Question 1

Does the drive come with the icepack heatsink? If it doesnt where can I find one to use in place of it?

Accepted Answer

It does not come with a heat sink or anything that you could use to mount it in a bay designed for a 3.5 inch drive, which is what I wanted to do. I looked around on the net and found a device: (Newegg item #17-994-083,  ACS HDD icydock MB882SP-1S-2B RT)
which is designed to adapt a 2.5 inch drive to fit into a 3.5 inch bay. It seemed to have been designed to work with a drive that was a bit thinner than this one and I had to trim a little flap thing that is designed to push the drive tightly into the adapter to allow the lid to close. This wasn't difficult, just used a sharp knife on the plastic. The adapted drive fit into my 3.5 inch bay and seems to work fine. This isn't a heat sink but supposedly allows sufficient airflow to keep the drive cool enough. (You may also need a SATA III cable-this kind of drive doesn't daisy chain )
There may well be an adapter made for a thicker drive which you wouldn't need to modify, but I didn't find it.

Question 2

It says it comes "Drive only without mounting". Does that mean I would need to purchase an adapter like the ICY DOCK EZConvert to install it in my computer case?

Accepted Answer

Yes and no, you have to keep the drive cool so ideally a 2.5 to 3.5 mounting kit would work as long as you have enough cooling in your case. This is not a standard 2.5 drive. I found mounts for under $10. 
I have mine mounted in my case with my 140mm fans blowing on it and temps are around 80 F so not bad at all but I have a pretty big case. 
BTW my case already had a 2.5 mount with rubber guards which you would need without an ICY Dock as this drive spins fast. I ended up just mounting directly to my case (Lian Li) so honestly it depends on your situation. 
I also have another Raptor in an IcyDock and I like it much better mounted as that heat sink works like a charm.

Question 3

Hi, I just ordered a 600GB VelociRaptor. My Computer case has removable HD tray with mounting holes on the bottom so I assume these will just bolt in. Will Standard power and SATA cables snap in without the use of an adaptor?

Accepted Answer

No adapters are needed use a 6gbps sata cable for best speeds  and a standard power cable is fine . Side note their is no heat sink attached for this VelociRaptor so the size is more that of a ssd drive . Yes it will mount easy but what Idid was attach to my front bay like a cd rom drive its more open and will disperse heat beter than the confinement of a hard drive area .

Question 4

I've got 4 first gen 75GB raptors.  Can I remove those drives from their heat sink and drop these into it?

Accepted Answer

A 1st Gen Raptor drive is a full size 3.5 inch drive where these newer SATA III interface drives are dimensionally similar to a very thick 2.5 inch laptop drive.  This is so that it can also fit server chassis which use the similar but not identical SAS drives.  So, if your current (1st gen) drive has a tray with a heatsink, this will not fit.  You can, however, find the heatsinked trays for this model.   Do an image search for Western-Digital-VelociRaptor-1TB-Sled and you will see the sled which fits this series.

You will most likely not need this heatsink as the drives to not run hot unless you have very little to no airflow.

Question 5

Grade A Re-certified  is different how? Please elaborate Grade A verses another term like Grade B or just Re-Certified etc?

Accepted Answer

I don't know the answer to your question. I purchased one of these drives on Aug. 31, 2013. At that time the Newegg listing didn't mention Grade A or Grade B, it merely said "refurbished". I received a drive with a date code of 21Feb2012. I went to the Western Digital website to check the warranty period for the drive since refurbs typically have a reduced warranty period. Much to my surprise, in the warranty checker there was a line that said "refurbished = no", and the warranty was good until 24Mar2017. So, in my case, as far as Western Digital is concerned I bought a new hard drive. I cannot explain this, I can only relate my experience.

Physically, there were no signs that the drive had ever been installed or used. Also, be aware that that these drives do not come with the "ice pack" mount.

I hope this helps.

Question 6

How to update the firmware ?  I checked on WD website, cant find the any firmware?

Accepted Answer

I never found it necessary to do so. It was PnP on my win 8.1 desktop. I'm not even using a heatsink enclosure and it's been running fine, although I'm not using it as a boot/sys drive; it's just serving as a gaming partition

Question 7

This draws 220-320 mA on 12V and ~7W total so would it work in a standalone 2.5" enclosure (obviously not on USB power)? I'm guessing you can't put more than one in an SATA rack, e.g. Icy Dock's ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB-1, due to that power consumption, even though it looks like the z height would fit.

Accepted Answer

David
Both the the drive enclosures you mentioned are powered from external sources. The USB standalone is most likely powered by a plug in wall transformer which has the voltage and current it provides, so check it to ensure your not exceeding them.  The  Icy Dock's ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB is supplied by a 4 pin molecular connector which again suggests the power is supplied from an external source and it too will need to be checked to ensure its voltage and current capacities are not exceeded when the Icy Dock's bays are populated with the devices you have installed into it.

Question 8

What's the warranty on this?

Accepted Answer

Hello Li,

The item comes with a 2 year limited warranty.

Thank you.

Brand	Western Digital
Series	WD VelociRaptor
Model	WD6000BLH
Packaging	Bare Drive

Interface	SATA 6.0Gb/s
Capacity	600GB
Cache	32MB
Average Latency	3ms
RPM	10000 RPM

Form Factor	2.5"
Height (maximum)	15mm
Width (maximum)	69.85mm
Length (maximum)	100mm

Western Digital WD Internal Drive VelociRaptor WD6000BLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Drive Only-Grade A Recertified

Refurbished

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Item#: N82E16822236523