WD_BLACK Western Digital 1TB WD Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD1003FZEX

Well, my last WD Black drive only lasted 2 years, but that's the nice thing about the 5-year warranty. I got this one as a mirror. The old drive started chattering loudly at 100% utilization during virus scans and backups about halfway through its short 2-year lifespan. One day it finally failed - first disconnected itself, and then when I reconnected, it appeared as "EMPTY." I first tried scandisk, and it fixed errors, but the disk now showed as full. I ran the free WD Diagnostics and it failed the short test, then on the long test, confirmed it had "too many bad sectors to recover." I read online to run chkdsk and do the full surface scan. It took 2 days to chug through the drive, but I got almost everything back. I had a backup drive copy, too, but I had a couple of things from that day that weren't backed-up...like my TurboTax file, which was almost complete (Murphy's law). I got back the most important files, bought this newer version of the same drive (the free replacement is now its mirror), and restored everything else from backup. This drive (and the replacement for my F1002 model) are running perfectly well, and I can't hear them over the fans, which is a nice change. I have one piece of advice when buying drives: get the highest rated drive with the longest warranty possible that you can afford. I got this one on sale. I thought about the 2TB or even 3TB versions, but I already have a 240GB SSD boot drive, and another 1GB drive (a Seagate that was a replacement for one that lasted 2 weeks - this one is a lucky one...I can tell :). Not to mention, 5TB of external drives, and a 3TB NAS, so why risk a bigger drive? Bottom line: good drive - fast, and quiet, and I sleep better with a 5yr warranty and a good backup!

I recently lost a PC, and am going through a technology upgrade cycle, and wanting to have data redundancy and convenient clones of hard drives to test under various scenarios (different PC's, docks, cloning hardware and software, OS's, etc.) So, I recently bought four of these (One from Amazon, and three from another PC vendor). All four worked as expected right out of the box, taking nearly a 1 TB of Windows 7 OS and user data from other PC's via various drive cloning processes, and then showing up as expected and letting me acess and update the data just fine. The drives seem to run reasonably cool, and are fairly quiet (considering I'm running them in external open SATA docks for now), and the speed is fine. Just what I'd expect from a modern WD drive. I don't take chances with my data, so am happy to pay the premium for the WD black technology and reputation vs., say the WD blue. I can't report on reliability/durability yet, since I've had these drives less than a week. If I have problems worth noting, I'll plan to post updates. In my experience (from memory), over the past 20+ years, I've had a LOT of experience with roughly 30 WD drives. All consumer drives, size ranging from about a GB to 4 TB. I've had only two problems. One was completely my fault. Back in the day when they sealed the drives with some kind of rubber gasket, I tore a small section of that removing a drive from a desktop case the first time. (Not a HW guy -- didn't know what I was doing). That drive crashed in a few days -- which again was COMPLETELY my fault as air (with hair, dust, etc) got in there for awhile. I had another drive start making noises and refusing to accept a full hard drive clone via Partition Magic version 8.X -- probably in the early 2000's. Again, not wanting to fool around with my data, I quit using that drive. The main reason I've stuck with WD is the drives seem to be very solid and perform consistently. I've use lots of both bare OEM and full retail kit WD drives, depending on prices/convenience.

2 years in still working great. It is a big noisy but fits all my games and files fine. Works with Windows and Linux (ext4 or btrfs)

In Nov. 2009, I bought a 650GB WD Black series HDD to replace a crashed disk. I specifically bought the Black series because of the marketing claims of better construction and reliability. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out to be true for me, since I had to buy this 1TB disk as a replacement just over 4 years later. Maybe I have high expectations, but a 4 year lifetime seems pretty poor. Luckily, I had installed an SSD as the boot drive a few months earlier, so the computer would boot and I could get email and use the internet to order a new HDD. I first noted the failure while I was running a backup - an obscure file couldn't be read. I deleted that file and tried again and more files were listed as corrupt. I ran chkdsk and it reported no problems as did the SMART ap. By the next morning, the disk was unusable. I reseated the SATA cables, swapped in new ones and change to a different power plug with no effect. I think the problem must have been in the electronics and not in the disk itself. Amazon got the new drive here in 2 days and it was decently packed. Installation was easy and restoration from a week old backup went smoothly. Of course recreating the week of lost work required a lot of time. The new 1TB drive seem fine, but it is still slow compared to an SSD. If you really want to improve your computing experience, buy one of those. But remember SSDs wear out (really) so make sure you back up your data so you don't lose everything. Of course HDDs fail too, so back those up frequently. I gave the drive 4 stars because I was not happy with the reliability of a previous product. Maybe in 10 years I will update this review and report excellent performance.

