WD 750 GB WD Blue SATA III 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive

I went with Amazon.com based on reviews that they now cushion the hard drive box with special packaging, and free super saving method of shipping being the most gentle, even though Amazon's price is higher. Who cares about price if something delicate is ruined in shipping? In any case this hard drive is running quiet and perfect with no problems this long, means there should not have been any mechanical damage done to it while in Amazon.com (Amazon.com and not an affiliate) hands, and it was treated with the extreme care such very delicate devices require. Unlike some things throwing these against a wall - type of damage with insufficient CUSHIONING won't be good. Since I am more concerned with reliability than speed, is the reason I chose this model at the time. After Partitioning and formatting, this is the main drive of a newly built i5-2500K 16GByte Computer, and it was all I could afford until I can afford to get the operating system running on a Solid State, but whatever the load time for Windows 7 is is OK for me.I am so happy Amazon.com fixed their "Hard Drive Problem" - the right way by shipping them properly (little plastic inserts) for the electro-mechanical devices they are. Be sure to pick the most gently-handled (non-throwing) shipping method too in my opinion. Bottom Line is I'm happy.

I purchased the Western Digital 1 Tb Sata 6.0 Gb-s 32 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare-oem Drive WD10EALX from Midwest Memory Outlet through Amazon. The drive was received within 3 or 4 days and was packaged extremely well. My original Seagate drive from my HP m9550F failed and was replace by the WD. The Seagate was the drive that HP kept shipping after a drive bios error was long known about. Information from the internet showed that lots of people lost valuable data because HP just kept shipping a drive with a known problem. Anyhow, I did get a bios update for the Seagate before it failed but it ended up failing anyhow.The WD10EALX drive is fairly loud. I still have the drive located outside the case so that may contribute to the sound level. The noise seems to be from the head movement. The platter spin is silent. For the price this is one drive that is hard to beat and I am well pleased with it. My bios can't take advantage of the 6 Gb/s transfer rate but the drive is plenty fast just the same. I have loaded around 600 gig of data onto it. After around 3 weeks I'll assume it will not fail and put the case back together. If it fails I'll update this review. I noticed on NewEgg that a few failures were being reported. Not the long-term ones but the more likely out of the box ones. Here's keeping my fingers crossed. (Boot drive failures are a pain).UPDATE:OK. I put the case back together. The drive is not silent but it is pretty quiet. I can hear just faint clicks as it does its thing. Very nice. No problems with the drive at all. Recommended.

I got this last month for storage usage and it's been running very good.It is very quiet! I was first going to get the Caviar Black but I see so many reviews about it saying that it is very loud... so instead I got the Blue and its amazing.I use this to store games (I have OS on my SSD). It's pretty fast loading up games and I never crashed yet.So if you're looking for a HDD, I would recommend this! Even for you gamers out there that want to store games! It's quiet and fast and a lil cheaper than the Black!

Bought 2 of these drives and installed them in Roswell fan cooled USB enclosures. Had them set up for file backup on a Linux server at a radio station.The first one failed in 2 months so I pulled them both out of service.I put the second one back in service on a off site file backup machine and it lasted 3 months.I had my IT expert look at them and one of them he was able to fix by fixing the partition table.The other one he could not repair.Not sure why these failed so soon but i will try to get the one warrantied and keep a close eye on the other one.Guess I will stay away from Western digital drives.

The technical run down: The Blue drives have very similar performance to the Black drives on average, except they come with a three-year limited warranty instead of the Black’s five-year (best in class). The Black drives typically have a larger buffer as well; for example, the WD1002FAEX Black has a 64MB cache vs. the 32MB cache of our WD10EALX Blue. Compared to the Greens, the Blues have a higher rotational speed (7200RPM vs. ~5200RPM) which equates to better performance. In essence, the Blue is Western Digital’s bread-and-butter drive. The WD10EALX’s technical highlight is its 6Gb/s interface, which is the latest SATA III standard.Their are faster drives on the market yes, but WD reliably and value keeps me in their camp.I still own some 20Gig WD drives that have over 2700 hours on them and work flawlessly still. I will be purchasing this drive in the near future.

I bought an Emachines ET1831 on Amazon. OK, but I ended up buying a video card, This required more power supply, so I also bought a corsair(great product) power supply. Worked perfect for about one month over 1 year. It just so happens that is the extent of the warranty from Emachines. Amazon vendor sent a message back that "there is nothing WE can do"(meaning no warranty left). Go to the MFR. Seagate knows via the S/N that the HDD(750GB) was in an emachines, and will not replace. So, I will not buy another seagate- ever.Decided to try the WDD 1TB drive. Installed smoothly, and the Emachines recovery DVD set worked perfectly to replace the software, except for the freeware, and marketing crap. But so far, so good. The WDD is quiet, and fast enough for this system. Thanks WDD, and Amazon, and screw you seagate- a HDD should last at least five years, OR you should replace it under warranty. Thanks for the chance to offer my review, Amazon- I hope this helps someone.