Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Pros: I've heard the stories that they fail. I believe it happened to people. I'm not saying it can't happen to me. But so far, so good -- never had a WDC drive fail on me and I've been building since 1995 and always bought WDC. I owned this one for 4 years and 4 months exactly, and so far, still ticking without a hitch. If it dies tomorrow, I would be very embarassed about giving it 5 eggs, but it seems to be on par with the good WDC quality I have always witnessed.

For desktop computing and gaming, access time seems plenty fine. Even with a lot of disk operations (I'm talking about EXTREME loads here) from many programs at once it doesn't take too long to clear up.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I recently purchased 3x of the similar WD5000AAKX from NewEgg which for the most part appears very similar to this one. As far as I know, the only difference is its a SATA 6.0Gb/s instead of a 3. I hope I have a positive experience with those as well. Never know about a drive though until its been used :)

Pros: I got it at a cheap sale price

Cons: It one day stalled at Verify DMI pool data. I was able to backup the files. I am reformatting it right now and hoping it doesn't happen again.

Other Thoughts: Hark Disk Sentinel Report
Power on: 662 days, 3 hours, Health: 100%

Pros: still running good since 2010!

Cons: none

Pros: I've been using this as my backup hard drive and it's served me well until recently when it all of a sudden started to fail.

Cons: Would have liked it to last longer, but considering it's warrantied for 3 years and I've long since filled it up, I guess I can't complain too much. I do recall hearing the occasional clicking noise for the past couple years which always scared me that the drive was dying. Whether this is related to my drive's actual death I don't know.

Other Thoughts: I can still get it to read data off the disk if I rotate it so that the front of the drive points downwards. I'm guessing maybe this helps the head move out onto the platters?

Pros: -have 2, both still running great 3 years+ after purchase, reliable
-fast
-fair price

Cons: -not caviar black, still have to wait for players in games to load at times so don't really see the point spending more for the gaming I do

Pros: Bought and installed as a boot drive in April 08. This week it started dying. Almost made it 5 years, not bad.

Cons: Only has a 3 year warranty. I was hoping for 5. (Didn't WD offer 5 back in the day?)

Pros: -two years, no problems so far in a computer that gets moved around a lot, and sometimes even dropped
-speed is decent. I haven't run any speed tests, but my brother says that with this hard drive, his computer loads all the games faster than any of his friend's computers.

Cons: -it's not as fast as an ssd

Pros: This drive has served me well for 2 years now with no drive errors, which is more than I can say for the Samsung drive I purchased last year and am getting errors on after 4 months of usage.

Cons: ...It's not an ssd...I guess??

Pros: Reasonable capacity, performance, noise

Cons: 2 out of 3 dead after 5 years of moderate use.

Pros: Great drive. Does what I need it to do.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I used this in an external enclosure for a while. Did the job nicely. It's on the lamb at the moment, spare drive collecting dust, though it's notable to say I replaced it with a WD10EZEX because I needed more capacity. I'm sure I'll find a use for it again at some point.