Customer Reviews

Western Digital 500 GB Caviar Green SATA 3 Gb/s Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD5000AADS

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I recently built a new Windows 7 Core i7 system with some new parts and some old ones from my prior system. Since my last computer had hard drives with a couples years under their belt, I opted for two new 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital SATA Green drives. The investment in my data's security was well worth the outlay. I couldn't be happier. They are silent in my CPU's case (seriously, I can't even feel them if I rest my toes against the case during read/write operations) and speedier than any hard drive I've owned before. The plan is to keep these until the price point of solid state disk drives falls to around traditional hard drive prices. I figure that time will be around when the world ends in 2012... if you believe in that nonsense. ;p

Purchased two of these to use as a mirrored external backup drive. Performance, while nice, isn't critical to me (since it's all going through a USB2 interface anyway), but the noise level and power consumption is. After my Seagate drive died (they're not even worthy of a link to their product. Point is: don't buy SeaGate as their firmware likely is still riddled with bugs that they'll release an update for...after you've lost all your data.)

At any rate, after formatting these drives and doing a series of tests for integrity, these seem to be up to the standard of all the other Western Digital drives I've purchased in the past. They run on low power, cool, and very quiet - the fan in the external enclosure is far louder than both these drives combined. Copying data to and from the drive was flawless, and, while not as fast as many other drives on the market, if you're looking to save power and/or it's going into an external enclosure anyway (and speed doesn't matter much), then these really drives can't be beat.

Would highly recommend. The only "problem" with Western Digital drives are they last TOO long. As I write this, I have 4 WD drives next to my desk: 3gig (from August 1997), 8gig (March 1999), 13gig (March 2000), and 80gig (June 2004). Yes, WD stamps the date on their drives...and they all work as flawlessly as the day they were purchased. It's just difficult to justify using 5volts to gain so little space.

I just installed this last night as a backup drive.

I bought it to replace my 2006 WD primary drive, but the packaging was so bad, I thought I better test it first.

I have all Western Digital drives and was able to download a program from them that makes adding or changing drives a snap.(Acronis)

The second program(Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows) does a nice job of checking connected drives for errors and performance. And it monitors for pending failures.

I was a little shocked to see no molex power connector on this drive. Luckily my 2006 PC has a power supply with sata power plugs available. I also had to flip flop the data cables because my old secondary drive used a WD connector (Connect 1) that covered the sata power port on this drive. WD sells a Connect 2 cable for $10 that does not cover the power port. Also, Amazon offers sata data cables and molex to sata power adapters. The retail version might include some cable options, and would be worth checking because I could have gotten a retail version for just a few $$$ more.

It would be wise to open your PC cover and find out what power and data options you have before ordering.

Day 2: Running the extended Lifeguard tests and forcing Norton Ghost to it daily. No problems yet. I see it is back on Amazon. I hope they fired everyone that picked the shipping methods previously.

Day 25: Getting near the 30 day Amazon return policy. Have hammered the drive as much as possible installed opposed to how bad Amazon HAMMERED the drive during shipping. I plan to make this the new primary tomorrow.

I really think FREE SHIPPING should be looked at by Amazon. My box should have been inside another buffered container. I used to ship mega $$ fiber optic boards across the USA and would not ship a fragile HDD like they did. Check the WD site for HDD handling.

Day 2 of the conversion to primary drive: The drive is quiet. All I hear now is the fan. Startup and shutdown seems faster than the '06 WD80. I'll bet going to a 32 MB Cache helps.

It's been over a year and this has been a great purchase!!

Excellent deal and fast shipping. I have personally used Western Digital hard drives for years on many DIY builds and have only had to return one, after 3 years of use. The customer service was great and the RMA went through easily. Highly recommended!

This hard drive itself is a great hard drive if you are not looking for performance, no noise and has a pretty fast read rate. Keep in mind this will not be compatible with any raid system, and is fairly slow in comparison with other performance hard drives. Then caviar green was designed with someone who just wants to replace a noise old hard drive and is not really looking for an upgrade in performance.

When I first bought these, I was worried that they both came DOA. Kind of weird to get TWO lemons at once, but I guess that's how it works, sometimes. Well it ended up that this wasn't the case, instead it was the fact that my old-ish motherboard, the ASUS A8V Deluxe, wasn't recognizing these harddrives because I had left them on the default setting. Instead, when I put the jumper in position 7-8, forcing the drive to be 1.5g/s instead of 3.0 g/s, it worked like a charm!

PROS --
1. Ease of use - As soon as I put in the jumper cable, this harddrive worked like a dream. My ASUS motherboard was able to detect it rapidly and I formatted it very quickly for easy use.

2. Installation - It's a 3.5" harddrive. Installation was just like an other harddrive, not harder nor easier than anything I've ever owned before in a SATA harddrive. It's my motherboard I would put as a con as far as the positioning of the SATA slots, but that's another review!

CONS --
1. Bare drive only - Yeah, I know it shouldn't really be a "CON", but really, the harddrive is lonely. Wouldn't it be better if they included a cable or harddrive screws or something to keep the harddrive company while it was being shipped?

2. Amazon = Pricey - There are other means of buying this harddrive, but I'm not one to bash Amazon too much. Their prices are usually fair, but for this harddrive, it is being sold by a third-part vendor so I think you can easily go somewhere else and get it for about 20 bucks less...

I ended up buying two of these babies, and they are still going strong. Would I recommend Amazon to buy computer parts? Probably not. Would I recommend these harddrives? Absolutely!

Installed this hard drive as a secondary drive... works great! Backing up important photos with no problem at all!!!

The drive arrived ok even though the packing was a little skimpy. I had no trouble installig it and copying my files tl it

Perfect speed!
Silent!
No problems when partitioning it!
I am very happy with this HDD. Have it partitioned it with dual boot for various OS.

I bought this hard disk as a main disk for a general purpose server. I've ran game servers, voice servers, and a couple different chat servers on it for personal use. My main desktop computer was built with large, slow fans that would be as silent as possible, so I was trying to keep the server (also kept under my desk) quiet as well.

The variable speed speed seems to work pretty well. I haven't noticed any I/O bottle necks, and after the initial spin up I hardly hear the hard disk at all.

There's really not a lot to say about a working hard disk. Make sure you realize this is OEM and doesn't come with cables or screws or anything. Knowing this ahead of time, this drive fit all of my needs.