I have for my own uses pretty much come down to this: NO other drive, or other new drive, unless it is a WD drive. Yes, they are that reliable and that good... plus, the price is right.... as long as you buy them using a degree of wisdom. Buy the right type of drive(life & use), the right physical size of drive(fit), the right characteristic of the drive for the use intended(speed), and from the right store (price). This is one of the best internal drives that WD makes right now (IMHO). It is fast, not THE fastest, but fast; it has a good sized cash memory built into it (64 MB) to help with speed and processing, and does not cost too much either! Possibly, from what I have seen, right now.... this specific drive just may be the best bang for the buck that is out there! Some are faster, but require 3 or 4 times the money too! Some are larger too, and the same applies to cost. No one out there has a better or longer warrantee than WD drives do. WD does not "lavish" customer service on us, but they ARE there if you need them!! You just need to apply a bit of effort now and then to get it. Good people! How can you go wrong? Buy with confidence. Enjoy!

Working good after 1500 hours so far: smartctrl -a /dev/sdd: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 175 174 021 Pre-fail Always - 2250 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 246 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1446 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 106 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 247 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 111 103 000 Old_age Always - 32 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 user:~# sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sdd /dev/sdd: Timing cached reads: 7414 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3708.38 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 514 MB in 3.01 seconds = 171.04 MB/sec user:~#

I purchased this drive to replace a failing one on a relative's Windows-based system. I also used the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software, downloaded from the manufacturer's site to clone the old drive. I was half-way through the installation when I thought, "What if I were just a general consumer and not a computer geek?" In other words, what if my relative had ordered this drive and tried to replace the old one without calling me? It probably would not have gone well, as it arrives as just a drive in a box, with no documentation or hints of what to do. The documentation on the manufacturer's Web site is fair, but maybe not enough for an average person off the street. With that in mind ... The installation went very cleanly. I had a spare SATA cable handy, which I needed during the replacement, and a SATA power Y splitter, which I did not need in this case. Those items do not come with the drive: You will have to purchase those separately if you need them. You may also need to buy 4 drive screws, but I personally did not need them for this installation either. I was going to use different software to clone the failing drive, but decided to use the utility provided by the manufacturer on their Web site. I Read The Friendly Manual and it worked very efficiently. After cloning, I removed the old drive and rebooted with only the new one. Everything was fine. I did not run any extensive diagnostics, but this new drive is relatively fast and quiet with no obvious defects so far. That was just a day ago, so I will leave my rating at 5 stars for now. Other reviewers have had quality and return problems after a few months and have submitted lower ratings. Hopefully, years will go by and I won't hear about any problems. The manufacturer makes kits providing additional documentation, cables and such if you need them -- but for me this purchase was a good option.

This is an excellent choice in a 1TB drive. The performance is good for a small increase in price over other choices. I have used WD black drives in the past and have always found them to be reliable. The software to migrate from the old failing drive worked flawlessly. Bought one back in 2012, hasn't had a hiccup since. Needed more space so i got another one, and its been good so far. My desktop has had problems with over heating. As soon as I put the liquid cooling kit in, it was running like a dream. Keeps everything nice and cool even when I'm pushing it. The design is also very compact so it doesn't take up too much room in your tower. Product Information: For the creators, the gamers and those that demand the best, we delivered the next generation of hard drives to enlarge your PC playground. The latest WD Black desktop hard drives offer enhanced features that maximize system performance, allowing you to spend more time doing what you love most and less time waiting. WD Black is designed to intensify your PC experience with generous capacity and incredible performance, pushing the boundaries of personalization.