Customer Reviews

Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD10EADS

5 star:		(174)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

If you're looking for a low power drive, the Western Digital WD10EADS is one of the best options currently. It has by far the lowest idle and active power consumption statistics. That, not surprisingly, helps it run cooler than other drives as well.

There is some performance loss, though most users will probably not notice. For detailed stats, look up the Winter 2008 Hard Drive Guide at Tom's Hardware. (Though you may notice how quiet and cool it is!)

Also, note that this is the OEM or Bulk version of the drive, with no SATA data cable or power adapter, or screws if your system uses them.

UPDATE 2-2010: Western Digital has recently introduced a new WDxxEARS series of Caviar Green drives, with a number of enhancements. And, they are priced attractively. But they come with a wrinkle that means you'll need to do some thinking about whether this earlier WDxxEADS series drive is still better for you.

The WDxxEARS series uses more dense 500GB platters - so a 1TB drive has just two platters, and drives up to 2TB are available - and has 64MB of cache. So far so good. But the wrinkle is that WD is using the new series to transition to 4KB sectors on the hard drive; they call it WD Advanced Format technology.

For some users - those using Windows XP, or those trying to clone a drive to the new drive - Advanced Format presents substantial issues, so the EADS seriews may still be the drive to use. For those doing fresh installs for Vista, Windows 7 or Mac systems, be sure to look at the newer drives. Read the reviews for the new drives for more info and some suggestions for where to get still more info.

PACKAGING UPDATE 2-2010: Read some of the recent reviews for comments about the completely unacceptable packaging that Amazon is using to ship these hard drives. You may want to consider choosing another source for the drive.

For those that don't know why you want a low-power drive:
It's not just for the environment or your electricity bill--those are just added bonuses. A hard drive can generate a lot of heat inside of your system. This means that (a) your fans will have to blow faster (and thus your computer gets significantly louder), but also that the rest of your computer (CPU, graphics card, etc) are operating at a higher heat. This means that they are running at a lower efficiency rate, as well as with an increased risk of failure. Long story short, your computer will run quieter, faster, and more efficiently, and will also last longer with fewer failures.

This particular drive runs faster than a lot of low-power drives, and has been incredibly reliable. It's 7200 rpm and 32mb cache are rather good specs, especially compared to other drives out there--make sure you check those two specs before you buy! The price also cannot be beat.

It unfortunately doesn't come with any cables, so I would strongly suggest getting this (as I did): Cables Unlimited Serial ATA Cable Kit. It comes with both the sata connector for your motherboard as well as a power adapter to power your drive from a 4-pin molex cable from your power supply.

----Update regarding WD's changed rpm specs----
WD has changed the specs on the drive since my last review, from 7200rpm to "IntelliPower," and many other websites speculate as to what that exactly means. Some say it runs closer to 5400rpm, other say it's a variable rate between 5400 and 7200. I don't know what it is, but I did want to weigh in on performance.

I also have a 5400rpm drive in the same machine, and a proper 7200rpm drive in another machine. This green drive definitely outperforms the 5400 drive, and I personally do not notice the difference between this and the other 7200rpm drive when running Acronis backup or Photoshop/Gigapixel work. Apparently this has to do with the increased density of the plates used in the drive, although I do not know enough to weigh in scientifically on this. Of course I doubt that performance is comparable to the WD Black drives, but for normal use this drive will not be a "slow-down factor" like other 5400rpm drives tend to be.

The rest of my review about power consumption and temperature still stands, and I would also like to add that it's great with fanless external enclosures, which often tend to generate excess heat with higher-power drives.

WD engineering continues to impress me and I've been in the IT business for 20+ years as an engineer on all levels. When used in an Apple computer these drives impress with the hardware and OS ability to control the drive for increased performance. Some PC's are being built with this capability as well, but even without it the on-board processor performs fantastic. I would however not recommend this drive in a server due to it's variable spindle speed.

In an external enclosure SATA II through Firewire 800 sustained speeds matched a WD Black 1tb drive, basically maxing out the FW800 bandwidth. Through USB 2.0 they both performed identical as well but USB speeds are based on the external enclosures chip and since it's Serial (USB) it's ONE WAY at a time which makes it slow when compared to FW400/800.

Temps in an iMac were less than 109* at most times, rarely exceeding 110* which also resulted in lower fan noise.

Lower Heat, Less power generally equal longer life and higher reliability however these drives are still new. But as of this review our company has 2 in a NAS Enclosure running in RAID1 for the last 4 months non-stop without any issues.

The WD Black drives would be ideal when performance is what matters but in situations where energy consumption and more importantly heat is considered the ideal attribute these drives are best. The WD black is about 30% faster overall on either Mac/Pc.

Spindle speed varies from 4200rpm-7200rpm on newer models, first generation varied 5400rpm-7200rpm. Both are able to stop altogether through a spin down feature however this will never "spin-down" on a windows based machine due to the indexing Windows employs that access's the drive once every 3 seconds.

I custom fabbed a NAS for file storage, backup, media streaming, etc. and am a fan (and shareholder) of Western Digital products. While some offer opinions between manufacturers, I'll just say that I need reliability and performance in any drive, and this drive delivers.

