UPDATE August, 2010:
I am amending my review for the WD Black 1TB 32MB Cache "Firmware Rev 05.00K05" HD's tonight because I've been quietly buying masses of them from Amazon.com, a total of 60+ of them through my account and my company account since I wrote this review, into August 2010, and the packaging at Amazon.com has improved 100% in the past year, so much so that all recent HD's have been sent in new, clean, strong HD-specific boxes with "T-Mount Fittings" for HD suspension, a box within a box, with air bladders, without fail in all my recent shipments. This adequately packages the HD's for transport, and I see no reason to continue to call Amazon.com down on its shipping practices for OEM HD's, as they have learned their lessons well it turns out and remedied the shipping problems with their OEM HD's 100% in 2010.
This isn't to say things couldn't be improved because they can be improved: Amazon.com could use foam inserts in the boxes to protect against static electricity and other impact damages which the hard cardboard mounting doesn't protect against, so please take note of that idea also...it is encouraging to see the good packaging, however, with all recent Western Digital Black 1TB HD shipments, and Amazon.com is to be commended for changing its ways and trying to do the customer right with adequate packing for all HD shipments in 2010, at least with my accounts it's improved to this status. This should be noted by people reading this review and others that were critical of Amazon.com packaging of OEM HD's in the past, especially 2009, a year where Amazon.com didn't fare well with criticism from most customers about their OEM HD packaging and protection during shipments.
In addition there has been a post above where one person is commenting about WD changing the firmware in the OEM WD Black HD's to make them incompatible with RAID use, and that is patently false, and is NOT TO BE BELIEVED! All WD Black 1TB HD's that I have been purchasing this year, and last year, are 100% compatible with RAID arrays, any sort of RAID array, and with hardware RAID controller use, as I have built many systems this year utilizing WD Black OEM 1TB RAID setups, with and without hardware RAID controllers, and they are 100% compatible, no disclaimers necessary at all for that fact, and any claim to the contrary cannot be believed. PROVE IT TO ME if you want to publish such commentary, because up to now that whole idea is just plain uninformed, misconceived thinking, and it needs to be taken down from this web site because people will believe stupid claims like that, given the chance.
Wavey Davey - August 23, 2010
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I have been waiting to review my six (6) WD Black 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 2 HD's because I wanted to establish a track record with them, a baseline, since I am using them in two distinctly different RAID mediums. In any case, the SATA HD's are working fantastic in RAID 5 and RAID 0 for me and my newest PC build. Let me digress a little and I'll rate the HD's after I tell you how I am using them.
I have four (4) in a FirmTek SeriTek 2eEN4 4-Bay HotSwap RAID Enclosure as my primary "write-to" HD system for video and sound projects, in a RAID 5, so total space available in RAID 5 is 3TB. A RAID 5 uses speed and redundancy so it's an ideal medium for film or audio, as it "saves" one HD as a "spare drive" in the array, just in case of a single HD failure, and will replace that failed drive with the "saved" drive instantly so that you never lose data, or hardly ever. You'd have to have 2 HD's out of the 3 fail to lose data with RAID 5, at least in theory this is the case.
The RAID 5 is connected to an Areca 1680IX-8 SAS to eSATA/SATA Hardware RAID Controller in the PC, and it's got a rudimentary installation of Vista 64-bit Ultimate on it to make it bootable, also. That's correct, I can boot the PC externally using the RAID 5 if necessary, and I do when I am building a film project from scratch if you must know the application's benefits. The RAID 5 writes at more than 405MB/sec, and reads at more than 430MB/sec with an empty volume to give you some perspective on "Hardware RAID" versus software, or system-bus RAID on an internal volume, so there is quite a benefit with the Areca 1680IX-8 controller in place.
The second use for my WD Black SATA 2 HD's is as the boot system for the PC 90% of the time, as I have two (2) of the HD's mounted internally in the PC, still pushed by the Areca controller for hardware RAID 0 inside the case also. I have all of my main applications like Photoshop CS3, Illustrator 11, etc+ my web browser, Outlook, Mail, on this HD system, as it suffices to drive the PC most of the time, but for when I use the external RAID 5 and am involved in a film project. The 2TB RAID 0 (c.1.8TB formatted) gets your attention right away, as it's much faster than a system bus RAID 0 could ever be with the hardware controller in charge: HD Tune Pro says that empty, it writes at more than 200/sec and reads at more than 210MB/sec, which is 50% faster than a WD Raptor 10K drive, so two of the Black SATA 2 HD's in RAID 0 is another surprise fast package using the Areca 1680IX-8 controller!
