cushioning.