It's true; these drives run cooler due to having 3 platters for this capacity (reliability) yet not sacrificing on the rest just cause it's "green" by still producing 7,200 RPM & 32MB cache (performance). Don't be swayed by a lower price for the similar WD10EACS model; that one is an older generation that runs at 5,400 RPM at half the cache. Your drive is your investment on the data you keep on it, so it's worth the extra few dollars.

I have 2 of these set up on a RAID configuration on my NAS and they do run very quiet indeed and are great for storage, however don't look at this drive if this is to be your OS drive; look at a smaller capacity for optimum performance. Bear in mind this ships bulk (no retail box, cables, literature, etc.).

I bought one and have it running quite nicely in my Windows Home Server. The drive is definitely quiet. Speed? It runs fine. This is not an OS drive. It's more of a storage drive. If you're looking for speed, look outside the "Green" line. If you're looking for storage, and a great price, then the "Green" line is the best choice.

I read plenty of feedback before making this purchase. The EACS got mixed reviews. However, everywhere I read, the EADS, which replaces the EACS, is a much better product.

Amazon did a great job in packaging this OEM drive too. I've bought OEM drives from all the major online retailers, and I think Amazon did best.

Dead on Arrival! The shipping box and lack of packing material was just not up to the job. I was a little suspicious when I heard the slight rattle as I installed it in my Power Mac G5. Then came the ominous "tic..tic...tic", silence, then "tic...tic" of a drive that is dead. After numerous attempts to revive it and use any form of utility to read it I finally gave up and carefully placed it in the bin! My father once told me 'if you pay peanuts you get monkeys!"

This review is purely about the packaging, and ... yes, before someone states that I have "no right" to reduce the overall item product rating by complaining about something other than the item itself, I would suggest you try estimating the life of a hard drive that barely was COVERED let alone protected from dropping stresses or from hitting against other items in the shipping container! Anyway I've just added the new Packaging attribute to this review page and I suggest those of you who have ACTUALLY ORDERED/RECEIVED this item from Amazon (or are thinking about doing so) pay close attention to the difference between the item ratings and that rating. Likely Amazon will remove this attribute before long but at least you now have the chance to see what you're letting yourself in for.

(Updated)
Just to clarify something: the customer image, at the top of the product page, labelled as being from Vinodh Ramasubramanian, which shows a much higher quality of packaging is NOT what is being used by Amazon, at least not any more. I don't know when that image was submitted, although I have to assume it was not recent. I wish the drives I ordered had been supplied in packaging such as that. Then at least they'd have had a chance to survive the equally feeble attempt by Amazon at using viable shipping container packaging - those inflated air bubble strips are useless at preventing items from hitting against each other and often also swell and burst (sometimes even rupturing the shipping container itself) when the package is sent to a higher altitude (like here in the mountain states).

I bought this drive and installed it the day after Mother's Day 2009 (May 10). It died on May 18, 2009. That's eight days. I had just finished moving all of my data from my old failing drive to this one the day before its boot record or MFT decided to call it a career. Thankfully, I use the Mozy service to back up my important stuff, so I was only out a few photos and an album I had just downloaded.

Customer Service from WD was useless. I was told to get an RMA number, pay for shipping to AND from their facility, and wait up to 15 business days for the replacement. Or, I could utilize one of their certified data recovery services, which I'd have to pay for. They apparently do not recognize a difference between day 8 of ownership or day 800.

Thank God I was still within the Amazon return window. They're taking it back and giving me a full refund. I prefer WD over Seagate, but I would shy away from any of these "green" drives. I read some issues about them when they first came out, thought I'd wait until the firmware was upgraded and then purchase. I guess it didn't make a difference.

Bought this drive for my home theater PC based on the positive review on Toms Hardware. I don't have the gear to measure the power consumption, but Tom's says it's lower than the previous drives of this series.

The drive is certainly very quiet. I can't hear it over the power supply fan which itself is pretty quiet.

Performance is also good, as expected.

Recommended.

I bought this to replace a failing Seagate 750gb 7200.11 drive in my Netgear Readynas Duo. I originally only bought the Seagate drive because it was a match for the drive that originally came installed with the ReadyNas. What a mistake, the Seagate is noisy, hot, and after 6 months is reporting 10 new bad sectors a day. After reading some forums and seeing the price of this new(er) Green model from WD I decided to give it a try. Now this drive is not on Netgear's compatible list but it does work fine. It's SO much quieter than the Seagate and it runs 10 degrees cooler and uses half the power according to reviews I've seen online. This is a big deal for a NAS. Performance is a wash since the network is really the bottleneck for any NAS box. As luck would have it, immediately after replacing the failing Seagate drive with this WD Green, the other Seagate drive in my ReadyNas started reporting failures. I removed it and ran SeaTools on it and it too failed. I now have two Seagate drives in route to their RMA dept. Never again will I purchase a Seagate drive after my experience with the 7200.11's. If you have a NAS drive, a DVR, or even a mid-range PC than this drive is perfect. It's no speed demon, but even in many benchmarks is a faster than many other 7200 rpm drives on the market.