WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS Hard Drive

Good buy

Strengths: Reliable, quiet, fast cache

Weakness: None

This is my second WD 500G drive. I added a second drive for media storage. The access time is fast. The drive is quiet. I've been using these drives for about 6 months and so far no problem found. Never got any error on routine drive scan. Sata set up is easy and windows XP recognizes the drive right away.

By samD1965 - Sep 21, 2008

very fast and easy

Strengths: 500 Gb, price, speed... and on and on

Weakness: this is the "bare drive" version, and it is just that. don't expect more that just the drive!

This drive arrived in a mf sealed plastic envelope, wrapped in bubble wrap, nested in a big box of peanuts. (excellent packaging!) The "bare drive" version is just exactly that. There were no screws, no documentation, not even an invoice in the box. (I didn't need those things, so it was no big deal.) I installed this drive in about 3 minutes. It appears to be perfect. I am upgrading from an 80...
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This drive arrived in a mf sealed plastic envelope, wrapped in bubble wrap, nested in a big box of peanuts. (excellent packaging!) The "bare drive" version is just exactly that. There were no screws, no documentation, not even an invoice in the box. (I didn't need those things, so it was no big deal.) I installed this drive in about 3 minutes. It appears to be perfect. I am upgrading from an 80 Gb (secondary) drive, so this is a big improvement for me! I ordererd this on the 10th, paid for 2-day shipping, and it arrived on the 12th. I could not be happier about the product, the price, or the service I received from mwave.com! A+++

By phd-mama; - Sep 12, 2007

Western Digital 500GB HDD great for everything

Strengths: 3 platter design Fast seek, read, and write times. It's S-ATA-300. Western Digital offers RMAs from most of the sellers on PriceGrabber free of cost

Weakness: Not optimized for RAID (simply put, more than 1 hard drive acting as a single drive)

This is a Western Digital hard drive. I've had other brands, and WD is one of the few brands that seem to survive the test of time. The write time for this model is 2 ms slower than the 5000ABYS model. However, the ABYS model is made for RAID.

All in all, an excellent hard drive, and should go well with my other two.

By psk0100786 - Jul 3, 2007

Great hard drive

Strengths: Fast, whisper-quiet, reasonably low power usage, 3 year warranty on OEM drives.

Weakness: Still has moving parts, like every other drive.

Western Digital drives have become the de-facto standard for quiet computing, with both low power usage (hence low heat dissipation) and excellent acoustics. The WD5000AAKS is a 3x166GB platter-design, which should improve on the already-excellent performance of the 4-platter WD5000KS. Western Digital's second generation SATA drives are fast and competitive in both price and features. Further,...
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Western Digital drives have become the de-facto standard for quiet computing, with both low power usage (hence low heat dissipation) and excellent acoustics. The WD5000AAKS is a 3x166GB platter-design, which should improve on the already-excellent performance of the 4-platter WD5000KS.

Western Digital's second generation SATA drives are fast and competitive in both price and features. Further, Western Digital still offers advance RMAs at no charge, unlike Seagate who at the time of writing charges for that service. Samsung drives are the only other ones I'd consider purchasing at the moment.

One thing to note is that Western Digital's website claims that they will only honor their 3-year warranty for OEM drives purchased from "authorized" vendors. That list can be found here: www.wdc.com/en/buy/whe.... It's not clear that they will refuse warranty for other drives, but caveat emptor.

By mfeingol - May 13, 2007

Great Hard Drive

Strengths: This drive is worth the money. I've always used WD and I am always happy with my purchase.

Weakness: Can't find a single one. It's a hard drive, what else do you want.

I recommend ordering from a retailer you trust and has a good warranty and return policy. And for those who are saying that they are losing HD space, try turning off system restore for that drive . But only if it is a secondary drive. Although I recommend leaving it on because you may need it one day.

By sbetts428 - Apr 29, 2007