Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM SATA II WD3000GLFS
by Western Digital
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List Price: Our Price: $199.00 You Save: $130.99 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $79.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM SATA II WD3000GLFS
Customer Review: Fast drive but is an OEM product and not listed as such. Disk has many bad sectors out of the box
Summary: 2 Stars
First off, this is not listed as an OEM product, but it is in fact OEM. That means that it does not come with any supporting documentation, SATA cables, power cables, or retail packaging. Its very frustrating that Amazon has neglected to list this as "OEM." I don't have a problem buying OEM, I do it all the time as I've got a large supply of left over computer parts and always have things like SATA cables lying around. However, for the 'average joe,' expecting a retail package, the way this item is listed could be very misleading. Usually OEM parts are listed that way in their title. This one isn't.
Evaluating a hard drive is fairly easy; does it do what it is supposed to do? Is it reliable? In this case, the answer is yes, and maybe. The drive works fine, is lightning fast, and performs as expected. My Vista boot time dropped about 20 seconds when booting from this drive, which is pretty impressive.
However, when cloning my current Seagate 500gb drive to this one, I found very many bad sectors on the drive. I've uploaded a photo to support this. There were so many that I was ultimately forced to do a 'ignore all' just to get the cloning finished. That many bad sectors on a brand new drive is really annoying and simply not acceptable. I'll be returning the drive for a replacement, and will update this review once it's been received.
In concussion, this is a fast drive. It is OEM and not listed as such. I experienced a whole lot of bad sectors when cloning from my old drive. I have no choice but to leave this a drive a pretty poor review. Your mileage may vary, and if you get one of these with no bad sectors, you will likely love this drive.
Customer Review: RAID FAILURES - BAD FIRMWARE
Summary: 1 Stars
EXPENSIVE AND PRONE TO FAILURE. Known firmware problems result in drive failure in 49.7 days of usage. WD recommends a cold power down of the computers containing the drive every 30 to 45 days. The issue results from problems in the TLER and FIS firmware programing. The error occurs when someone is reading or writing to on the 49.7th day of operation. The result is all drives fail simultaneously during a data read or write resulting in total RAID failure and data corruption.
Know bad VelociRaptor drives:
WD3000BLFS-01YBU0
WD1500BLFS-01YBU0
WD740BLFS-01YBU0
WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
WD1500HLFS-01G6U0
WD740HLFS-01G6U0
WD has been very slow to replace these drives probably due to the overwhelming number of failures. We were back ordered on RMAs for weeks with downed servers. WD has been poor to recall known defective WD3000 drives and replace them. Also WD has not alerted Systems Integrators and VARs to the problem.
Customer Review: Shipped Wrong Item, Will Not Refund
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this from Amazon, not someone else. It does not ship in the retail package. It was shipped in an envelope that said Western Digital on the outside, but inside it was a Seagate hard drive. I sent it back, but now they won't refund my money.
Go to the store, and buy the retail version of this. Do not trust Amazon to ship no retail items. Every time I have, they have shipped the wrong item, or a bootlegged copy of software.