Western Digital Caviar RE WD2500YS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: It seems to be working just fine.

Cons: I noticed, after I had it opened, that it is a "recertified" unit. Now I fear that I have just purchased someone else's intermittent problem. The frame had gouges on it near the screw mounting holes which indicated someone tried to get a screw to go into where there was no hole. I suspect Newegg has their behind covered on this as it was an OEM drive. I did not expect to get a used drive when I made this purchase. I will be much more careful in future. Newegg is not the only place to purchase from!

Pros: Drives performed well in RAID0 and RAID5 using Areca controller. I was seeing 230MB/s read and 190MB/s write using 4 drives as RAID0. With degraded RAID 5 with 2 existing drives I am seeing 120MB/s read and 105MB/s write. :-)

Cons: Unfortunately 2 of the 4 drives failed within the 1st 2 days. One had the clicking sound of death while the other had excessive SMART errors which caused the Areca controller to take it off line. This may push me to configure the drive as raid6 instead of raid5!

Overall Review: I received the drives and controller from Newegg in 2 days. The RMA process has been painless so far. I can't wait to get my disk performance back when the 2 drives return.

Pros: Western Digital is still the best HD manufacturer. There has been a few negative reviews about this drive, but there is a firmware fix on WD site (See link below). http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1493&p_created=1168299631&p_sid=vfEX7qri&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiZwX3Byb2RzPTAmcF9jYXRzPTAmcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9mbmwmcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1XRDQwMDBZUw**&p_li=&p_topview=1 I gave an excellent rating cause this is a fixable issue with a company who has very very few issues.

Cons: If you plan on running these in a RAID you must apply the firmware upgrade!

Overall Review: No one in this world is perfect. Not even Western Digital. Their drives are the absolute best and I NEVER trust anything else. I am a Senior System Administrator with a prominent biomedical company and use exclusively WD drives with one falure in 1997, and I buy a lot of drives!

Pros: runs quite, cool, and quick

Cons: have gone through 3 of these now, none of them lasted more then 4 days

Overall Review: oh, I don't know, make one that lasts more then 4 days?

Pros: If a hard drive has to die, it is nice that it chose to do so within a few hours.

Cons: It died within a few hours. With impresively loud clicks

Overall Review: I work on PCs regularly. Sometimes it happens; hard drives sometimes die within hours or days. But I bought two other 500GB drives on the same order (same model as this one). One of those died, too. Two out of three ain't good.

Pros: Fast, Great Value

Cons: Be sure to apply the firmware upgrade from Western Digital if adding to a RAID Array! I have lost one from an array and now need to apply the firmware upgrade to all drives involved. More risk than I care to have in my business.

Overall Review: Go to the Western Digital web site for the firmware upgrade. If not for this, I would give the drive a 5.

Pros: Fast drive for RAID array

Cons: Setup RAID array for four drives. Bought five - one spare incase one died. Two of five were dead on arrival. Doesn't WD test these things before shipping?!?!

Overall Review: Always used WD drives in the past and have NEVER had one die before. With this order of drives - I had a 40% dead rate. Drive got above 'Very Poor' based on speed ... and 5 year warranty.

Pros: Marketing jargon about 24x7 reliability and RAID compatibility. 5 year warranty.

Cons: Just as others have stated, incredibly high failure rate. I ordered 3 of these drives to do a hardware RAID 5 in a Dell PowerEdge 700. Out of the box, one drive was inoperable (continuous head clicking). I can't believe mainstream manufacturers like HP, IBM and Dell get drives from the same OEM "pool." If they did, WD would almost certainly be out of business.

Overall Review: Newegg is replacing the drive under 30 day warranty. Newegg's packing methods leave much to be desired. These failures may be due to damage during shipping. Or maybe cheap Internet e-tailors just get B-stock OEM products? My advice is to order N+1 of whatever you need. Or pay more for SAS/SCSI!