Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD5000AAKX

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 1 x 4 x 5.8 inches ; 15.8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00461G3MS
• Item model number: WD5000AAKX
  

By : Western Digital
Price : $79.99
You Save : $20.00 (20%)

Product Description

Size: 500 GB
From the Manufacturer
WD Caviar Blue Hard Drives – Value and reliability for everyday computing.
WD Caviar Blue SATA hard drives deliver solid performance and reliability making them a perfect solution for both family and business computing.
Why you should choose WD Caviar Blue:
A wide array of capacities, cache sizes, and interfaces means there's a WD Caviar Blue hard drive that's just right for you. And because it's from WD, you'll have the confidence in knowing you've selected a drive that's truly world-class.
The original.These drives are built utilizing the proven technology of the original award-winning WD Caviar 3.5-inch hard drives for desktop computers.
Value.Built to the highest standards of quality and reliability, these drives offer features and capacity at an affordable price.
Ample capacity.Store up to 500 GB of photos, videos, music and files.
Features at a glance

• 500 GB of desktop storage
• SATA 6 Gb/s interface
• WD quality and reliability

Ideal for:

• Family and business computing
• Adding storage in desktop PCs or external drives
• Adding extra storage space for photos, videos and music

Features:
SATA 6 Gb/s interface - Twice the interface speed with backwards compatibility to legacy SATA standards.
Cool operation - WD continues to develop new and innovative ways to keep drives cool while they are operating which helps protect the drive and the data stored on it.
Compatible - We perform tests on hundreds of systems and a multitude of platforms in our FIT Lab to give our customers confidence that our drives will work in their systems.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
Desktop / Consumer RAID environments - WD Caviar Blue Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications. (RAID-0 / RAID-1)
Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Blue Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.
Upgrading your drive is easy - WD Acronis TrueImage, available as a free download on the WD Support site, enables you to copy all your data to a new drive so you don't have to reinstall your operating system to get all the benefits of a new drive. Note: Bare drive does not include any cables or mounting hardware.
The WD advantage - WD puts our products through extensive Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) prior to any product launch. On average, each new product goes through 600,000 hours of testing. WD also has a detailed Knowledge Base with more than 1,000 helpful articles. You can also call toll-free support 7 days per week in the U.S. and Canada. See the WD Support site for full details.

WD-certified packaging - All WD drives purchased from Amazon.com are shipped in WD-certified hard drive packaging. It is designed and fully tested to provide WD products with the highest of safety while in transit. With WD-certified packaging, you can rest assured that your WD hard drive will arrive safely, fully protected, non-descript, easy-open package.
CompatibilityWorks with Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000, Mac and Linux operating systems.
You might also consider:
3.5-inch InternalComparison Chart
WD Caviar Blue
WD Caviar Green
WD Caviar Black
WD VelociRaptor
Value and reliabilityfor every day computing.
Cool, quiet.
Maximum performancefor power computing.
The fastest SATA hard driveon the planet.
80 GB – 1 TB
320 GB – 3 TB
500 GB – 2 TB
150 GB – 600 GB

Western Digital 500 GB Sata 6.0 Gb-s 16 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare-oem Drives WD5000AAKX

 

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD5000AAKX

 

Technical Details

• WD Caviar Blue hard drives have a multitude of features to deliver rock solid performance and ultra-cool and quiet operation.
• 3rd generation SATA interface for 6 GB/s maximum data transfer rates.
• WhisperDrive technology minimizes noise to levels near the threshold of human hearing.
• 500 GB capacity holds up to 100,000 digital photos, 125,000 MP3 files, and 60 hours of HD video.
• Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging
• 3rd generation SATA interface for 6 GB/s maximum data transfer rates
• 500 GB capacity holds up to 100,000 digital photos, 125,000 MP3 files, and 60 hours of HD video
• WD Caviar Blue hard drives have a multitude of features to deliver rock solid performance and ultra-cool and quiet operation
• WhisperDrive technology minimizes noise to levels near the threshold of human hearing

Customer Reviews

My use for these drives is to replace a couple of aging five year old 80GB drives in Windows XP and XP Media Center machines. Those drives are still running fine, however, for the price, I had absolutely no reason not to upgrade them at this time.
I came across this drive middle of last week and Amazon was selling it new for $29 - I was scratching my head thinking "what's the deal" and "what's wrong with these drives"? Sure, even though they were above $25, Amazon was still charging for the shipping - so I took two to bring the per drive shipping down slightly. The old 3Gb version of this drive was selling for over $40 - so again, scratching my head about this. Maybe it was a pricing mistake? Whatever - it was a great price.
The drives arrived yesterday, same standard OEM packaging all of my six other WD drives have come in over the past 9 months. I used Clonezilla to clone the old drives on to the new, it went smoothly without any issues. I'm storing the old drives just in case these new ones have any issues I won't have to rebuild the system drives from scratch.
I know that the motherboards in my machines cannot make use of the 6Gb throughput, however, these drives are definitely faster than what they're replacing - older WD drives which indicate they are 7200RPM and 3Gb. Specs on the older drives indicate performance shouldn't be all that different, but it is, and for the better. I won't question it.
The drive indicates you can jumper pins 5 and 6 to limit it to 3Gb, but I didn't understand the benefit of doing it, so I left it unjumpered and it's working well.
To summarize - these drives are fast, quiet, and so far are performing excellently. I'm very happy with them thus far.

It's a bare hard drive that arrived quickly from Amazon and well-packaged. I replaced a 500GB WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS with this WD Caviar Blue WD10EALX as the primary drive in an HP i7 desktop. This drive and the old WD drive show basically identical CrystalMark results, but it does seem to load programs and boot faster (I restored an image of the old installation to the new disk, so everything else is the same). CrystalMark shows that it outperforms the Green series drives I own by 20-30%.
I was looking at the WD Caviar Black drives, and saw some reviews that said they are loud, so I went for this one, which is advertised as quieter and cooler than the Black series and insignificantly slower than a Black. I don't have a Black series to compare to, but the WD10EALX is definitely louder than the 500GB Blue version, and also louder than 1TB and 2TB WD Green drives that I own. It's not LOUD, but it is louder than those other drives. It has the normal disk seek sound which is not annoying, but present in the same way the computer fan noise is present. If you are going for the ultimate in quiet, then this isn't it.
If you want to compare this to Seagate, then it is a 300 star product. I used to be a Seagate customer as their price/performance ratio seemed great. I got hosed by Seagate with a 1.5TB drive, the same one that everyone else got hosed on. They offered to recover my data for $900. I told them to stuff it and I only buy WD and other brands now. My plan is to use this drive a year or so and replace with SSD, demoting this one to backup. I'd probably try another brand at this price point if I had to buy another 7200RPM 1TB drive, but I am not disappointed in my purchase, just underwhelmed by the performance. It is advertised as being quiet and fast, but it is not quieter nor faster than the disk it replaces, hence the relatively low rating and minor disappointment.

 

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD5000AAKX