Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM

Pros: Cheap drive.

Cons: Busted after 9 months - you get what you pay for.

Other Thoughts: Drive began loading/seeking slowly about 6 months in and having major difficulty with tasks like opening video files and launching applications. Today, out of the blue, Windows pops up an advance warning that the drive is failing. Mid-backup, the drive quits and bluescreens the computer. Drive now totally dead.

Spend a little extra and don't risk a bricked drive less than a year out.

Pros: The size of the drive is a nice offering for archives and backups. The drive runs cool and very quiet. The drive responds well to hot-swapping on SATA as well as SAS interfaces

Cons: Over time I have noticed this dive growing slower and slower to the point that it seems that backups stand still.

I am not running this drive as part of a RAID set but as a standalone drive on a raid connection. While other WD Blue and Blacks show their full speeds this drive for some reason is reading 1.5. The drive is in it's native format as shipped and has no jumpers installed so it should be operating and registering at full speed. I've since moved it to a SAS connection and and have seen slight increase of transfer rate but nowhere near SATA II or III rates. The slowdown and halts are intermittent still with this drive. The drive still registers in BIOS as well as disk Management in Win 7 64 bit as well as AMD RAID and Promise RAID monitoring but is still reading as 1.5 , SATA I. Odd at best but still functional albeit inexplicably slow and has been faster in the past when tested.

Other Thoughts: Continuing to monitor and review this product to determine why there seems to be a performance hits even with latest SATA/SAS controller software and Drivers while configured as a straight non RAID standalone drive.

Pros: Inexpensive and high capacity

Cons: Carefully installed it in an external drive that housed an 2TB WD20EARS, that one lasted for a few years so this was the replacement. Turned on and heard buzzing noises followed by clicking. Would not mount. Very disappointed.

Pros: Cheaply priced, decent size

Cons: Alot.

Other Thoughts: Greens rarely work more then a year. These are throw away Hard Drives. Never buy these expecting to use them for life, go with the Blues for that.

Pros: Was pretty decent drive while it lasted. Was a bit slow to wake up for use, but otherwise no real complaints.

Cons: Had for a year, then it blew something on the circuit board and won't power up at all. No indications of any problems at all. Perfect drive one day, next day totally dead.

Because it is a EARX drive, it cannot be easily restored - has to go to a data restoral company for a minimum fee of $499 up to $1199 to recover the data.

WD sent me an email saying they are sorry but thats just the way it is with these type of drives.

Other Thoughts: Who wants to loose all their data after a year? Raise your hand... you are the folks this drive is designed for. Otherwise, pass on this. Even if the odds are 5% - you don't want that to be you in order to save $30. Trust me.

Manufacturer Response:

We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the WD Green, as this is not the typical experience with the product. We are very sorry to hear that your drive did not function so soon after it was delivered. We stand behind our warranty for the duration of the products provided warranty period, and as such, we are here to support our products regardless of the circumstances. We would like to assure you that what you have experienced is extremely abnormal.
We would appreciate the opportunity to further assist you, and resolve this particular issue for you with a positive resolution to your experience. You may contact us at 1 (800) 275-4932, or via our support website at: http://support.wdc.com/rs/. Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: The capacity is large and the drive was bound to replace a few smaller drives to help with power usage.

Cons: Failed after little use.

Other Thoughts: The drive installed and formatted fine, but started to show signs of failure early into use. Continued usage would crash (and any program currently accessing it) the drive rendering it unusable until reboot.

In WD Data lifeguard diagnostics tool the drive could not pass any test. I returned the drive. This is the first time a WD drive failed on me this early into it's life. I still have a few that keep on working 12+ years after purchase.

Manufacturer Response:

We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the WD Green, as this is not the typical experience with the product. It is unfortunate that you have experienced a drive failure, as our drives are all rigorously tested to ensure they are in good working condition before leaving our warehouse. There are many variables that could affect the drives integrity between leaving our warehouses prior to being installed in a computer, such as improper handling in transit. We recommend installing and running our Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows (WinDLG) utility for Windows users, or running Disk Utility for Mac users. Information regarding our WinDLG utility and Disk utility can be found at the following link.
How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Win
http://bit.ly/mE9Fjo
How to test a drive for defects or problems on a Mac
http://bit.ly/kTV4cj
Regardless of the reason for your drives defect, we stand by our product, and would like to replace your drive for you directly.
How to get an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) or replace a defective product under warranty
http://bit.ly/Anlqmn
You may contact us at 1 800) 275-4932, or via our support website at the link below.
http://bit.ly/MZqham
Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: -Good Price
-lots of space
-durable with WDidle3

Cons: You MUST use WDidle3 on these things. If you do not they will die in 4-6 months. WDidle3 will save these drives and it is on the UltimateBootCD which is free. There are plenty of tutorials if you google. Description of what WDidle3 is and what it does in other thoughts.

Other Thoughts: The main problem with this series of drive is that they attempt a head park every 8 seconds of operation. Head parking is the main cause of wear and tear on hard drives and excess should be avoided. Parking the head every 8 seconds is an attempt WD is making to try to save a little energy. Unfortunately this causes the drives to wear out really fast. Western Digital knows that some people do not think the reduced life is worth the small energy savings. Because of this they released WDidle3 which can change the timing of this. for good drive life i recommend 300 seconds as using the never spin down command can cause damage on some drives.

Pros: - Big
- Fast

Cons: - None so far

Other Thoughts: Using this drive as a backup device in an external enclosure for a MacMini running Mac OS X 10.8. Works great!

Pros: Works great, awesome deal....GO GET ONE

Cons: not one problem

Pros: love this hard drive.

Cons: nothing