Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS

by Western Digital

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches ; 1.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001C271MA
• Item model number: WD1001FALS
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (288 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,472 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 2, 2008

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

WD Caviar Black Hard Drives – Maximum performance for power computing.

WD Caviar Black high performance 3.5-inch SATA hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, an integrated dual processor, and dual actuator technology for lightning-fast performance in demanding desktop, workstation, and multi-drive systems. And 1 TB capacity gives you the space you need to hold enormous amounts of photos, videos, and files. Best of all these drives are backed by a 5-year limited warranty.

Why you should choose WD Caviar Black:

WD Caviar Black delivers industry-leading performance that's perfect for hard-core gaming and intensive photo and video editing.

Maximum performance.
Sophisticated performance enhancing features deliver the speed you need to work faster, not longer.

No compromises.
High performance, high reliability, cutting edge technology and a 5-year limited warranty make up WD Caviar Black, the ideal drive for those who demand only the best.

Award winning.
This 7200 RPM speedster is at the top of its class when it comes to performance and reliability.

Features at a glance Industry-leading performance 1 TB of desktop storage SATA 3 Gb/s interface Dual processor technology 5-year limited warranty

Ideal for:

• Power computing applications such as intensive photo or video editing
• Maxed out gaming systems
• Adding lots of storage in desktop PCs
• Adding extra storage space for photos, videos and music

Features:

SATA 3 Gb/s interface - The industry standard and most common interface.

Dual processor - Twice the processing power to maximize performance.

Massive Cache - leading 64 MB cache size.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations which enables consistently higher performance.

Desktop / Consumer RAID environments - WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications. (RAID-0 / RAID-1)*

*Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Blue Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

Upgrading your drive is easy - WD Acronis TrueImage, available as a free download on the WD Support site, enables you to copy all your data to a new drive so you don't have to reinstall your operating system to get all the benefits of a new drive. Note: Bare drive does not include any cables or mounting hardware.

The WD advantage - WD puts our products through extensive Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) prior to any product launch. On average, each new product goes through 600,000 hours of testing. WD also has a detailed Knowledge Base with more than 1,000 helpful articles. You can also call toll-free support 7 days per week in the U.S. and Canada. See the WD Support site for full details.

WD-certified packaging - All WD drives purchased from Amazon.com are shipped in WD-certified hard drive packaging. It is designed and fully tested to provide WD products with the highest of safety while in transit. With WD-certified packaging, you can rest assured that your WD hard drive will arrive safely, fully protected, in a non-descript, easy-open package.

Compatibility
Works with Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000, Mac and Linux operating systems.

You might also consider:

3.5-inch Internal Comparison Chart WD Caviar Blue WD Caviar Green WD Caviar Black WD VelociRaptor Value and reliability for every day computing. Cool, quiet, eco-friendly. Maximum performance for power computing. The fastest SATA hard drive on the planet.   Ideal for Family and business computing. Desktop PCs, external drives and NAS devices. Photo and video editing, and maxed out gaming systems. Performance enthusiast systems and workstations.   Capacity range 80 GB – 1 TB 320 GB – 3 TB 500 GB – 2 TB 150 GB – 600 GB   Interface SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s PATA 100 MB/s SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s   Form factor 3.5-inch 3.5-inch 3.5-inch 3.5-inch   Cache 8 MB – 32 MB 16 MB – 64 MB 32 MB – 64 MB 32 MB   Limited warranty 2-year 2-year 5-year 5-year   Highest capacity         Highest performance         Photo/video editing

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1TB of space, 32MB cache *PLUS* SATA2? Absurd. Buy now, January 20, 2009

By 

Gordon Ewasiuk (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS (Personal Computers)

I bought two of these. Just an insane price. Thanks, Amazon. The drives are bulk/OEM which means they come with nothing. Just the drives and the anti-static bags. Do your homework. If you want software to hold your hand through a hard drive install, do not buy this drive. If you need screws, rails, or cables, do not buy this drive.

