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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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
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: Great product, but you guessed it, terrible packaging
Summary: 5 Stars
This drive looked great on paper with all the specs that are listed in the product description. It looked fast, cheap and reliable. So far it has lived up to all expectations. The drive was a snap to install on my Mac and was immediately recognized by the system. All I had to do was format it for the Apple and I was off to the races. The drive seems very responses. In copying the data that I wanted on the drive to it, the drive performed very well. I have not yet had the opportunity to really put it through its paces by using it for video editing but I am very happy with it. My only gripe and it has been said many times in these reviews is that the packaging it comes in is awful. Luckily mine was not DOA but I could easily see why so many reviewers had horror stories. Amazon must think that it is cheaper to replace the broken drives than to fix the packaging. Too bad its such a hassles for the buyers that have the bad luck to get a dead drive. For the price and performance you can't beat this HD. It performs exactly as advertised and if it matches your needs then I would highly recommend it.Customer Review: Buy yourself some storage breathing room
Summary: 5 Stars
Just a great price for a humongous amount of storage. Bought two of them, now instead of wondering where I'm going to squeeze my files among multiple smaller hard disks, I'm wondering how I'm going to make use of all that extra space!
Amazon must have smarted from those reviews about the lousy packaging: my two disks somewhat ridiculously came double-boxed inside a 19x13x7-inch box, with plenty of air cushions inside... a bit overkill. Shipped by FedEx to my home, a bit of a hassle as they tend to attempt signature-required delivery while I'm away at work.
As noted, these are really barebones: disk & dessicant packet inside an anti-static bag are what you get inside the plain cardboard box; no instructions or cables or even box labeling.
Also note unlike WD-boxed hard drives I've bought previously, these are not formatted: after making sure your BIOS recognizes the drive, you'll need to go into Windows Disk Management utility to find it and then format/assign a partition to it. Only then will it appear in Windows Explorer.
Customer Review: Caviar Black -great product
Summary: 5 Stars
The new Caviar Black 1 Terabyte drive is quite incredible. So much storage at a very reasonable price. Installation into my HP a1630n was straight forward, and the SATA connection was very nice. No jumpers to configure or other issues. I will say that formatting took quite a while, but I did opt for a full format, not the quick one. Considering the 1 terabyte size, several hours to format was not unexpected.
I don't notice much heat difference, although I also installed a new video card at the same time, so I would think it is more from that. The drive is also very quiet, I am not sure why others mentioned it could be noisy. I am not hearing any noise issues.
I immediately backed all my systems on the network to this drive and feel much better, knowing I have an image for all 3 other systems. So far I am very satisfied with the WD drive and hope it lives up to the descriptive features of automatic error correction and internal diagnostics. I feel with the features, it was worth the extra money over a WD Green or Blue series.
Customer Review: Fast, cheap, cool
Summary: 5 Stars
I filled 8 of these with some archival data and had no issues or DOA's. The drive is fast and runs fairly cool. Streaming raw data to these drives (from sector 0 to the end) I got an average write rate of around 60mbytes/sec across the disk (higher at the outer edge, lower near the middle as expected). On the read side I could sustain 85mbytes/sec on a streaming scan from the front to the back. These are competitive with Seagate Barracuda's in the same class and quite a bit cheaper.
They are not rated for 24x7 enterprise operation so they may not be appropriate for use in a file server, for my purposes (archiving telemetry) this isn't an issue.
The only negative is Amazon's packaging. Each of the 8 drives was put in a little cardboard box which was loosely packed with inflatable cushions, so loosely that the drives could bang around in their boxes easily. The 8 smaller boxes where put in a much larger box with too little fill so they all bounced around. None of them were DOA so I guess it was good enough.
Customer Review: Drive = Great, Amazon Packaging = Horrid
Summary: 5 Stars
I will start by advising that if you are purchasing an OEM drive, choose a vendor other than Amazon. Allow me to describe the packaging they used: drive in anti-static bag placed on bottom of box, air-filled bag-type cushioning placed loosely on top of drive. The drive was therefore totally unprotected on the bottom side, and the wear on the anti-static bag showed it. In what alternate dimension is this an acceptable means of protecting a hard drive? They're supposed to be protected from vibration. Duh!
As for the drive itself, it seems to be a quality piece. It seems to have survived Amazon's shipment abuse test, though only time will tell if its lifespan was shortened any. The drive is louder than the WD 3200AAKS-75SBA0 drive that shipped with my system. That's not a major concern to me though.
It's a shame I cannot assign a rating to this experience with Amazon, as that would be zero stars. The four stars are for the product only. Buy it somewhere else!