💾 WD RE Enterprise Hard Drive 500GB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache - WD5003ABYZ Review

I have a lot of such disks in servers, more than 30 for sure. All were bought in 2022, and at the time of writing, not one is going to die when working 24/7. With intensive writing or reading from / to an array (s) of 8 such, a clear crack is heard, given that the Tower format servers (quiet). I advise you not to look at the predominance of shortcomings in my review, since everything is blocked by the reliability of the disks. All drives work with the SSC jumper installed, if anything.

Three years ago, I used four drives to create two soft-RAID arrays for SQL server. I have 4 disks here, however 2 of them have faulty sectors all over the place. Nothing could be retrieved from the lost data. There is no sign of stopping the old REs (WD5003ABYZ), but even under a light load, they will only last another two to three years at best.

Ordered to replace a complete RAID array on an old Dell server. They work great and are a lot cheaper than Dell drives. However, since these are not Dell, you will get an error on the RAID card stating that non-certified drives are installed. Ba!

I just bought this drive from Revain. I received it today. The date of manufacture on the device is April 8, 2014. This device is 2 years old. Western Digital's warranty is 5 years from this date. So when I go to Western Digital's website and check the warranty, the drive only has a 3 year warranty instead of 5 years. I was in a dilemma and installed the unit today anyway but am very disappointed that I ordered a brand new unit from Revain and now it's 2 years old.

I received my drive from Coast Micro and it was brand new. They also packaged it like they wanted it to be one piece and I really appreciate that.

Good price and great features for this server hard drive. Use them exclusively on my servers now. I particularly like the 5 year guarantee.

I usually buy WD drives and am very happy with them (RE and Red series). I'm expecting a lot from this and will update this post if it doesn't impress. As said before, be very careful when ordering this disc. The first retailer I bought it from sent me a disc that is out of warranty and the disc was not properly shipped. Use Western Digital's serial number tool to verify. And leave feedback to seller so we all know about it.

I took 4 disks for two soft-RAID arrays, for SQL server 3 years ago. Now I have these 4 disks in front of me and 2 of them are scattered - a bunch of bad sectors. The data could not be recovered. The old REs (WD5003ABYZ) are still working 24/7, but these were only enough for 2-3 years in a low load.

This hard drive is produced as a replacement for the previous Western Digital WD5003ABYX. I ordered 28 pieces and installed in RAID-1 (Mirror) in a dozen Simatic rack pc 847b (SIEMENS) and older systems up to Pentium4. They were determined without problems both on the ICH7R chipset controller and on the ancient FastTrak TX2300. It is this model that I advise all contractors servicing our pieces of iron.