Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk OEM Hard Drive 3 5 Inch 32 MB Cache 7200 RPM

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 ____ _____ _____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ _____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ___ ___ ___ ___ 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 Read more

Nothing I can say against this drive, ~$100 for 1TB and a caviar black at that. I have this on an ASUS Server board's Marvell RAID controller in a RAID 1 with another (identical drive) I had purchased previously from Newegg. Been great so far as my main data archive. -----------UPDATE---------------- I've now used this drive in several different configurations since June 2009 when I originally wrote this review, and I'd like to supplement what I previously wrote. I'll probably be duplicating a lot of what other have written, but so what - my unique experience might help you with your situation (contact me with questions if you wish) First, general notes: This drive is fast, cool, and quiet. The only time I ever hear it is when it spools up from being asleep, and when its crunching on a particularly large file (or large series of files). Usually, my velociraptor (or NAS) drowns it out. Next, Pros and Cons: Pros: 32 MB Cache, w/ Dual CPU - minimal use of my xeons to run this drive Price per TB - falling every day 5 Year Warranty - I can see this drive still working in 5 years higher density platter design - improves seek time Cons: Spool Up Time from power save - if I wanted a power saver I'd have bought a caviar Green RAID - does not work well in RAID arrays (WD trying to sell more expensive RE versions) Bottom Line: So long as you know that you're getting a bulk drive (no cables or OEM packaging) and don't intend to try and do RAID arrays without working firmware magic, then this is an outstanding drive. The performance, reliability, and warranty make it a no-brainer purchase. If you want to do RAIDs, look at the samsung spinpoint raid drives or the deskstars (or spend the money to get the RE drives). If you want a power saver, go for a Caviar Green If you want more speed, then you're looking at setting up a RAID0, using a WD velociraptor, or using SSDs If you think that your planned useage fits with the functionality of this drive, then go for it! You won't regret it! -------------------Configs and Notes------------------ Workstation: ASUS DSEB-DG Server Board Dual Intel Xeon 52XX Dual Core CPUs (not a production chip) 8 GB FBDIMM ECC Memory (DDR2 800) WD Velociraptor 300 GB 10,000 RPM SATA2 PNY GTX 265 Creative X-Fi Sound Card Corsair 1000W Power Supply Thermaltake Armor Case Uses of Drive: Configuration 1 - Software RAID1 on Marvell Raid controller on ASUS DSEB-DG mainboard Configuration 2 - Hardware RAID1 on Synology DS 209 NAS Configuration 3 - Data drive on my main workstation (I sold its older brother) Config 1 notes - I discarded this usage because I was worried about my ability to rebuild the RAID array if a drive failed (or my motherboard). I had troubles building the array with the Marvel software, and was worried that in re-building I might lose all my data. Thus, I switched to a Synology DS 209 NAS Config 2 notes - these drives do NOT work well in a RAID1. Many have had this issue. Unfortunately I purchased mine AFTER WD changed the firmware to not allow RAID in their non-RE3 drives. Now, I've heard of a colleague successfully flashing the RE3 firmware onto this drive, but I have no idea how he did it. But, I simply purchased (2) Hitachi Deskstar 2TB drives for my NAS, and sold my second caviar black to a friend to subsidize the project (see my separate review of the hitachis) Config 3 Notes - Operating by itself (internal drive) is essentially what this was designed to do, and it does it well. The only con is the spool up mentioned - although it saves power, it takes about 15 seconds, which can be annoying Read more