Western Digital WD Green WD20EARS 2TB 5400 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: This drive for being 2 TB and 64mb cache, you would think this is too good to be true. The price and the drive are great. The best name in hard drives is Western Digital.

Cons: NONE

Pros: Low power Low heat Low noise

Cons: A bit slower than other drives 1 of 2 ordered was defective - not recognized, could not format.

Overall Review: Purchased 2. One was defective and had to RMA. Shipping cost of around $14 to return the item defeated the cost benefit from ordering through Newegg. I knew this was risk purchasing this item, but it shouldn't be such a gamble. Newegg gets dinged on this review because they put the cost back on the consumer. Can't the manufacturer pay for the return shipping? WD needs to fix it's QC issues with these drives. The slower speed is a compromise that is hardly noticed when you factor in the lower power, heat, and noise. Replaced a Samsung drive (non-green) that was in my HTPC and generating 45 degrees C of heat. These generate around 33 degrees C.

Pros: 2tb Low power usage

Cons: None

Overall Review: I purchased this drive for use in my home NAS. It has been running 24/7 for about a year without any issues or slow down.

Pros: Runs as expected. Using as main storage (DVR) drive for HTPC. For the most part, drive access time seems comparable to the 7200 RPM it replaced. Haven't monitored temps, so can't comment on that.

Cons: Sometimes access is slightly slow, but overall, I don't notice much difference between the WD 7200 RPM 1TB drive that I had been using before. Time will tell.

Pros: Price was really good on sale. Works well as external e-Sata storage. Quiet. Runs cool even when transferring large files.

Cons: Not a 7200 RPM drive, but fast enough for an external enclosure for storing Video files.

Overall Review: This isn't a bad drive for storing files. Like any hard drive, you have to test it first using your favorite disc utility, then format and go from there. I find usually that if it passes an initial test and you don't beat them to death, you can get at least a year out of most hard drives, sometimes more. Remember, BACKUP....BACKUP..... BACKUP..

Pros: -Large capacity, formats to 1.81TB -Very quiet, I can't hear it at all -64MB of cache, which is great for multitaskers

Cons: As expected with a power saving hard drive, the performance is lacking when compared to 7200rpm drives.

Overall Review: Here are my HD Tune 2.55 results on this HD. Access Time = 19.2ms Burst Rate = 149.7MB/s CPU Usage = -1.0% Average transfer rate = 84.8MB/s Minimum transfer rate = 48.3MB/s Maximum transfer rate = 119.8MB/s

Pros: High capacity, virtually silent, produces almost no heat, and impressive speed: sustained 100MB/s on both read and write.

Cons: Doesn't make coffee in the morning?

Overall Review: These drives are not slow! The reviewers claiming so have likely messed up the partition alignment - EARS drives are advanced format with 4k blocks, and you have to make sure that your partitions are aligned with the 4k blocks. If you don't align them properly (and most disk partitioning software fails at this), you will be spending over 1/2 of your write speed compensating for the poor alignment. Western digital has a tool available from their site to help get alignment right, but I recommend just using GNU's parted (available for download on the excellent UBCD), and specifying the partition start in sectors, making sure to use a multiple of 8 (4k physical blocks / 512byte logical blocks = 8). For instance, to format the drive with a single large partition, leaving space for a GRUB boot loader at the start of the disk, you would run: bash$ parted >> mkpart primary ext4 64s -1s

Pros: Runs slightly quieter, cooler and more energy-conserving than other models such as the Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB.

Cons: Slower than other drives such as the Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB and this "Caviar Green" series seem to have some major problems... Bought 2 drives: Drive #1 had massive bad sectors. 1. A full/complete format could not complete in Windows. 2. Windows CHKDSK reported lots of bad sectors. 3. Western Digital's own software "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows" could not finish it's scan and gave the message "too many bad sectors". (Unfortunately, bad sectors seem to be the theme for many Western Digital hard drives these days. Example: I purchased 5 different models of the Passport Elite portable hard drives, tested all and all had bad sectors!) Drive #2 failed to report SMART info and the serial number in the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows" software after about a week or two. BOTTOM LINE: If you discover your drive has even 1 "tiny" bad sector, return it! If you don't, you'll likely "pay for it" later on.

Overall Review: Whenever you purchase new hard drive: 1. ALWAYS do a full/complete format and NOT a "quick" format on it. 2. ALWAYS run a CHKDSK with surface test/scan on it. Go to the drive in Windows, right click while pointing to it with the mouse then go to: 1. Properties 2. Tools 3. Error Checking 4. Click on "Check Now" button 4. Make sure both options are checked; "automatically fix file system errors" and "scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors". On this drive, a full/complete format and a CHKDSK with surface test/scan will take about 6 hours each. To me, it is an absolute MUST! Read the CHKDSK report. If you cannot find it, search for "find chkdsk report" to find out how. When bad sectors appear, it means the beginning of problems for a hard drive and possibly even it's death. It's better to invest several hours (just leave it there by itself) to test like this rather than to waste your money and to get more headaches later when you need to salvage and save y