Western Digital Caviar Green 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000AACS

by Western Digital

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches ; 1.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0010YOVNW
• Item model number: WD5000AACS
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and cache size designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. IntelliPark - Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag. Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - Employ PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, quiet, fast, easily installed, March 5, 2008

By 

PB2008 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Green 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000AACS (Personal Computers)

This drive uses reduced power at least partly by varying its rotational speed as needed. It is part of WD's new green power line. I purchased it to replace a failing Maxtor drive that came with the PC.

The WD drive is incredibly quiet. It is also considerably faster than the original drive in the machine. A very noticeable speed boost.

Installation is conventional. Straightforward although I would only recommend doing ANY hard disk upgrade for people with some experience working inside PCs. WD's Data Lifeguard software helps with formatting, partitioning, and copying files from your old drive (assuming it still works).

Obviously, if you want to copy from your old drive you must temporarily install it in your PC after installing the new one. WD's software will copy entire partitions quickly and easily. I used this to copy the system and other partitions to the new drive. It worked reasonably well. Win XP booted correctly. Primary problem was that this got Microsoft Office 2003 a bit confused. Somehow the office update settings got out of sort. Office worked without doing this although Office Update did not. Actually had to clean those registry settings and then uninstall and reinstall Office.

WD's user guide is good although a bit poorly worded in places - the guide for using the software to help set up the drive. E.g. The user guide talks about creating a bootable floppy diskette. I did although it was never needed. It may only be needed if setting up the drive from DOS and your PC cannot boot from CD.

Overall, I strongly recommend this drive. Over the years I have found WD drives to be quiet, fast, and reliable. This continues the record. Remember to erase your old drive!

49 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nice idea, flawed execution, April 21, 2009

By 

Keyan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Green 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000AACS (Personal Computers)

This drive (and all other of the "green" line) has a nice premise - why spin the drive at full rotational speed when most of the time it is idle or underutilized? Unfortunately, the execution of this idea is flawed. This drive cannot continue reading and writing data while the speed changes from 5400 rpm to the 7200 rpm tier, instead it halts while the speed is changed. This means that any programs that are actively using the drive cannot write or read to/from it during this period, resulting in some programs breaking entirely and things like music players either pausing or repeating their buffers like a broken record until the drive can send data again.

I found it out when I was just streaming music off of the drive and then went to perform some more intense file copies - the music started repeating until the drive was at full speed and then it started normally. I've been able to repeat this several times so it is a flaw in the drive's design. Also my video editing software does NOT play nicely with the speed change, often crashing when it cannot read/write in a timely manner.

Finally, the spindle on mine whines when the drive is cold like drives I have heard before with problems in the drive motor, and it is only 2 months old.

Very disappointed, since the drive was cheap and flawed it's not really worth spending the money to ship it back to western digital under warranty, I have already replaced it with a Caviar Black that so far exceeds it in every way (yes, the blacks are a little louder, but still quiet compared to my Raptor boot/program drives and overall fan noise).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great SATA Drive, January 13, 2009

By 

Jonathan (Marks, Montserrat) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Western Digital Caviar Green 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000AACS (Personal Computers)

I bought this to install in my new AMD Phenom Quad Core 9500 system. It works great as does all of the other Western Digital Drives I have ever had. I have not had one of them fail yet! I have bought cheaper SATA drives that have failed on me in the past. Do yourself a favor and stick with the Western Digital brand.