Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD3200AAKS

by Western Digital

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches ; 1.1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000RT3GHI
• Item model number: WD3200AAKS
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (132 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,103 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 14, 2004

Product Description

Capacity: 320 GB

From the Manufacturer

WD Caviar Blue Hard Drives – Value and reliability for everyday computing.

WD Caviar Blue SATA hard drives deliver solid performance and reliability making them a perfect solution for both family and business computing.

Why you should choose WD Caviar Blue:

A wide array of capacities, cache sizes, and interfaces means there's a WD Caviar Blue hard drive that's just right for you. And because it's from WD, you'll have the confidence in knowing you've selected a drive that's truly world-class.

The original.
These drives are built utilizing the proven technology of the original award-winning WD Caviar 3.5-inch hard drives for desktop computers.

Value.
Built to the highest standards of quality and reliability, these drives offer features and capacity at an affordable price.

Ample capacity.
Store up to 320 GB of photos, videos, music and files.

Features at a glance 320 GB of desktop storage SATA 3 Gb/s interface WD quality and reliability

Ideal for:

• Family and business computing
• Adding storage in desktop PCs or external drives
• Adding extra storage space for photos, videos and music

Features:

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

Cool operation - WD continues to develop new and innovative ways to keep drives cool while they are operating which helps protect the drive and the data stored on it.

Compatible - We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

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.

Desktop / Consumer RAID environments - WD Caviar Blue 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 an environmentally-friendly, 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

Product Description

WD Caviar Blue hard drives are available with either SATA or EIDE interface in a variety of cache sizes with a multitude of available features to deliver rock solid performance and ultra-cool and quiet operation. Pick the drive that suits your needs with the confidence in knowing that all WD Caviar Blue drives are built to the highest standards of quality and reliability. With capacities ranging from 40 GB to 640 GB, these drives are the perfect solution for family and business computing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Western Digital 640GB Caviar SATA Hard Drive, July 27, 2008

By 

rorschach99 "rorschach99" (West Monroe, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD6400AAKS (Personal Computers)

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.

33 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Right price, January 11, 2009

By 

Jerry L. Rainsdon "Jerry" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD6400AAKS (Personal Computers)

The hard drive worked great I had to go online to get the product manuals and purchase the cables since it is a SATA II drive and my computer supports SATA I it took me several hours to make it work but once I figured out how to slow down the drive with the jumper which was not supplied it was a plug and play process. Make sure you know your system specifications before you order and get the needed cables and jumper & Screws all at once.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars WD Caviar Blue 640GB OEM Drive, October 4, 2009

By 

sc - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD6400AAKS (Personal Computers)

The drive is pretty fast and allows for allot of storage room. Amazon needs to learn how to pack a hard drive for shipment! The hard drive arrived in a box with a static bag around it and no protective padding at all!!! My drive is warrented until 2012 from WD and it is already making noise upon spin up. So it looks like I am going to have to ship it back to WD for replacement. I would not purchase this item from Amazon again not because of the drive; but because of the horrible packaging the drive was shipped in.

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