Western Digital WD5003AZEX Black 500 GB Performance Hard Drive

I've had many makes of hard drive over the years but seem to migrate towards Western Digital as a preference. They are generally quiet and reliable, certainly I have never had one fail and indeed one I own is now a grand 9 years old and still going strong (obviously no sensitive data stored on it any more!)I replaced a "Blue Caviar" drive with this item which is the faster "Black". It features double the processing power on the built-in controller and is consequently much quicker to grab and write data. An added bonus is that it also runs more coolly. The previous "Blue" ran at an average 29-30c whereas the "Black" is running at about 26c. Over time too much heat kills electronics so this is good.In operation the drive is as quiet as the "Blue" and once up to operating speed can rarely be heard. My personal advice would be to use some kind of rubber washer mountings in your case just to insulate the drive further. It doesn't need it but will benefit from it.The only bad thing about this purchase was the packaging. It wasn't the lovely foam-padded box in the product photos. Mine came in an OEM cardboard box - no Amazon outer at all - held in place within the box by two rigid plastic inserts. Luckily the drive doesn't seem to have suffered but it caused me great concern when it arrived. I would happily pay just a little more for the Amazon card outer of old or for some of that foam.

I think its time to make a review about the HDD!.This was very expensive but this HDD was the perfect fit for my needs and for my build, For my experience for this HDD that sometimes i can hear it spinning, I have never used this HDD for gaming and Windows 7 is on my SSD so i cant really say if its fast with Windows 7 or for gaming because i have Windows 7 and some of my games on my SSD, This HDD was for more space just in case my SSD was filling up too fast.I only give this 4/5 because sometimes i can hear it spinning!

Western Digital Black - 500GB Desktop SATA Hard Drive - OEMUsing this in a caddy as i filled a previous drive ..Caddy does not have a fan but didn't even get warm while moving over nearly 300gb ..i always use WD raptor 10,000rpm usually.. but in this case i went with the black for stability and low heat for an external 2nd back up .. its slightly more expensive .. but if you want reliability .. you pay a little extra right. Packaging was acceptable .. delivery time was a day quicker than stated .. Thankyou

Bought three of these. Wish I'd bought all hard drives from Western Digital from the start.Not 5 stars 'cos you always want it to be faster ! Very good value.

I chose this hard drive because it scored very highly on benchmarks. I was not disappointed. I'm running Windows 7 with an average amount of programmes on start-up. My pc boots to a use-able desktop in 14 seconds.One problem, the packaging needs some attention. It came in a box no bigger than the hdd itself with no additional packaging to cushion it from knocks. It could have been so easily rendered useless during transit.

Cloned my Hackintosh drive onto this earlier, and it seems to be running fine. I've already got one with OS X Yosemite installed on it which I'm using with a Hot Swap tray, and a WD external hard drive for storage. WD drives seem to be very well made, I've had no problems at all with any of them so far.

Desktop replacement for 300g original

Just from the weight of the drive i could tell it was going to be good quality, felt very solid and sturdy. Should last a good few years! performs very well too - not as well as an SSD, but for the price this is definitely the way to go. I'd rather spend a little more on a drive tha'll last years, so this is perfect