If you want to save some cash while getting an absolutely absurd amount of disk space with SATA2 (3Gbps) plus 32MB of cache (older drives have 4-16MB), then get these drives. They are beasts.

After the Seagate fiasco, I vowed to go with an alternative. Western Digital came through with these monster hard drives. Get one. Get two. You will not be disappointed.

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faster, slightly more "clatter", February 4, 2009

By 

J. Poorman (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS (Personal Computers)

I bought this drive for my Mac Pro (Mac Pros, at least when I bought mine 3 years ago came from Apple with WD 250 GB hard drives). I have installed about 10 WD drives, upgrading this time form the WD 500GB drives, and this drive with its 32MB cache is indeed a bit faster (10-20 percent) than the 500GB. The ONLY downside at all to this drive is that is a bit louder when the heads are seeking, with the drive seek "clatter" more noticeable than the previous 500GB Western Digitals I just replaced (I needed more storage). Not bad tho--it's just that my Mac Pro is absolutely silent and I notice the least little additional sound and never really heard the 500's, the 1TB I hear now--but don't get me wrong it's not bad and there certainly is no drive "whine" when idling--these are quite drives. I guess whizzing across 1TB of data is a little more strenuous on the heads. I have bought about 20 Western Digital drives since 2000 and not one has failed on me--unlike LaCie--ick.

179 of 204 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beginner's guide to adding a second hard drive, May 3, 2009

By 

Sandstone (Salem, OR United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS (Personal Computers)

This is for people (like me) who've never done this before... I use Windows Vista and an HP desktop computer.

1. Ordered this drive, which arrived promptly. Drive was well packed with foam. As expected, it didn't come with anything else. It works fine, and to me it doesn't seem noisy.

2. Ordered Tripp Lite P940-19I Serial ATA (SATA) Signal Cable (19 Inches). Note: older computers won't support SATA. If you have a newer computer, it should work. SATA cables are red and about 1 cm wide, the older cables are about an inch wide and silvery. If your hard drive uses these, don't get this drive.

3. Ordered Tripp Lite P946-12I Serial ATA (SATA) Dual Power Adapter Cable - 4pin/2x15pin SATA - 12in. This is a "Y" adapter (optimistically planning for my next hard drive!), but a straight one would also work. I found out after it arrived I already had a SATA power adapter in my case. However, it wouldn't have reached with the available wiring length, so I still ended up using this.

4. In my case, the drive requires 4 screws to install it. These are short screws with large flat heads, the heads form a sort of "rail" for it to glide into the rack on. On opening my case, I realized that HP had thoughtfully provided extra screws for future upgrades! The drive does not come with screws.

5. Installed drive in rack, plugged in the two cables, no problem.

6. Get to Windows. Your new hardware icon should say "locating... installing" or something like that.

7. Go to Start-Computer (right click on Computer) - Manage - then to Disk Management. Find your new drive at the bottom of the screen, and click over the "drive 1" (or whatever) designation to make it "online". Then right click the long color band over the drive's partition graphic and start the "new simple volume" wizard. Stayed with the defaults.

That's about it, everything worked the first time. After the drive was up and running, I decided to error-check the drive from Windows Explorer (under the tools tab for drive). This gave the unexpected result of giving me a blank screen for several hours while it checked it. When I've error-checked drive c:\, my screen gives me information on what it's doing. This was just totally blank, which was disconcerting, but in a few hours it finished what it was doing and everything worked.

I also went into the BIOS on bootup (pressed F10 while booting, don't know if this is the same on other PC's) to see if I needed to do anything there, but I didn't. The new drive was already listed. I did get a new option on booting, to set up the drive in a RAID configuration, I left this alone. (non-RAID)


This is written to help first-timers like me. If any experienced computer folks want to comment and add pearls of wisdom feel free!