Western Digital 2TB WD Blue Mobile Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 128 MB Cache, 2.5" - WD20SPZX

I gave this drive to someone as a gift, and they've been using it for backups for 10 months without issue. My review is based on another unit of this drive which I bought for myself some months later. I've been using it as my primary desktop OS/programs drive since 5/29/2014, so it's about 5 months now. There have been no problems thus far. It's really quite a bargain for desktop use if 1TB is all you need. The actual capacity of this drive is 931.5GB. That's an old marketing trick which can be blamed for the pointless redefinition of all our real, long established data measurements with those silly "i" characters. I won't dwell on it any further, but 931GB is the true capacity when measured in base 2, as all data is correctly measured. This 1TB Blue drive uses a single 1TB platter spinning at 7200rpm. There are 2 heads (each side is 500GB). A single platter design is usually better for reliability than having multiple smaller platters, because there are fewer points of failure, the assembly is lighter, the motor doesn't have to work as hard, and less heat is generated. Single platter drives will also tend to be quieter, but due to my configuration I can't judge the noise level. There has been much discussion and testing among users in online forums, including WD's forum, which repeatedly show that the 1TB Blue and 1TB Black perform the same. It appears the only benefit of the 1TB Black is a longer warranty. Some Blacks are faster than this drive, but the 1TB model is not. Compared to a Green, the Blue is faster owing to it's faster rotation speed. The Green drives also have an "intellipark" feature which causes them to keep parking the heads after a few seconds of inactivity. This can cause laggy response and extra wear. I dislike that design - I believe power management functions should be left under the control of the operating system, which can account for user preferences and what is happening in the rest of the system. Hardcoding this behavior into the drive is ridiculous, in my opinion. The Blue behaves the way I prefer - it does not use "intellipark", it stays ready to roll until directed otherwise through power management commands from the OS. I wish they were making the Blue series in larger sizes - it seems this 1TB is the end of the line. I don't care for the Greens and the Blacks are more expensive. Partition/Sector Alignment -------------------------------- Please be aware that like most modern drives, this drive uses 4KB sectors (also known as "advanced format"). If you are using Windows 2003, Windows XP or older, as I am, don't let Windows handle the partitioning of this drive. This is even an issue on unpatched versions of Vista and Windows 7. These older versions of Windows will believe that the physical sectors are 512 bytes, when in reality they are 4KB. As a result, the partition(s) will not be aligned with the physical sectors. It will still work, but performance will be reduced. Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP and older do not have any update to fix this, but it's not a problem as long as you do the partitioning with a suitable 3rd party utility. I think Western Digital offers a tool for this, but I've never tried it. Once the partitions are set, it's fine to let Windows format them. For my Windows XP install, I used a recent version of GParted to partition the drive. GParted can be downloaded and burned to a bootable CD, or installed to a USB flash drive. Just use the option to align your partition(s) on 1MB boundaries. This is the easy way to ensure they are aligned correctly for the best performance. Then boot your WinXP install disc and let it format the partition that you already created. It sounds harder than it is, it's a minor hassle but it's simple. If you ever change the partitions, once again use GParted or a similar utility that handles alignment for modern hard disks. Don't use the built-in XP partitioning. But again, once the partitions are created, it's fine to let Windows format them. The built-in partitioning is fixed in Windows 8. According to Microsoft, it is fixed in Windows 7 after installing Service Pack 1 - you would need to have that service pack before partitioning the drive, not after. Again according to Microsoft, it is also fixed in Windows Vista *after* installing update MS KB 2553708 - I assume this is automatically installed for people who use automatic updates, but I don't know that for a fact. This won't do you any good if you're doing a fresh install and your install disc predates the required update. The partition alignment detail I've described above is an issue you will encounter with any recent hard drive, it's not unique to this model. If you ignore it, performance will be affected but it will still work. You may see Seagate drives implying that they are immune from this, but in reality, they are not. All modern "advanced format" drives, of any brand, will perform better if sectors are properly aligned. But it's not a big deal - just use a modern partitioning utility and then you're set. ---------------------- I just tested this drive using "Roadkil's Disk Speed" on Windows XP 32-bit. I'll cut out all the variables and just give the linear transfer results with large block sizes. My drive has a few partitions and there are lots of files on it, so this might affect results. First partition (first 20GB): 170-178MB/sec linear read 3rd partition (physical location range is from 28-628GB): 153-177MB/sec linear read Last 300GB is unpartitioned so I can't test that range. I don't think the random access test is useful, because my partitioning greatly influences the result. There's a test mode for the whole physical disk, but it's results are too inconsistent. This drive is a great bargain if you just need a simple, inexpensive, well performing 7200rpm hard disk. I was tempted to try a Seagate SSHD, but I couldn't justify the cost compared to this. If I was shopping today, I'd look carefully at the HGST and Toshiba offerings as well, but from the WD side this is my pick for a general purpose 1TB desktop drive. Update: It is now 11/2015. This drive is in my desktop PC, used daily, and still works fine. Some months ago I ran a benchmark on this drive using the linux utility "gnome-disks". The random access performance measured out to a 15.7ms average. This is mediocre, but expected from a quiet drive. Screenshot is attached. It also shows the transfer rate across the disk (read test only, I didn't test writes).

