Customer Reviews

Western Digital 750 GB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD7501AALS

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Caviar Black model of drives differ in three ways from Blue in three major ways:

1) 32MB buffer vs 16MB. This means the drive is overall faster because it can store more data in memory local to the drive. So if you access the same data frequently there is little or no drive access to get at the data.

2) Dual processors vs single. This will alleviate the load on your CPU as the drive itself has more processing power locally.

3) Five year warranty vs three. Five years is a lifetime in hardware. Basically, you're covered for longer than you will most likely use the drive.

The Caviar Black line comes in three four sizes; 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, and 500GB. The 1TB and 640GB are the fastest because they use a denser platter technology which allows the drive head to get at the data quicker. The 750GB and 500GB are no slouches though and the differences in speed will not be noticeable to most people under most real-world usage scenarios.

Caviar Black drives are the fastest affordable consumer drives available today. If you want faster you have to look that the VelociRaptor 10000RPM line of drives but expect to pay a lot more for a lot less storage.

I measured the speed of the 750GB model using the HD Tune utility and access time was a fast 12.5ms with less than 1% CPU usage on my 3.2Ghz Intel Quad Core setup. The drive runs cool at 32°C in my system and is quiet. Overall a great drive at a great price. You can't really go wrong.

works great in my mac pro machine, 32mb cache loads everything speedy and efficiently. read/writes quiet.. kudos on the great packing amazon provided, solid and safe.. removed my noisy seagate for this super drive.. recommended for all mac pro developers and users..

I've been a Seagate user forever, but have been disturbed by some of the reports of failures for their large drives. Decided to switch to WD, the Caviar "Black". Disk installed easily. Performed full format, transferred a couple of hundred Gig, and have been using the disk for about 3 weeks. No problems. This is also a very fast disk -- data write tests show a write speed of 70-75 MBytes/sec, when transferring information from memory (as opposed to disk-to-disk, when bus interactions can have a larger impact). The Western Digital is a good 12-15% faster than my other disks.

Sale price was very good ($90). While not the highest capacity disk, the trade-off for speed and perceived reliability seems to be worth it!

Amazon listens!! I was concerned after reading reviews that the drive was package poorly. Not This One. It came in a heavy cardboard box with foam shipping support at each end of the drive. These little black supports were form fitted to the ends of the drive and supported it in such a way that the drive never contacted the box, kind of suspended and cushioned in the air. A+ for shipping.
Thanks Amazon.
Unit came from Lexington, KY

This is fun because I'm only going to comment about the packaging used to deliver my new WD750 Black. After reading other WD/Amazon reviews that described the sorry state of product packaging, I was 'cautious' about ordering a new HD from Amazon. Well, I can only guess that Amazon actually read some of the criticisms and made a beeline to their shipping department to correct the issue. Here's a description of the packaging condition my new HD arrived in.

When I got home from work, the box was lying on my desk. I lifted the box and gently tilted it from side to side. No noise was heard or movement inside the box felt. The weight seemed centered. I opened the box and was greatly surprised to see the new HD nestled between two Styrofoam forms designed to hold the product in the middle and prevent ANY product shifting. The HD was wrapped in a static bag and securely embedded in the Styrofoam blocks at each end.

Like I said earlier, I couldn't be more pleased with the shipping and product condition upon arrival. Guess now I'll install the HD and see how it works.

Thanks to all who previously critiqued the Amazon shipping. I think your voices were heard.

There's not really much you can say bad about this HDD. No, it's not 2TB and it certainly isn't the best on the market, especially from Western Digital. However when you look at what you get for the price, it's really hard to pass up this drive. I've waited a month before writing a review in case I had to include anything like having to return it or anything like that. Suffice to say, it runs great and I've had zero problems with the drive so far. I've already filled it up more than half capacity at this point. It is pretty quiet too, even when performing intensive writing or reading.

I've personally never owned anything but Western Digital drives, and I imagine I'll have this drive for a long time as well. There's a simple reason: reliability. Only one WD drive I've owned has ever stopped working, and it was almost 10 years old when it quit on me. You definitely get your money's worth when you go with a Western Digital drive.

The basics: Fastest drive I own, biggest drive I own. Easy install. Low noise.
The details: With 750GB drives you end up with about 697 usable space due to a megabyte is 1024k not 1000k. so there is the reason why no HD gives you what is stated on the box. The ratio is .93, go figure. This drive is quiet, very low noise when compared to a couple seagates I have. The 32mb buffer is huge, I haven't pushed it yet but is nice to know it is there. I can't say how long it will last but it has a good warranty period. Which I want to insert a note, Back up your important data on writable disk, regularly. Pictures and documents. And encrypt the stuff you don't want to share. It is not a question of if a hard drive will fail, It is when! No matter the Mfg. Copy those pictures you can not get back...do it today.
I like this drive and would recommend it to anyone, I would buy another. Mine was packed very securely although most new non-running drives can withstand over 300 Gs.

First HDD I got was dead on arrival. Here's hoping the next one Amazon ships works. Otherwise I'm going to buy it elsewhere.

Installed 2 of these drives and they just work and work well...

If they should fail anytime soon, I'll be back to edit.
My last batch of WD drives were still running after 4 years of 24x7 on
so I'm hoping for the same with these.
(I'm guessing my next set in 2015 will be all SSD by then)

It was a good buy for the money, I checked around and couldn't get a better price.