The internal RAID 0 launches the OS and the applications, even with Vista's stodgy factors entering the mix, in less than 1 minute! Yes, it's true, it IS faster than sin on the Bible. It "whirrs" a little when it's seeking and searching for data, and a little more during writes, but it's not unpleasant at all considering how fast it's going about its business. These WD Black SATA 2 HD's are just amazing things with 32MB Cache x 2 on board, for 64MB cache in a RAID 0, so things happen very, very fast between the logistics of the HD's and the controller doing their work.
I am constantly amazed at the speed of the RAID 0 for just being two (2) HD's, but again, it's the hardware RAID that does the job, and there is no substitute for it of you want ultimate performance in your PC system. Let's see, what are some general comments about these SATA 2 HD's that makes sense to the layman...OK, here goes:
1) As mentioned above, the 32MB/64MB (2 x HD's in RAID 0) Cache really makes for a fast ride for any data writing or reading, and seek/access time is approximately 10.4m/s (milliseconds), with a Burst Rate of 410+MB/sec, according to HD Tune Pro's Benchmarks, so hardware RAID is virtually off-scale for a 2HD SATA 2 array of any sort with RAID 0
2) Running the File Benchmark with a 64MB file goes off-scale completely with HD Tune Pro, yielding almost 1500MB/sec write speed, and 1250MB/sec read speed, so you have to use a larger file size of 512MB to get any real world performance measurement done, and that gives us up to 200MB/sec read speed, and more than 350MB/sec write speed, very commendable stats
3) I don't have anything but subjective RAID usage to give up to the nice people at Amazon.com, but I would expect nominal 90MB/sec+ read and write speed in a single volume setup with these WD Black SATA 2 HD's, as they are just about 20% less speedy than a 10K RPM Raptor HD in the 300GB capacity (I have one of those in the PC for comparison), so you're not giving up much in the way of performance with a normal system bus setup with the WD Black SATA 2 HD's
The most obvious benefit from the Black series SATA 2 WD HD's is Enterprise Status, which means 5-year warranty service should anything ever go wrong with one, and that gives me confidence in the HD's aplenty! They are rated at 1,000,000 hours MTBF (mean time before failure), only topped by the Raptor 2's 1.25M MTBF rating in the spectrum of WD HD's available. These SATA HD's are not the low energy draw HD's like the GP SATA 2 drives are, and I'd suggest you go with GP HD's if you want to worry about economy and watts per HD...these guys are power hungry HD's and will take their measure of watts in a system, all they can get in fact, up to 14W-15W per HD at peak write/read speeds.
In closing, at less than $95 shipped per 1TB SATA 2 HD these things are the bargain of the year at Amazon.com, and I'd suggest perhaps that they are the most underpriced HD's for sale here. Regarding shipping, I am always amazed at the inconsistency of Amazon.com shipping when it comes to HD packaging. WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO LEARN? You have to be consistent, pack each HD in its own HD-specific box, with foam anti-static cushions, wrapped up in an individual anti-static casing, or you just don't belong in the business of shipping HD's! It's just about that simple to me, and I have received 3 out of 4 HD's packaged correctly, then got two more and they were packed in air bladders in a box, semi-loose, and subject to damage of all sorts.
Good GRIEF AMAZON.COM!!!! Can't you get it together and ship these things packaged correctly, all the time? There is no excuse for shipping these great HD's in crappy packing, there's just no sense in it...so get yourselves busy doing it right, ok? PLEASE?
Wavey Davey 7-26-2009
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Packaging SUX but WD support was very good
When i first got this item i was shocked at the packaging so i submitted photos here... whoever is not supervising these drives being sent out should be fired... read the ongoing comments... and it is also not just this drive, it is across the board from Amazon (Western Digital)... when i called WD direct they were very helpful and understanding... all worked fine from WD but the Amazon originated shipping was a joke by ANY standard... sooo... beware of the shipping... BTW the drive was damaged but did not show up till after the 30 day Amazon return policy expired... Amazon did not want anything to do with it... so i just warn all look at the photos and you make the call...otherwise the drive is excellent... it's a Western Digital Black Baby!sorry Amazon, but you need to fix what is obviously broken... please fix and stop wasting everyones time with returns and RMA's...namasteBTW the three star rating is balanced out... Amazon= 1 Star and Western Digital gets 5 Stars
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