Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB PATA Hard Drive - 8MB Cache - 3.5-Inch Internal Retail Kit (WDBAAV5000ENC-NRSN) Review

I bought this drive over a month ago and it works perfectly. It's very quiet and hopefully it will be last as long as the dozen Caviar drives I currently own. But the price is attractive: western drives are affordable and don't fall short on reliability. If you need a hard drive and see it online, just grab it and you will be happy most of the time!

Installed in an external USB drive enclosure and it takes a very long time for the computer to recognize it (tried on a pair) and the data transfer is incredibly slow for some reason . I have several of the exact same cases with 500GB IDE drives and they work great. The drive was preformatted so I may need to reformat and try again. Otherwise the price for the gig was very reasonable.

This hard drive lasted a total of 6 days before failing completely. Now the system does not recognize the hard drive at all. Western Digital Support has determined that the drive has failed completely and the only solution is to replace the drive. AFTER 6 DAYS! What the hell! Western Digital went under.

I have an old computer that needs an internal PATA hard drive. I wanted to add an internal drive to an empty bay because my main drive was full. This hard drive from the WD brand meets all requirements. Right size, right configuration and right price. I would recommend this drive to anyone looking to increase capacity rather than buying a new PC. Important Note: I had to contact Western Digital about a technical issue and it was a pleasant and rewarding experience. The support has been great.

I needed to upgrade a Sempron 3000 K8M800-M2 board (from ECS) that has been working fine since 2005 (loads XP fast). Despite being a leader in SATA drives, the K8M800 BIOS does not recognize serial drives, which are now faster and cheaper for the same capacity. Although I've seen a 750GB Seagate drive in the past, I believe it's now the largest 40-pin parallel drive available, which is why I chose it for this board. For the Sempron 3000 there is no alternative to buying a new board, since AMD…

Installed it in the case of an external USB drive and the computer (tried on a pair) takes a very long time to recognize it and the data transfer is incredible for some slow reason. I have several of the exact same cases with 500GB IDE drives and they work great. The drive was preformatted so I may need to reformat and try again. Otherwise the price for the gig was very reasonable.