First, this is a state of the art, newly introduced drive from WDC. In my opinion it is the best general-use drive you can get at this price point.
Prior to my purchase, I read several negative reviews from prior customers who voiced dissatisfaction with Amazon's packaging of OEM drives. Any chance of damage in shipping would indeed be reason to shop elsewhere for such a sensitive item, but on one such page of ranting and frustration I saw a note from Amazon that they had recently addressed these concerns, so I proceeded to order the drive.
Here's the latest and I hope final word on this issue: Problem solved. The drive arrives sealed in an anti-static bag, secured by two end-mounted shock absorbing plastic caddies, then double-boxed with the usual sealed air padding. The redundant packing system appears to be well-designed and the drive has been working like a champ.
So buy with confidence and kudos to Amazon for responding to customer reviews and ensuring appropriate, safe packaging for this product. Western Digital WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA 6 GB/S 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 3.5-Inch Desktop Hard Drive
I've been using Western Digital hard drives since getting into computers in 1998. In fact I've never owned anything but WD hard drives (from 4.3gig to 1TB). In all my years of using them I've only had 2 go bad, though they never "completely" failed. This speaks of Western Digital's consistency in reliability.
With that said I love the Caviar Blacks and have 3 of them in my system - 500, 750, and now the new 1TB SATA 3 (64Meg cache).
While there is a noticeable speed gain over my previous 1TB Caviar Black (32Meg), the previous version was/is extremely quiet! This new SATA 3 drive is LOUD! It sounds like a percolating coffee pot at its highest boiling point, especially during boot-up or accessing files. Very annoying, especially if it's the noisiest part of your system!
I just put an i7 system in a Cooler Master HAF X case which has 4 fans - 1 Front bottom 230mm 700RPM 19dBA (Red LED), 1 Top 200mm 7000RPM 19dBA, 1 Rear 140mm 1200RPM 19dBA. My Noctua CPU cooler fan tops out at 1200RPM load at 19dBA as well. At idle my ATI 4890 video card fan runs around 27 percent, making it in-audible above the other fans.
My point.... My case is extremely quiet.... Save for WD's new Caviar Black SATA 3 HD!!! Because of this I'm seriously considering going back to my previous 1TB 32meg cache Caviar Black HD.
BTW this is a replacement drive as I thought the first drive was faulty due to the same noise. With that I called Western Digital about this issue.... and to make a long story short, they say this is normal and that drive wasn't designed with noise in mind, that if you want a "quieter" drive, get the Caviar Blue.
Make of that what you will....
All I know is that the older 32mge cache Caviar Black drives ARE quieter than their 64meg cache cousins.
Those looking for quieter WD drives might consider looking elsewhere (Blue or Green series) if noise is a factor over speed.
4 stars.
Edit. Went back to my previous drive because of the noise. If you want a caviar black that's quiet, go with the 1FALS (32meg) vs the 2FAEX (64meg)
Amazon's product review of this product is incorrect. This is not an Advanced Format drive as stated. "WD Advanced Format technology increases media format efficiency, thus enabling larger drive capacities. WD Advanced Format drives are specifically optimized for Mac and the latest Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista and Windows 7"
The advanced format is only available currently on the "Caviar GREEN drives" All "BLACK" drives are 512kb sector drives not 4k. Check description on Western Digitals web site using product WD1002FAEX or under Caviar Black drive description. I confirmed this via WD tech support.
In the future, WD and other manufactures will be going to 4k sector drives.
Having said that, this appears to be a nice drive. You might see some speed increase due to 64mb cache but not from SATA 6Gb transfer, no drive can read/write that speed. 5 year warranty, 1tb capacity, makes a nice boot drive. I will purchase a "Green" drive as a data and back-up drive for less heat, noise, and power consumption.
I purchased this from Amazon and I ordered the factory packaged drive, not the bare, less packaging drive, and I'm glad I did. The package shipped via UPS arrived smashed in on one end on the outer box. Had this been the minimal packaging I think the drive would have been damaged. Amazon needs to fully wrap shipments in better protective packages to survive transport.
I erased, zeroed and reformatted this drive to use in a MacPro. For Mac boot drives, do not use as it comes, reformat to Apple Partition Map(APM) journaled for PowerPC (G3,G4,G5) and as GUID journaled for all Intel Macs. Time Machine likes GUID, but you do not need to journal if using only for back-up or data storage. Western Digitals web-site gets this wrong as well, and says to use APM for Intel Macs. Intel macs will not boot from APM drives, but can read/write to them.
Hope Amazon corrects the product description.
Hope WD corrects knowledge base on partition/format for Macs. - Wd - Sata - Hard Drive - 1 Tb'
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