Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)My HDD on my Dell that is about five years old started to fail, and I needed a new HDD. But with a computer that is five years old, I didn't want to put too much money into because I will be buying a new computer soon. At $64, including free shipping, this HDD was actually cheaper than some smaller drives.
Before installing the HDD in my computer, I ran Steve Gibson's SpinRite 6.0 program (in another computer) to test the entire disk. It took 32 continuous hours, but not one error was reported. The temperature of the HDD did not go over 100 degrees, and at the end of the test was around 96 degrees. Another older drive that I tested had a temperature that went up to about 112 degrees during a shorter period.
This is a bare disk drive. No mounting hardware or cables are included (other than a packet of screws). No instructions or user's guide is included, but you can download them from Western Digital's website as well as drive management software.
Keep in mind that this is a PATA drive, not a SATA. As I found out when I researched the subject, hard disk drives that used be called ATA, IDE, or EIDE are now called PATA. Newer computers will probably come with SATA drives that transfer data a bit faster than PATA drives. How to tell? The cable connecting an ATA hard drive uses a ribbon cable with 40 wires as opposed to a SATA cable which only has 7 wires; the number of pins on a SATA drive are therefore correspondingly fewer.
By the way, when installing the HDD, note that there is a white jumper on the pins between the power connector and the ribbon cable connector. That jumper has to be removed or moved to a different set of pins in some cases. Conveniently, there is a label on the drive cover that shows the jumper configurations so you don't have to look that up. If your computer does not recognize the drive when you first install it, check the jumper configuration.
Any HDD maker can ship a DOA unit or one that fails quickly but Western Digital has a good reputation, and the price/performance ratio here can't be beat. When I get my new computer, I'll be moving this HDD to the new computer to mirror the new drive as backup.
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