Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Pros: 16 drives with no failures in 40 months of uptime.

Cons: It makes me grouchy to pay a premium. But, I guess, not as grouchy as doing RMA's.

Other Thoughts: These are attached to Adapted raid controllers.

Pros: Lots of data, inexpensive price.

Cons: I bought 10 of these for use in two devices, each setup with a RAID 5 group. This is used as backup storage, mostly for Symantec BESR. I have owned the first set of five drives for 1 year and 5 months. I am starting to see failures already.

Other Thoughts: Enterprise Storage, as this drive is, should not fail so quickly. But I suppose this is why we have RAID.

Pros: ?

Cons: Bought 2 of these. Both have failed within 2 years. Nice.

Other Thoughts: avoid.

Pros: It's just there, and it works. This really is a complement for it, since this also includes working in less than ideal conditions. Performance stays pretty constant regardless of workload - well at least for the limited desktop workload I can give it.

I run distributed computing projects, and when it loads eight instances of a project to crunch this drive doesn't fall over flat delivering that. It's not exactly fast mind you, but you can still do other things while it's grinding all that out. I really need an SSD, but... I digress.

Cons: Why is it still so expensive for a 1TB drive? Even the 1TB RE4 is cheaper. It's also no single user speed demon - but it really isn't intended to be. The 1TB WD Black edition of this era does feel more responsive for normal desktop use - but again that's what the Black Editions are intended for.

Two years later, I'm not sure if I'd still consider this drive for a new build since I'm pretty sure other drives are faster. I'm stating this from a desktop user perspective - which again, isn't really what this drive was intended for. There are faster desktop drives out there, but that doesn't negate the fact that this drive has been good to me.

Other Thoughts: So having used this drive for around 2 years now, I just thought it would be good to comment that it's been a good drive for me. I've had it in some pretty non-ideal situations (overclocked SATA, crummy ventilation, banging around a junk case) and it's never really complained.

One odd thing, it used to really freak me out with the (at the time) undocumented fact that when the "Third Generation Dynamic Fly Height" does it's thing every 11minutes or so, it really sounds like the drive is having a re-allocation fit. It's not a happy drive sound - I thought the drive was dying. However only later after much digging I read from others this was considered normal.

Later I changed the drive's orientation from vertical (on it's side) to horizontal and it doesn't do this anymore. So perhaps I'm wrong on that.

Anyway I'm still happy with this drive, but those considering it now need to realize it's old tech. There are faster drives out there now. I'm actually surprised WD still makes RE3

Pros: Bought 4 of these for use in a server in Dec. 2009. Three of them are still running.

Cons: 1 of 4 drives began experiencing read errors after less than a year and died after 16 months.

Other Thoughts: Three out of four aint bad?

Pros: Bought this drive 2/9/09 and it has run all most 24/7 and still going strong. I paid 189.95 back then. Going to buy another one at this cheaper price. If you are looking to buy this drive buy it.

Cons: none

Pros: None.

Cons: I bought two of these drives, and put them in RAID0 configuration under Windows 7. Performance was a pathetic 40MB/Sec. I had another pair of Samsung 1TB drives, which give me a sustained 200MB/Sec. I had returned the RE3 and purchased a pair of WD1001FALS, which are awesome! They are giving me more than 200MB/Sec sustained throughput.
In Summary: Stay away from these, and but WD1001FALS instead if you care for performance.

Pros: Been running five for close to a year without a single hiccup. This is despite poor cooling in the operating environment.

Cons: None noted.

Pros: Years of positive experience with WD led me to buy these Raid Edition HDD's. They have run constantly and flawlessly for the past 2 years.

Cons: None so far - except that they were $189.99ea. 2 yrs ago <grin>.

Other Thoughts: I have other WD HDD's up to 10yrs old that I use in an external enclosure to transfer files. And like the old Finck's overalls ad used to say - they "Wear like a pigs nose"! Basically indestructible. I have 2 WD RE3 1TB's in RAID1 for critical data & 2 smaller HDD's in RAID0 for gaming. Best of both worlds.

Pros: in external (BlacX dock-ESATA) performs like my VRaptor

Cons: none-shipped quickly & packed well

Other Thoughts: WD....register your new product...very good support