I had been having intermittent - but increasing in frequency - problems with my computer. The HD drive was a Hitachi Deskstar (also known as Deathstar because of their high failure rates). I got the drive with my machine about 1.5 years ago and was unaware of their reputation. Eventually, enough problem boots and so on led me to discover the root cause of my problems, the slowly failing Deathstar.
The specs of the Hitachi drive were exactly what I wanted, however, so I set about looking for a drive with similar specs to replace the old failing one. A search through Amazon took me to the WD Caviar Black drive. The specs were very similar to the Hitachi drive that I was getting rid of and it had generally positive reviews. I ordered the drive and it arrived with Amazon's customary quick delivery times.
I was a little apprehensive about the swap over because the Hitachi was my system disk and, if at all possible, I wanted to keep my machine set up like it already was because I have a lot of programs with quite fussy settings. Fortunately the machine has a secondary drive and I used the Windows 7 System Image program to create an image of the system drive on the secondary drive after running chkdsk on both drives (as ever, the Deathstar had some new bad sectors). I then opened my case, disconnected and took out the old drive, replacing it with the new one. So far so good, everything fitted. I started my machine and the new drive was recognised. Booting off a recovery disk, I used the system restore routine to write the image of my old drive on to the new one. Then I rebooted using the new drive as the system disk. Success! The machine started, Windows loaded, it spent a little time automatically configuring drivers and then that was it - perfect.
It has now been some time since I installed the Caviar Black and I am impressed. It runs more quietly than the old drive, has good access rates and chkdsk gives it a completely clean bill of health. It basically does exactly what I want a hard drive to do. I don't know if the old Hitachi drive was slower or noisier than it should have been because it was failing but, by comparison, the new WD drive is significantly better.
Would I recommend it to other people? Yes. So far it has been a good, reliable and reasonably quick HD.
Would I recommend a Hitachi Deskstar? No, definitely not!
| Brand | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 14.73 x 10.16 x 2.54 cm; 689.46 g |
| Item model number | WD1002FAEX |
| Manufacturer | Western Digital |
| Series | WD1002FAEX |
| Colour | Black |
| Form Factor | 3.5-inch |
| Hard Drive Size | 1 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | Mechanical Hard Disk |
| Hard Drive Interface | Serial ATA |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 7200 RPM |
| Wattage | 6 watts |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 689 g |
| Guaranteed software updates until | unknown |
