Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS
by Western Digital
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Our Price: $151.21 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $93.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS
Customer Review: Very good/solid hard drive
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm currently running 7 drives in my computer (a mix of 4 IDE's and 3 SATA's, using WD and Seagate among all of those). The latest of these is a 1TB WD Caviar Black hard drive running through a Vantec 6-port SATA II 150 PCi host card with RAID. After doing an exhaustive search of various Seagate and Western Digital drives in the 1, 1.5, and 2 TB range, I finally settled on this one because it appears to have the lowest failure rate out of most of the Caviar Green, Caviar Blue, and Seagate models I looked around at. I also took various reviews of the different models into account (on Amazon, TigerDirect, and NewEgg), not just technical specs.
I was originally looking for one of the Seagate 1.5 TB drives, but after reading about the bricking issues with different models (Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA and DiamondMax 22 drives) which I believe has now been remedied with firmware fixes by Seagate last year?), as well as reading about a high number of failure rates (and thereby low ratings and quite low prices - I assume because of the high failure rates) for the 1.5 TB drives on TigerDirect, NewEgg, and Amazon, I finally decided to dig around for any kind of a more reliable drive. The 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black is certainly less in storage than 1.5 TB obviously, but the stability is what I needed with my work (audio mixing, graphics, and computer programming). I needed something that would hold up. And, when I saw the 5 year warranty, plus 399 reviews with 4.5 out of 5 stars here on Amazon, 4.5 out of 5 on TigerDirect (28 reviews), and 4 out 5 on NewEgg (2490 reviews!), that pretty well helped me make up my mind with this getting this drive. I've now had it over a month and it's doing good. Still wishing I could've gotten a 1.5 TB drive, but with the amount of problems I kept reading about with the Seagate drives right now (Seagate usually being my choice), I finally had to go with this one. I'm just not willing to trust the 1.5 TB's of *any* manufacturer right now for that matter. Info on this one is WD1001FALS, 1 TB, 3.0 SATA, Caviar Black, Western Digital.
I also noticed that Western Digital has released a 6.0 SATA version of this drive, but I haven't read any reviews on it yet.
Customer Review: Build your own High Performance eSATA DVR Expander
Summary: 5 Stars
UPDATED: 09-25-10
This is the drive to build your own eSATA DVR Expander along with the Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360SU-BK enclosure Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360SU-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive Enclosure (Onyx Black).
Or Better Yet NO Enclosure, just add the following:
1) eSATA to SATA Cable Link Depot Rounded eSATA to SATA Cable (Blue, 3 Feet)
2) Molex Power Supply CG 110v AC to 12v DC 4pin molex Power Adapter
3) SATA Power Adapter Cable.
Optional Equipment:
4) Aluminum Heat Sink Vantec Hard Drive Coolermodel#Hdc-502Aheat Sink With 2 Fans
5) Silicon Protector Sleeve Hard Disk Protector Sleeve for 3.5 Drive
Add 120HRS of HD recording capacity to your DVR, By hooking this up with the enclosure via eSATA cable included in the Vantec enclosure. Solid no glitch HD recording with a Scientific Atlanta DVR - SA8300HD,SA8300HDC,SA8240HDC as long as you are not running TWC Navigator ODN software.
Solid High Performance drive with dual processors. Drive runs fairly cool considering it is spinning 24/7. I have been using this drive for over 7 months often recording two programs simultaneously without a single glitch, that was not part of the original program signal.
I also have one of these drives connected to my Networked PC via eSATA, using it for back-ups and Network storage. Transfer rate via eSATA is very fast. Back-ups no longer take several hours. I love these drives.
Since writing this review I now own 6 WD Caviar Black HDDs
Customer Review: Good Shipping, Fast Drives
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered three of these 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives from Amazon.com. I don't usually order computer parts from Amazon but their prices, especially combined with free shipping anywhere in the US, have made them a much more economical option than other online computer part stores.
