Western Digital WD Green WD5000AADS 500GB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Pros: pretty good speed considering it's a green hard drive, to date it's lasted 3+ years with heavy usage (been filled, emptied, refilled some 50 times in its life) and still kickin' real well.

Cons: a little small for the money at time of purchase (prices are way higher now...)

Other Thoughts: tough little drive, took a couple tumbles unfortunately during several computer re-builds as i switched cases and motherboards a few times, but still works just fine.

Pros: Durability. This HDD has never crashed on me once.
I've reformated it multiple times and each time it loads back up flawlesly. I purchased this drive as the master drive in 2009. Since then I have purchased multiple SSD HDD's to run the OS making this drive a slave drive. It still works great almost four years later.

Cons: Not as fast as the Solid State Drives.

Other Thoughts: These SATA drives have gone down considerably in price so if your just out for mass storage then this might be the thing for you. Otherwise nothing beats SSD 3.0 right now as far as speed.

Pros: Good amount of space and was pretty cheap. Everything seems to work fine.

Cons: It seems a bit slow sometimes when transferring files or when i open a really big file, but nothing major.

Other Thoughts: So far it seems good. Hope it lasts for a few years.

Pros: It was affordable at the time and on sale so I went ahead and purchased it. 2 year warranty.

Cons: Used it an a Mini ITX box from TT. It died in 17 months. It can't hold any power. Should have known when I went to dual boot Ubuntu that it required a disk check meant I needed to back it up. Oh well. I had just fresh installed Windows 7 about 2 weeks before it died. Maybe the heat of the small case caused it to die? Regardless, I like WD, always have, especially the 2 year warranty!

Other Thoughts: Wouldn't hesitate to purchase again, just not happy a computer that gets infrequent use, had the HDD die so soon. Hopefully it's just a lemon. This is my first HDD RMA for any reason in the lifetime of building my own machines (20 years).

Pros: I have never had a caviar drive fail yet. All of them from the late 90's til this 500gb drive are still kickin and I leave my puters on 24/7. I got a caviar back in 2000 to replace a drive that failed after 3 months. This is back when drives were rated for 100,000 hours. It was 'top of the line' back then and they still work great now. Sure, it's mechanical and will fail one day but that day is not today!

Cons: Why do I always need more space?

Other Thoughts: I'll be buying Caviar drives until their quality fails.

Pros: Storage capacity.

Cons: I bought this hard drive about 3 years ago. It never was impressive from the start. From reading other reviews, I feel like my experience is not unique. The drive was bad about hesitating, and it would even hang up sometimes when Windows booted. I bought this drive for a new build, and it took me a while to figure out that the slowness of the machine was due to this "Green" drive. So, I replaced it and used it as a backup drive until it died after about 3 years of very little use. Now it is a big paperweight.

Other Thoughts: Read the reviews before you buy this drive.

I have finally bought a Solid State Drive and I am very pleased with the performance. Time will tell how they compare to the mechanical hard drives. I hope I never have to use a mechanical hard drive again, especially a WD Green drive.

Pros: working great
on sale

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: have several wd hdd's. all work great.

Pros: Runs cool and quiet. I use an SSD for my boot drive and this drive to store my data. It works good for that purpose. Mine is a WD50000AACS model.

Cons: Not the fastest drive. Died after 7 months. Today when I rebooted my computer, it could not see any of the SCSI devices. When I disconnected this drive, everything worked again. He's Dead Jim!

Other Thoughts: I guess I'll stick with SSD's from now on.

Pros: Durable and good size

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I have had this running for 2.5 years and it is still going strong! Never a single issue with it.

Pros: Installed it. Formatted it. Done. It does what I expect it to do for an HDD.

Cons: Price is a little high considering its 2TB cousin is only $30 more. But $30 is $30 when you're building on a budget. And obviously it's not that big of a "con" - I bought it.

Other Thoughts: Bought this as an OS drive for a budget build - blasphemy, I know. Figured I'd give it a shot, see how it goes. After formatting and putting Windows 7 on it, so far so good. It's not a high-performance drive, but then again, it wasn't a high-performance build.

Been using a 2TB Green for storage (on 24/7 essentially) for a little over a year with no issues. WD seems to be getting a bad rep, so maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had better luck with them than their popular rival (knock on wood).