Customer Reviews

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB SATA II, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive WD10000LSRTL - Retail

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There IS a reason to buy RETAIL disks, not OEM disks, from Amazon, and that is the shipment's packing.

Received this disk in a "standard" box (those just fine for BOOKS), with some brown paper wadded in along the SIDES of the disk's own box. No bubble wrap, no plastic air bubbles, just some paper that did NOT prevent the Western Digital box from moving around, as I noticed when I picked up the box from the porch. Come on, Amazon, these are NOT books, dvd's, or hand tools... At least you could put enough packing in so the object does not move, let alone putting packing in above and below to REALLY cushion the hardware.

I'll note that the Amazon box was crushed in on 1 end a good inch, no doubt from having something dropped on it. UPS is not exactly known for its gentle handling of packages... Amazon should be aware of that and act accordingly.

If this had been an OEM disk, I would have returned it immediately, not even bothering to format. With the retail version, I'll format and run a chkdsk.

But in continues to amaze me why Amazon so carelessly ships computer hardware with such poor packing. Makes me want to look ELSEWHERE for computer products.

Evening's UPDATE: Call the coroner - this drive is DOA. Plugged it in, powered it up, can hear it come up to speed, then click click - it's the head's death rattle; Window's disk manager waiting in vain for a disk that will never appear. Shame. UPS/Amazon has murdered another one... The only "good" news is, I won't have to wait for chkdsk's run...

Note: this is the RETAIL version - i.e., comes in its own box, not an OEM (static bag only). If Amazon's packaging can't protect a retail box, think how an OEM would suffer...

WD Caviar Black 1TB 32mb cache retail. Nice. This is apparently THE best drive right now considering the claimed performance and reliability. Price is very good at $99.

Get retail box instead of the OEM Bulk drive. Retail has better packing, better binning selection from the factory, and overall your best chance of receiving a reliable drive that performs the way it's supposed to and will receive full warranty. (WD warranties the OEM bulk drive purchase 5yrs as long as it is shipped correctly, and there's the rub).

Install is easy. Plug and play.

Drive gets WARM so place it with some airflow. I have a well-ventilated case and the drive is reading 34C (93F) at idle. That's 10 degrees warmer than I'm used to with my old 160gb Caviar.

The papers in the box claim 5yr warranty. WD website concurs. I don't think you need to register to get warranty service, just need your receipt. I have had no trouble from WD when I had to return a drive (did three last year) and I have never registered.

AMAZON SHIPPING IS STILL AN ISSUE. Retail 1TB Black arrived with the retail box intact but loose in the shipping box, with some packing material tossed in randomly. The drive is suspended in the retail container, so that the retail box protects to drive from direct impacts but I still wouldn't want to drop or toss the box around. Unfortunately that is exactly what happens during shipping and Amazon is inconsistent about padding that box.

But I'm happy to say that the drive tested fine with Western Digital Lifeguard Diagnostics - Extended Test. BTW same goes for the OEM one I got in comparison (miraculous considering the shipping for that one!).

I did large file transfers between two of these on a fresh Windows & 64-bit install, P45/ICH10R motherboard (gigabyte ud3p) and throughput was 80MB/s - 114MB/s. I haven't run any performance Diagnostics, just looked at the Resource Monitor once in a while. So, decent performance. I'm going to run hw2bench and see what I get.

It's a bit noisy with two of these in my quiet PC case, but not a bad sound, just purring every second or so.

EDIT: both my retail and my oem 1tb caviar black are still going fast and strong 8/9/2011

I purchased three of these Western Digital Caviar Black drives to put in a RAID array. I play with hardware all the time, but something about these drives just seemed right--I found myself in a pretty good mood once I'd got them into the box. Seek times are low, the cache is high, and while the RPM isn't 10,000, the price is certainly right.

Slipping all three of these into my file server was super-easy, but that's really due to the tray design in my hardware array: the connectors aren't really any better or worse than any other drives because hard drive parts are fairly standard. Mostly what impressed me was that the drives spun up right away, were ready to roll in seconds, and are very, very quiet. This drive cage is a bit open and it sits on my desk, but I don't hear a lot of noise when doing read/writes. I've put about a quarter of a terabyte on them so far, and I've got plenty more where that came from.

