Firstly the drive itself. In my experience you'll nearly always get a slight hum / vibration when a HDD spins at anything over 5400rpm, as far as 7200rpm drives go, this is a quiet one. How your drive is attached to your chassis / case will have a big bearing on what reaches your ear.
The wake up times are very good when compared to a Caviar Green, so it's good for an everyday storage drive for say downloads etc as there's very little pause when waking after the drive been put to sleep to save power etc, say 1-2 seconds compared to say 6 with a Green. All in all, I definitely recommend this drive, especially for the price. Obviously the only thing that matches an SSD is an SSD but as far as transfer speeds go, I was getting around 120-130mb/sec sustained when moving large files across internal mechanical drives.
Now why only 3 stars? Well I went to register the drive and check the warranty. I'd had the drive about 2 days, ran the serial and it came back as having about 5 months remaining out of the 24 months you get with a new Blue drive! I queried this with Western Digital, they revealed what I already suspected... I had been sold a recertified drive. These are basically knackered drives that Western Digital then refurbish and put back out, usually for resellers to flog at a discounted rate. The fact they only give them 6 months warranty says allot. The fact that the seller puts them out as a new drive also says allot.
So the moral is, make sure when buying that your drive is DISPATCHED FROM AND SOLD BY AMAZON themselves and not a third party seller. Even if it's fulfilled by Amazon it can still be sold by a third party.
I returned the drive for a refund and purchased a new drive from Amazon themselves, this time with a full warranty. I have attached images showing the differences between the two drives. The most obvious being the difference in the stickers, the brand new drive has the Blue sticker, the recertified has a black sticker, but both have the same part number. There's also a shot of the faint 'Recertified' stamp that I missed when fitting (*face palm*) hopefully this review will help people avoid being fleeced by unscrupulous sellers charging the same for a refurbished unit with a dead warranty as a brand new unit with a 2 year warranty.
| Brand | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 14.73 x 10.16 x 2.54 cm; 440 Grams |
| Item model number | WD10EZEX |
| Manufacturer | WESBX |
| Series | WD10EZEX Caviar BLUE |
| Color | Blue |
| Form Factor | 3.5" |
| Standing screen display size | 3.5 Inches |
| RAM Size | 1 GB |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR3 SDRAM |
| Hard Drive Size | 1 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | Mechanical Hard Disk |
| Hard Drive Interface | Serial ATA |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 7200 RPM |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Wattage | 1 |
| Hardware Platform | PC |
| Operating System | Yes |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Lithium Battery Packaging | Batteries contained in equipment |
| Item Weight | 440 g |