This Western Digital hard drive truly stands out as an excellent product, providing outstanding value that perfectly matches its price point. The ease of installation was remarkable; it was a truly fantastic purchase, as the entire process was incredibly straightforward and user-friendly. Furthermore, the price is exceptionally competitive and hard to beat, solidifying its position as an outstanding choice for anyone seeking a dependable and affordable storage solution to meet their computer's needs. I wholeheartedly recommend this hard drive; it's an excellent option.

These gems slipped right into our network drive and took off without a hitch. Easy to install, and has functioned well the past few months. There is the typical low drive-head seeking noise in the background, but nothing unusual or that noticeable. WD has been known to be a well made durable product and its price point was just perfect for the money.

They were sealed in their package and new. Being WD I'm sure they'll be great otherwise. These are for replacement system drives as I always keep the operating system on one drive and have a seperate storage drive for everything we want to keep long term. That helps protect important data better. If a drive is going to go down, most usually it is the one that is working all the time....the system drive. If you just back that up every so often and don't store important stuff there, it's a hassle but not a total catastrophe. I just had to hijack a spare out of my system for my son's computer as his system drive finally went south. So now I have these as the ones we are working on now have alot of age on them- and when they throw a snit fit...no problem...we'll just throw the backups on these and we'll be back running again. I always implicity trust Western Digital for solid, durable hard drives....all the time. All my really important drives here are, in fact, WD drives. Stability and quality matters when you're talking about info you want to keep a lifetime.

Excelente transferencia de datos, rápido, silencioso, ligero, hasta pensé que era un SSD, lamentablemente lo compré a un precio caro, después lo pusieron casi 1000 pesos más barato, así que verifica bien el precio antes de comprar, fuera de eso, gran producto

DHL bezorging in de dozen pers geweest Uw eigen bezorgdienst is wel begaan met uw spullen en netjes

Die Lieferung der Platte erfolgte in einem verschweißten antistatischen Beutel und auf der Platte war nicht mal eine Partitionstabelle angelegt. Ich würde daher vermuten dass ich Neuware erhalten habe. Ich habe die Festplatte als Ersatz für die 1TB Festplatte meines Laptops gekauft, da der Speicher langsam knapp wird. Ehrlich gesagt bin ich doch immer wieder erstaunt darüber wie viele Daten in ein kleines Volumen passen. XD Die Festplatte kommt einem wirklich winzig vor wenn man sie in der Hand hält was auch mit der geringen Dicke von gerade einmal 7mm zu tun hat. Beim Beschreiben erreiche ich eine Geschwindigkeit von circa 120 MB/s über einen USB 3 zu SATA Adapter. Ich schätze die Lesegeschwindigkeit leigt deutlich darüber konnte das aber noch nicht testen. Von der Geräuschentwicklung her ist die Platte auch super. Ehrlich gesagt kann ich die Platte neben dem Lüfter meines Laptops gar nicht wahrnehmen obwohl der Lüfter nur im Normalbetrieb läuft, also muss die Platte ziemlich leise sein. XD Für genauere Geräuschmessungen fehlt mir allerdings das Equipment. Langzeit Erfahrungen kommmen dann natürlich auch erst später, aber bisher hatte ich keinerlei Probleme mit dem Platten von WD obwohl sämtliche meiner Geräte mit solchen ausgestattet sind. Die älteste Platte die ich habe hat schon über 10 Jahre hinter sich und tut noch immer genau das was sie soll, also schätze ich dass ich von WD auch weiterhin gute Qualität erwarten kann. Alles in allem daher ein Top-Produkt!

I have have been using WD external storage drive which easily swayed me to choose it for internal storage as well. The performance is good and optimal read/write operation speed

Before installing and replacing my old hard drive with this one, I ran some tests. The hard drive is truly new and in perfect condition, no cosmetic and no internal damage was pressent when it came. I ran a speed test and it was quite a good speed for a hard drive. The noise level is very low, the hard drive can be very slightly heard when it is on heavy load. I am very happy with this product since no faults have occurred so far and the quality it came in. I did try to register the warranty for this product on Western Digital official website but it said that the product was already registered but I wouldn't worry about that because I believe it's due to the fact that Amazon takes care of any problems relating the warranty. I do recommend to buy this hard drive.