I used to be a Seagate fan, but I was burned last year with a purchase that didn't actually have the cache size promised on the box (I made Seagate take them back for that). Thus far, the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA II 32MB cache, 7,200RPM drives have continued to make me a WD fan. If you use these on a PC, you will probably find about 931MB of space. This is an industry thing, by the way: as far as your computer is concerned, 1,024KB = 1MB, 1,024MB=1GB & etc...but for reasons I never quite understood, companies at some point started rounding their specs off at 1,000. So a 1TB drive should technically mean 1,024MB of space, but the reality is the company only gives you 1,000MB and calls it good.

Strange, no? If you want to get down into the nitty-gritty details with your drive, take a look at the commentors to this review below, and also stop by the ntfs dot com site or Microsoft's MSDN site and look up "hard drive optimization" (sorry I can't post links: Amazon tends to remove them)

After reading lots of the reviews on other hard drives I thought I would take a chance and order the retail because it comes with the manufacturer's extra packaging. The package came from Santa Fe Springs, CA with the retail box left lose to be slammed around inside the shipping box. There was a single plastic air bubble that was flat when I opened the box. The packaging allowed the retail box movement of about 2in for length, 2in for width, and 3/4in in height the box. This is a hard drive with sensitive moving parts, they break when dropped, shaken, or are subjected to excess shock.

Amazon should consider using cornstarch packing peanuts to suspend the drives on all 6 sides in the package, and can still maintain the "green" label. Green packaging also means making sure the item ordered doesn't have to be recycled as a direct result of breaking from improper packaging. And the other part of green being money saved, for not having to eat the cost of return shipping. Ship it right the first time and everyone benefits.

Amazon should also consider using shock indication stickers, and conducting test shipments of items between facilities shipped the same way the customer orders them. Try shipping a raw egg in something leak proof and see if it breaks during shipping. Shipping companies are not gentle at all and I wouldn't be surprised to find a footprint or tire tracks on something.

I elected to return the drive for a refund without opening Western Digital's box. I also called customer service and let them know directly, as well as filled out the packaging review. I don't feel like playing Amazon Hard Drive Roulette. When I pay for something new I don't want to have to return it, or send it to the manufacturer and get back something refurbished. I like Amazon a lot, but may chose to buy certain items elsewhere if the packing doesn't change.

In this case secondary seller J&R Electronics did the packaging. Like all the rest complaining of similar outrage at a fine instrument packages like worthless second-hand rags. HOW can they (Amazon & J&R Electronics)not monitor this. what gets me is that these items are treasures of our modern civilization. It galls me to see these products of mankind's inventiveness and nature's inspiration treated like this. Shame on you all! The packaging department for all I know is staffed by individuals who hate their jobs and employers or why would they do this to a breathtaking item of this fragility? Remember Amazon & J&R,the bottom line is crucial but your shipping/packaging people besides being human beings, are your final link to hopefully loyal customers. Treat your packaging people right and they will do right by your bottom line and your customers. Get this drive if you want the best, but perhaps consider buying it at a local Best Buy for a couple bucks more & hopefully these on-line merchants will get the message that we are tired of their crappy packaging and the waste of our time hassling with a return of broken merchandise....

Works well and at a great price, however, this drive is so loud. This sounds like a jet engine starting up. Maybe it is my dell case, who knows but it is certainly louder than the drive I replaced. Perhaps I was suppose to receive a muffler and didnt get it.

I am a PC gamer and i like to store all my games on my secondary internal hard drive,the only problem was that i had a Western Digital 500GB drive,even though it worked 100% perfectly i was running out of space so i ordered this product.The first thing i did after formatting was transfer all my data from my 500GB to this drive,it only took an hour and a half to transfer 411GB of data since the other hdd had similar specs (32mb cache,7200rpm).After i was done i started up some games,programs,videos & music and was happy to find that everything loaded and ran perfectly,no issues what so ever.Even though it has 1TB of space and runs fast i was shocked to find that this drive is very quiet,my old 500GB drive was a bit louder for some reason.Givin the fact that i am using a 64 bit OS (Windows 7 Ultimate) i was a little worried about compatibility but i soon found i had nothing to fear,this drive has no problem with it.If your looking for an internal drive with tons of space at a great price than get this one,you will be happy.


