Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATAIII 6Gb/s 16MB Cache 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive OEM

Had the drive working for One week now in a new build Computer. Performs well, Its Sata 3 so read and write times are good. Is faster than Sata 2 but not spectacularly faster In real world use I find, the data speed within the computer is also affected by what chipset you're motherboard has and what CPU you have. The drive is quite compared to some I've had in the past. Has the jumpers on the back which are used for limiting the speed from 6Gbps to 3Gbps and/or using the PUIS (power up in standby) mode, handy if you have a large raid array to save on power depending on motherboard compatibility and raid type. So overall a good hard drive, quite and for what you get a good price, would buy again for any more new builds in the near future. Any problems with the drive and I will update this review. PS, Two good tips when handling hard drives, always wear a anti-static wrist band if you have one, and once you've taken the hard drive out of the anti-static bag, don't put it back on top of it. The bag is only anti-static on the inside, not the outside.

After my main hard drive blew on me a couple of months ago, I was left with a decision to make: new computer or replace the drive. Being a bit strapped of cash, I went with the latter and found this little beauty at under £50! It says on the WD website that this is for 'everyday computing' (they may have worded it slightly differently but I took it to mean light to moderate pc use. It is coping fine with me adding more software to it dail, and it responds quickly to opening files and programmes. I also love a bit of gaming (not the high end 3D type stuff, but Sims 3 with expansion packs a-plenty) and photo and video editing. I have thousands of songs, photos, video clips and even a handful of full movies on here. None of this seems to phase the new hard drive, and there is still loads of space left for storing future projects. My computer is back to its old self - I might even say better than it's old self. I recommend this product absolutely.

There isn't really much to be said about this drive. I bought it to work along side my SSD which houses all my essential programs and the OS. This drive is fast, quiet and hopefully reliable (Western Digital are well know for quality). Basically it does exactly what you want it to do. If you're concerned about the "OEM" thing I can tell you that the drive works perfectly well. The only issue we might have with this drive is the warranty if it breaks down. I'm not entirely sure how OEM licenses work so there might be some issues there. The reason I haven't given it 5 stars is because of the packaging. The drive comes in the standard anti-static bag which is fine but then it just sits in a cardboard box. There is no padding in the box and no form of shock protection. I had this item delivered by special delivery so it was perfectly fine when it got to me but if you have it delivered by standard class I can see it getting bashed around. PS: If this is the first internal drive you have bought then it can be worrying when it doesn't show up right away in my computer when you plug it in to the SATA port. You need to go in to your disk manager and make the partition volume yourself. Basically it's a great drive especially considering the price.

After a hard drive failure in my 2007 iMac there was a big decision to make as to whether go for a new internal or external drive. I knew fitting a new one was not going to be a simple job, but decided it would be worth the effort. Ordered the Western Digital as it was already the make that was in the machine so seemed the right choice and the price on Amazon was incredible (as I had been quoted £200 by an Apple store for drive & fitting!). The drive arrived next day, safe and soundly packaged. Now, it's not a quick or easy job to fit a new drive into the iMac but with two people and a set of torx screwdrivers (bought for £12 from a certain high street car supply store (beginning with H & ending in FORDS!)). Find an online guide - there are plenty around - and TAKE YOUR TIME. All in all it took about an hour and a half to change the drive but that did include a trip to the shop and a darn good clean of all the dust inside. Good idea to have a can of compressed air and a hoover to hand. The drive is lovely and quiet & I now have lots more storage than I did before. Formatted easily once inside and now begins the job of installing all the software again (really must do back ups from now on!) 5 stars all round.

This drive is identical to the drive supplied with my new Dell workstation and I wanted it to make a bootable Clone so that if the first drive ever fails I can simply swap this in and be back in business immediately. The Western Digital website has a free Acronis software download for use with WD discs and I was very easily able to make my clone using this. The disc arrived extremely well packaged in a wrap-around foam lined box. It is very quiet in operation, runs nice and cool and gives good transfer speeds as I know from the one in my workstation. I trust Western Digital over any other disc manufacturer and I'm very happy with this purchase for what I consider a sensible price. Dave.

It's not bothering me much, the health check came back fine, it didn't really help much that I was kind of mistreating it a little when I was installing it, the case is a little stiff still, so that could be down to me. Read/write speed is impressive from what I can observe, it doesn't take that long to install software onto it or copy files into. always a plus, runs quiet other than my issues, and it's not very warm either. I like it a lot, but I've always been a fan of Western Digital. Quite a hefty drive, and the quality is there. definitely, hopefully it will serve for years to come!

I am a dinosaur! My disk drive failed the other day. The data is still on it but it is stuck in a RAW state (technicalities). I need a similar drive to clone my old drive to (the data is backed up but I would still like to clone the drive). Can I go to a shop anymore? No! I am forced to order what is a delicate mechanical device on-line. The sellers might be gentle but you can bet that once it has been kicked around a sorting office and delivery van it is 50/50 whether it will work. Mine didn't. Despite mediocre package it arrived with a dented case, that takes some force! (Take it from me who tries smashing these things with a sledge hammer when they are end of life, they are tough beasts). When attached to a PC it ticks loudly like a grandfather clock, will not format and is not recognised by WD SMART software and is stuck in RAW. In yesteryear I could go to a local PC component retailer and buy a disk at least under the illusion that they have just lifted it gently from a shelf before giving it to me! Bottom line is item did not work. Bottom, bottom line is I've ordered another one on-line from a different seller. Here's hoping!

Hello, After looking at many hard drives on Amazon there where cheaper ones and "green drives" but after some research I decided to get a more expensive one and I am glad I made that choice. The drive installed the OS no problem and boots up fine, although I am going to be getting an SSD shortly and use this drive for my main files. I believe hard drives only have another few more years before SSDs will be the main drive. If you are looking for a hard drive I recommend buying this one, I will be buying more in the future to RAID my current one. Thank you

Disk was as advertised, but disappointed to find it was 10 years old.

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.

Necesitaba remplazar mi disco duro original WD del 2007 (también Caviar blue) de un Dell Dimension 9200 y ni en la pagina web de Dell me podían decir si este era SATA I o II. Me he atrevido a instalar este WD Caviar blue SATA III temiéndome lo peor en cuanto a compatibilidad. Todo ha ido bien. He reinstalado en él Windows 7 y los demás programas que tenía y no ha tenido ni un fallo. No hace nada de ruido y creo que es mas rápido que mi antiguo disco duro (estropeado). Estoy muy contento, y animo a los que se encuentren en una situación como la mía (ordenador anticuado) se animen con este disco. Yo me acabo de ahorrar comprarme otro ordenador.

IMBALLAGGIO: L'imballaggio perfetto per la cura del prodotto, imballato esternamente da del pluriball e da una bustina di plastica. CONSEGNA La consegna è stata velocissima e senza nessun problema e inoltre come detto precedentemente l'imballaggio è ottimo. PRODOTTO: Ho comprato questo prodotto per un intenso utilizzo e per aver delle performance che non tutti riescono a fornire. E' un Hard Disk molto veloce e anche molto professionale. Io consiglio principalmente quello da 1 tb per chi non deve effettuare grandi lavori con quest'ultimo perché ha il migliore rapporto velocità-archiviazione mentre per chi ha bisogno di una grande archiviazione ci sono gli altri modelli che hanno un'archiviazione da 1 tb fino a 6 tb. DIFETTI: IN quest'ultimo aspetto è perfetto, non ho mai riscontrato nessun problema anche avendolo da poco più di un anno.

Win xp : Mi pc - Administrar- Almacenamiento - Administración de discos.