These drives arrived in one box containing three smaller boxes -- each drive was secured in the smaller box by two black plastic form fitted "guards" to immobilize the hard disk and provide cushion. I was very pleased with the packing especially considering some other reviews and pictures I've seen here on Amazon.
I installed the drives in a new PC and configured them for RAID0 using the Intel Raid Controller on an ASUS P7P55D Pro motherboard. I get very fast transfer speeds with these disks compared to my old 160GB SATA drives with 16mb of cache. In Windows 7 x64 Professional using HDTach, I record a burst speed of 320MBps and an average transfer rate of 120 MBps. The most stunning part to me is that the average transfer rate stays steady across the entire platter, whereas my old hard disks would see performance drop off as the "end" of the disk was reached.
I have never had heat problems with hard drives, and that holds true for these as well. I have one 120mm intake fan in front of the drive cage that pulls air over them and the temperatures seem perfectly normal, even under load.
It should be noted that these drives are not intended to be used in RAID1, RAID10, or RAID5 configurations due to some deep recovery state settings that Western Digital has enabled. Your options around this are to spend the extra money for the RE (Raid Edition) drives, or dig around online and find the utility to disable the correct setting. Also, they're a little bit loud, but not obscenely louder than any other hard disk.
All in all I highly recommend this drive.
Customer Review: Low Price For High Performance WD Drive!
Summary: 5 Stars
I needed a high performance backup drive for additional storage. I do video editing of large video files and needed more storage to replace an existing backup drive. The Western Digital HD fit the bill. Amazon offers this great performing drive for a low price. I've used it for about 30 days without any installation or operational problems. It works as advertised.
Like other reviewers have commented, OEM means cables, rails, screws, and install software are not included. Being a replacement HD meant no problems other than formatting, which Windows does for you. Check the BIOS for set up and you're good to go after formatting the HD. But if you need these installation hardware items, order an HD install kit from Amazon or the mfr. It may be cheaper to order the WD HD retail kit which has these items included. If you have any install problems, go to WD's website for help on installation issues including free drivers, if needed. You may need to go to your computer mfr's website for latest updates on BIOS. And don't forget if you have older versions of Windows xp or Vista, get their service pack updates as well.
One last item, Amazon received lots of complaints on their shipping problems with these OEM HDs for the last several months from past reviews. I requested their FREE shipping option and wasn't disappointed. WD sends their HDs in a box that has thick foam padding around the HD. The HD is shipped in WD's standard electrostatic bag. Amazon ships the HD inside their box with the usual air filled plastic filler as an insulator. If I notice any external box damage or compressed insulators, then possible shock and damage to the HD may exist. If you notice damage, let Amazon know! In my case, no damage was noticed, so I proceeded with the installation without any problems.
I'm happy with the WD HD product performance and Amazon!
Customer Review: 100+ MB/s
Summary: 5 Stars
I have an application that needs very fast streaming reads, almost continually, over a multi-TB dataset. Write performance isn't that important, but straight-line speed and data integrity are. Oh, and it's cost-sensitive too. Good luck, right?
I settled on a RAID 6 array of eight WD1001FALS disks connected to Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 controllers, housed in a RPC-4020 case. I plan to add another 2-4 disks in a month or two. Write performance isn't critical, so software RAID will do -- instead of spending a thousand bucks on a RAID controller, I'll buy some simple SATA controllers, an extra quad-core CPU, more RAM, and still have saved enough money to buy five more disks. At maximum write speeds, parity computation uses almost an entire processor core; of course, I have seven more. Turns out Core 2 chips are really good at parity computation, even RAID 6.
Typical large file reads:
3498999611 bytes (3.5 GB) copied, 6.04208 s, 579 MB/s
3999941908 bytes (4.0 GB) copied, 6.56308 s, 609 MB/s
Despite being software RAID over dumb SATA controllers, performance is excellent. (For comparison, Gigabit Ethernet has a theoretical maximum speed of 125 MB/s.) Throughput often reaches 100 MB/s per disk.
Really, I'm not sure you can go wrong with these drives. They're reasonably quiet, very fast, and don't run any hotter than their competitors. Sounds like a winner to me.