Note: If you install this drive and find that you can't access it please remember that you must create a partitian before using it.If your a Windows 7 user this is what you need to do: In the start menu right click on "Computer",click on "Manage",click on "Disk Management",right click on the disk you just installed,click "Extend Partitian",then select the full size of the drive,the drive letter,the file system "NTFS",and choose what the drive is to be named.Now when you look for your devices you will see the drive can be accessed,just format it (takes a while) and your good to go.Hope this helps anybody new to installing hard drives :)

I use this as an external hard drive, so my review will reflect upon that experience.

PRO:

-1 TB of storage space for a good price
-easy installation
-Great read and write speed
-5 year warranty!! This is what I always liked about their products. The warranty is top notch and easy to claim. I claimed warranty numerous times on their old Caviar SE drives back in 2003-2004 for having whining noise issues. They immediately cross-ship a replacement to me at no cost with shipping label to return the defective drive. Actually I believe the drives failed from overheating, because my PC at the time had inadequate cooling. Took me a few years to realize it.

CON:
-As a "retail" box I would have expected at least an included sata cable.

-Box packaging doesn't seem like it would hold up to major punishment through the delivery carriers; however, it seems all HD's are packaged in smaller boxes now compared to maybe 7 years ago. I really liked the packaging they used in the past in the big boxes. The HD would have been well protected from external shocks. Now everyone is trying to cut costs. Also the shipping and packing wasn't any good either.. more on that at the bottom impressions section.

-It's a fast drive so it produces a lot of noise. Using this drive with an aluminum enclosure and placing it on my wooden desk amplifies the noise considerably. The solution to dampen the noise is to place the drive on top of a magazine or book. This makes a huge difference on the noise. Currently, I have the drive sitting right on top of the retail the HD came in.

Other thoughts-

Now is my chance to bash someone on their horrible packaging. Unsure whether it was amazon or [...] that packed it. The listing said sold by [...]. I was really taking a chance on my buying a hard drive through amazon, but I did it anyway. This drive came with a large box with a clump of wrapped brown paper, which was not enough. Therefore, retail box bounced all over the place during shipping. Luckily, this was a retail box and I have been running this drive for 9 months without a problem. I wouldn't buy an OEM drive from amazon though (google amazon HD packaging and you might still find images of how amazon "used" to pack oem drives). Newegg would be better since they wrap the entire drive in large bubble wrap; however, they do miss the corners...

This Hard drive is flawless and huge. I love it and my load times are excellent in games. The Normandy load times in Mass Effect 2 go by almost instantaneously and transfer rate to another SATA II hard drive are very speedy.

However, if you are looking at saving a few bucks by buying this drive OEM don't. Reviewers of the OEM HDD's state clearly that their drives arrived with little to no packaging and several stated their drives failed. Yes these drives are a bit more expensive but it is worth it because the money you save by buy those HDD's get chewed up and then some when you have to fork over a hundred bucks for a new, non OEM drive when the first one dies. not to mention all the files you would lose and the hassle of reinstalling Windows and all your programs.

One thing to mention though. This drive does not come with SATA cables for installation. You will need to purchase your own.

One of the best drives (this particular model) on the market at the time of my purchase (march).

I bought a retail packaged drive for the added intelligent (protective) packaging that it would provide. Had I not done so, this would have arrived stone dead.

HORRENDOUS packaging job. It should have been wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap or the like, and then further immobilized from moving away from the center of the box with some sort of fill.

INSTEAD . . . . .

It was dumped loosely in the box with 2 pillows of air, free to bang around inside of the box.

Packed like this, the outer box would receive little harm and the contents would receive every impact as if it would if it were unboxed.

I look at my purchase with great suspicion and expect early mortality. I am Stunned that Amazon would do this.

This practice makes Amazon a frightening place to buy technology, especially hard drives. No intelligence in packing. Stick to buying books here, they're packed appropriately.

I am WALKING to BestBuy tomorrow to buy a backup unit and taking one in my hands just to avoid shipping by anyone. Same price BTW.