Western Digital Caviar Blue 400 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD4000AAKS Review

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(More customer reviews)THE QUICK TAKE:The WD10EARS is a new (shipping 12-2009) version of Western Digital's popular and successful WDxxEADS Caviar Green series of drives.It's a very good drive, but may need more thought than usual about whether it's the right drive for you.

The Caviar Green drives offer low power consumption, low noise and moderate operating temperatures, while still maintaining performace good enough for many applications, such as networked storage.This new WDxxEARS series uses more dense 500GB platters - so a 1TB drive has just two platters, and several drives up to 2TB are available.The new models have 64MB of cache.

ADVANCED FORMAT:There's another change as well.WD is using this series to transition to 4KB sectors on the hard drive; they call it WD Advanced Format technology.The long-term goal is to improve the efficiency of large hard drives, but as a transitional move they still trying to accomodate the 512B sectors that Windows XP uses.So the drive emulates that, using 512B logical sectors.However, they still claim that Advanced Format provides an improvement in burst speeds.

ISSUES WITH XP:While that sounds like all good news, it turns out that many XP users need to use the WD Align software to setup the drive, which can be time consuming and create some potential issues in formatting and partitioning the drive, and in finding tools to do that.

The exception is if you are using a single partition for a clean install - then there is an option to set a jumper on the drive before installing.WD has a table which summarizes installation at their "Advanced Format Hard Drive Download Utility" web page - anyone buying this drive should be sure to review that page.

So less technical users may want to believe WD when they say "WD Advanced Format drives are specifically optimized for Mac and the latest Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista and Windows 7." This drive might not a good choice for some XP users - you'll be fine with the tried and true EADS series.

VISTA AND WINDOWS 7:Further, cloning and partitioning tools might present issues with Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well.You can read more about the AF transition at the WD web page mentioned above in the AnandTech article, "Western Digital's Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins."They note that as of 12-2009 there might not be any commercially available cloning and imaging tools that would work with these drives.

LINUX AND MAC:The Anandtech article also states that current versions of Linux and Mac OS X are not affected by issues with Advanced Format, but discussions online suggest that Linux users seem to face some complexities on how to best partition and format to avoid mis-alignment.

OTHER INFO:The WD site has a good whitepaper on Advanced Format. Tom's Hardware has a good discussion about the earlier EADS series in an article entitled "Caviar Green, WD10EADS, And 1 TB," with power and performance info; and some interesting points if you Google "Pros And Cons Of Going Green."

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Product Description:
Item #: 88056C. WD Caviar SE16 native SATA hard drive features 16 MB cache for lightning-fast performance. This reliable drive is fast, but still delivers technologically advanced acoustics and cool operation.
Product Description
WD Caviar SE16 WD4000AAKS - hard drive - 400 GB - SATA-300
Type: Hard drive - internal
Form Factor: 3.5" x 1/3H
Dimensions (WxDxH): 4 in x 5.8 in x 1 in
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Capacity: 400 GB
Interface Type: Serial ATA-300
Data Transfer Rate: 300 MBps
Average Seek Time: 8.9 ms
Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm
Buffer Size: 16 MB
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 years warranty
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