Western Digital WD5000KSRTL/WD5000AAKS Caviar 500 GB SATA Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital WD5000KSRTL/WD5000AAKS Caviar 500 GB SATA Hard Drive
Customer Review: The Way of the SATA
Summary: 5 Stars
There are many reasons to get the internal Western Digital WD5000KSRTL Caviar 500GB SATA. The first is that for economy you get more GB for your money. Drives half the cost of this model provide much less than 50% of the storage space. Some might say that the 500GB is experimental and to go with a solid 200MB drive, but the 500GB stability has shown failure rates no more or less than those models. To top it off WD have really taken the drive market by storm. I once owned an array of Seagates (and still do and am happy with my 200GB drives). The Seagate Barracuda has always been a dependable favourite, but Western Digital Caviar SATA should be given a test drive.
The whole point is that hardware compatibility standards have actually made that overnight leap. Many users will be looking to the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor about this time. In turn this means seeking out a motherboard like the Intel DP35DP or one designed for Core 2 Quad chips. When you engage these mobos you will be hit with new standards. These mobos force you to drop PS/2 connections (unless you get adapters) and the 3.5" Floppy is officially extinct with them. While they can handle IDE they are really built SATA drives. Cue the Western Digital WD5000KSRTL Caviar 500GB SATA. It is a monster drive, 0.5TB in one. With two of these you automatically have 1TB. That is phenomenal. While 1TB WD SATA drives exist, the stable ones are the 5400 Rpm and the 7200 Rpm version is cutting edge and so at your own risk. I would get this 500GB model and make your next buy the 7200 Rpm version of the 1TB drive, but do wait so that WD deliver on the same stability as this 500GB model. Eventually you will have a system with 1.5TB.
So essentially what we are looking at here is not just getting a new hard drive but probably a new PC. For those who already run SATA then they get a massive storage device to add to their system. For those who are wondering what to do with a new PC the key is to eliminate IDE and go with a SATA system. This also means getting a SATA DVD-RW while you are at it. It will be SATA all the way.
Those who want to combine IDE drives and SATA are in for headaches unless they have experience. Another possible nightmare is that XP installations won't recognize SATA drives without a driver that is usually installed via 3.5" floppy... and yeah, these aren't supported by some Intel Core 2 Quad mobos. Vista handles it no problem so you can see where this is all going. These are the kind of forces at play. So when you look at a drive like this you need to see a much bigger picture that is the Vista, SATA, Core 2 Quad direction. Either that or you need some experience with SATA/IDE hybrid setups.
Pros:
Western Digital
Stable
Fast
0.5 TB in one drive
Perfect for Vista
Cons:
Windows XP SATA support on some Core 2 Quad mobos is a nightmare
1TB 7200 is here already
Customer Review: I'm sold on SATA!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Strange title, I know.
I come from the old days of required jumper settings and IDE cables. It's been years since I touched the inside of a desktop tower so this was a total shock to my system. BTW, it's a Dell Inspiron 530. It already has a 500GB drive, which I've effectively filled up, which was why I bought this drive...to store some of my extra stuff, but also to act as a backup location for my laptop.
Installing the drive was a snap. Dell set this tower up to accommodate this type of drive. Just slide it into the HDD1 bay, use the WD SATA cable into one of the slots on the motherboard - just like HDMI, actually - and then give it power. Its assignment showed up in the BIOS right away. That's the hardware side. I left the jumper off (Default), and it's perfoming fine.
Next, the software side. Vista Premium picked up the drivers right away and got them installed. Next, Disk Management, initialized the disk, then set up the simple partition. Total install time was about 15 minutes, give or take a few minutes.
As a side note, if you have a home network and you're not performing scheduled backups of your primary computer's data, you need to start, and this drive is a great way to get this done.
Customer Review: works well, included software helps
Summary: 4 Stars
It seems like after a couple of years no matter what you had before you always outgrow your hard drive. I had put together a computer for home use a few years ago (P4) with a sata 1 motherboard. I was too cheap at the time to do Sata and did a 120gb eied drive instead. It worked OK but was getting full of pictures and I was experimenting with video, and my son started putting on 5 and 10 gb games. I replaced the drive with this new Sata2 drive with only a couple of glitches. It turns out you need to uninstall office 2007, use the included copy software to coppy the drive, and then reinstall office 2007. The copy protect makes office not work quite right and I could not uninstall it and reinstall it after it was copied onto the new drive. Fortunately all the files for outlook worked once I reinstall Office. And my Office 2007 boots up at least 2x faster. The other glitch was I needed to use the jumper they supplied to make it SATA1 for my motherboard. They tell you what you need to do and then tell you wont have to because it is automatic (not). All in all it gives me pleanty of space and my system boots and runs a lot faster.Customer Review: Ok for some
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this and returned it within 24 hours of receiving it. The product is ok, but I had some problems installing it. Some of these were my mistakes, but I blame them because it camw with no documentaion or cloning software. I had the right SATA connectors on my MB and the right plugs on my power supply. but I had to clone an EIDE (PATA) drive to it and there was no software like Seagate provides to do this. Also no instructions. I had a 2000 version of Norton Ghost and used it. It did the cloning, but without proper instructions, I booted up on the new disk without physically disconnecting the old drive and got the drives cross-linked. I managed to salvage the old drive and redid the process correctly, but my old chipset couldn't handle the size of this drive with one partition. It ran slow and sluggish. I gave up and returned it. Fortunatly I bought it from Amazon directly and they have an amazing return policy. Now, even if I by from the Amazon site, I always check to make sure it is sold and shipped by Amazon. If it isn't, I don't buy it.Customer Review: Satisfied WD Sata Drive Owner for HPMV2120
Summary: 5 Stars
I own an HPMV2120 with one 500GB hard drive. When I found myself downloading music and videos and other things to keep, I realized very soon that my storage space was getting low and I was looking to expand my server. I chose this drive because it was compatible with my server. I now have a whopping 925.25 GB of space. I again will be looking to expand he drive in the near future with two external drives. I usually don't buy used drives as a rule of thumb but when I saw the price, I knew that it was the right one for me. I never buy reconditioned or refurbished drives simply because you don't really know what you are getting in quality. But, I will consider a "used or like new" drive because you can get a better deal. So overall I am very happy with this drive. I did have a bit of problem (at first) installing it but I realized that the process once read by the manual, the process is very easy. Configuring the drive was a pice of cake. Go for WD drive when you are in the market for a new drive. I haven't had any problems with drives to speak of.