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did extensive benchmark testing of this drive against competitor drives and concluded this drive "trails the older 750 GB Caviar WD7500AAKS [7200 RPM] by margins of 11%-17% when it comes to StorageReview's single-user performance tests." Regardless of how fast it actually spins, it underperforms Western Digital's 7200 RPM drives. If I had known it didn't come with a cable, I could have ordered one at the same time and saved time and shipping costs. Its minuscule power dissipation also translates into far less need for cooling which yields yet more acoustic benefit."Also, it does not come with a SATA cable. Western Digital's website says this drive features "IntelliPower" but does not specify a spin speed. I got the drive and discovered I could not install it until I bought a cable.
Most users would probably assume it is 7200 RPM, which is pretty much an industry standard, so it's a little misleading to simply not mention the spin rate. I have heard the drive changes speeds between 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM, but I have never seen Western Digital make that claim.[.]. However, it is also "the quietest drive we have ever measured and heard here at SR. You can get one from Best Buy for fifteen to twenty bucks, or you can get them online for under two dollars (you'll pay more for shipping than for the cable). This is not a 7200 RPM hard drive; the rotational speed of the drive is conveniently not given anywhere on the box, on the paperwork inside the box, or on the hard drive itself.
You have to click on Amazon's "See more technical details" link to see that it says 5400 RPM, but I'm not even sure if that's true. Most hard drives come with a cable, but this one does not and the description on Amazon does not mention that fact.
Simple to format and to use. Would buy one of these again. Drive arrived quickly and well-packaged. No complaints.
The setup was easy and the drive worked well for 5 days then died suddenly on 10/13/09. And I had double checked its power cable and SATA cable all works perfectly on the other drive.
But before that, please make sure it's reliable. I had put around 200 GB data on it and afraid they will be lost.
The problem is this WD Caviar drive. I would like a hard drive to be greener (consuming less power and quieter).
I installed this drive on 10/8/09 as the second disk on my dell e510 desktop. Everything was normal during these 5 days, the desktop was never moved, the power was on all time.
Fortunately I have the backup.My suggestion is to always backup your valuable data in two places at least.
Manual cloning offers many more options.The cloning process took about 20 minutes. Open the HD bay shroud, extract the two green rails and attach to the HD. Push into the bay, connect the power and data cables. If this is to be an additional drive, it is mandatory to purchase a SATA data cable. Click the clone operation, automatic option.
The software offers a choice of formatted drives to clone, and automatically selects the new "raw" drive as the destination. For now, though, I'd recommend this product without reservation. Note. Total time from opening the box to booting up the new drive with everything transferred, about 40 minutes.Speed and Noise of New Drive:I have not yet run comparison tests on the new equipment, but the "feel" is that the new drive loads the OS and other data just as quickly, if not more so, than the 10,000 RPM drive it replaced. Replace the shroud. The retail package contains the drive itself and a pack of four screws with some minimal documentation.
Cloning the Drive:With the original boot drive still in the computer, start the True Image Software. New drives are cheap, replacing the programs and data is not.Cabling and Software for the New Drive:Note. From the Microsoft Office applications to McAfee to Digital Security certificates, all was there and operating. The only thing different is the 854 GB of free space on the C: drive. I've temporarily left the old drive in place, so I have three SATA drives to play with, and there's probably a need for externals drives as backup.Conclusion:The drive is speedy, dead easy to install, and un-naturallyquiet.
After downloading free software from the Western Digital support site, and performing a software repair the disk appeared to function normally and passed all diagnostics. The cooling fan is louder.For the future: I'm not very technically proficient, so I'm going to need time to device a good data management and backup system. Dell Disk Diagnostics reported an Error Code 7 problem on the boot drive. If asked whether to format the new drive, skip the procedure.
I'm not a risk taker. It's so silent that one can forget its working. I'll update this later on with reliability information. With the free True Image software, it's everything I ever dreamed about in a Hard Drive.
A SATA boot drive must be connected to the lowest numbered enabled SATA connector. Simple data error or pending hardware failure.
The Dell is standard with power connections for 4 SATA drives so no worry there. The procedure should be similar in other units with SATA connectors.
After exiting setup, Windows booted normally, all of the installed programs were present and running without a problem, no reinstall of anything was required. The free WD version moves data from any drive to a WD drive (only).Installing in a Dell Dimension XPS Gen 3 BIOS version A07, running Windows XP Pro SP3:Easy and simple takes about 10 minutes.
Ordering Information:Order placed on Sept 26, 2009Shipped on Sept 26, 2009Delivered on Sept 28, 2009 (Amazon Prime)Intended Use:The initial use for this drive is to replace a Western Digital 74 GB boot drive on a Dimension XPS Gen 3 machine. The Western Digital site carries cables at moderate prices, and Radio Shack has one available in its stores for less than $10.00 (Part # 26-1142) You may want to downloaded from the WD site a copy of Acronis True Image (2009) software.
At the end I rebooted, went into setup and disabled the SATA port for the original boot drive.
Not recommended for people need fast I/O (video processing for example. But this model work like a charm. The drive is really silent and cool, i have this baby since july 2008 and for storage is a blessing. I want to build a NAS server and this drives were my 1st thought, just noticed that WD have new drives, Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS, those drives are 7200rpm with 32mb cache and still green.
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