Western Digital 500GB 3.5", SATA, 16MB Cache Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD5000AAKS Reviews

• Just the drive, ma'am...

  
  By A38TT6R8OP3YQL on 2008-03-28
  As M. Mola points out, this is an OEM package. It not only has no instructions or software, it also does not have a connector cable, an IDE four-pin to SATA power adapter, or mounting screws.
  
  If you want to replace a failed drive and don't want the clutter that usually comes with a drive, this is for you.
  
  If you want to add an additional drive to an existing system, you'll need to get the cabling and mounting hardware elsewhere.
  
  
  

• Bought two, both Died quick

  
  By A2DC7XPHNFLXOB on 2008-04-22
  I bought this drive from NewEgg because it was marketed as quiet. It's quiet compared to standard drives but compared to the Samsung SP2004C drives I own this is very noisy.
  
  I bought two of these within the past year. They didn't even last a year. The first one started out Ok so I bought a second one, it was a good price for 500GB. Well, there is a reason they're cheap, because they are bad drives.
  
  I've been using computers since I was 12. I'm 28 now, and these are the first drives that have died on me in all that time, (five systems and upgrades later). I always treat the drives very well, avoiding hard resets and shut downs and such. I'm careful, yet despite that both drives I bought failed.
  
  The second one was never quite right, always a delay when accessing data. That one died first. The first one, which I thought was good, died a couple months later. I'm really disgusted with Western Digital. I used to buy only WD because I was satisfied with their drives, especially the 80 GB Caviar.
  
  After this I will be switching to Samsung. The Samsung drives I have bought are quiet and reliable with no quirks. In addition, after the drive died I found my computer is responding better and is faster. Seems the drives were causing some type of lag in my system.
  
  Western Digital seems to be going downhill fast. Avoid these drives and go with Samsung or Seagate with the five year warranty.
  
  

• Internal Hard Drive

  
  By A1XSUFRJ30CODW on 2007-10-12
  Have had no problems. Easy to install. Comes OEM with no instructions or software.
  
  

• No problems

  
  By A2VLG6ANL4TXX9 on 2007-11-04
  I bought this to replace the hard drive that failed in my imac. What can I say: no problems setting up, more space, pretty cheap - basically no complaints!
  
  

• WD tends to have problems with disk surface

  
  By A14I7UJ4C0J9IM on 2008-04-18
  Bought a WD5000AAJS and a WD5000AAKS at almost the same time. Within 3 weeks, the AAKS started to have bad sectors after disk scan, and since it was still under warranty, I had it replaced. Now its been 3 months since then, and another disk scan found more bad sectors on both the AAJS and AAKS. Never had such problems with my older boxes (maxter hdds in them).
  
  
• Pretty good product and excellent product support
  By A3LCBO3SCZNMFW on 2008-06-23
  It's a good drive so far. I have a Mac Pro and had two of these installed already. I was using them to store my movies and photos. Luckily I had them configured using Leopard's built in raid software where all the data is automatically shadowed to the other drive. A week after I ordered this drive, as an upgrade to another computer, one of these hard drives in my MAC pro, failed. Luckily, because it was in the RAID configuration, I did not loose my data. I've learned my lessons over the years and backup-especially of assets like digital photos is very important--I anticipate some disasters. The good news is, the drive was still under warranty, so I shipped it back to Western Digital and they send me a replacement the next day. I'm very pleased with the customer service and i've had many WD drives over the years and this is the first one that went south.
  
  
• Great product, arrived early, poor advertising on Amazon's part
  By A1M5Y699EK3LLY on 2008-07-12
  Purchased two 500 GB drives and configured them in a RAID0. The hard drives work great and the price is much cheaper than the brick and mortar stores.
  
  However, the drives arrived OEM (ie. no fancy packaging, no written documentation, just the drives). Could not find any indication on the website that these drive were sold as OEM. The drives are new, and it's no biggie to me, but if you're not savvy on hooking up SATA drives to your PC and you need some instructions, warranty docs, or written specs, then buyer beware! Amazon doesn't seem to openly advertise their OEM products.
  
  
• WD 500GB Caviar
  By A1BHC09ROTZ794 on 2008-01-02
  I got this in desperation when I needed a disc drive for my G5.
  It has been months.
  Not a hiccup.
  It is very fast. Noticeably faster than the stock 160.
  And it is very quiet.
  It has increased my system speed and gives lots of room for expansion.
  I am impressed.
  
  
• Entry level RAID drive.
  By A3JQ58CZBV3FOZ on 2008-08-20
  This is Western Digital's entry level SATA RAID drive. It generally costs about $10 higher than the AACS even though the specifications look exactly the same. What the extra $10 buy is special software engineering going into the firmware, which makes sure that the drive will not go incommunicado for longer than a few milliseconds. Ordinary drives have no such safeguards and the RAID controller can possibly mistaken the temporary lack of responsiveness as a drive failure. Once the controller marks the drive as failed, it has to be reformatted and everything on it is as good as gone. This is an inconvenience in RAID 5 or RAID 1, and a fatal blow in RAID 0.
  
  I bought two of these and put them in RAID 0 configuration. This RAID array serves as the only storage system. The setup is rather risky and therefore necessitates frequent backups. On the other hand, the performance is phenomenal, approaching that of the 10k RPM drive while costing a fraction of the price.
  
  
• a bit shaky
  By A14I7UJ4C0J9IM on 2008-04-17
  The quality is a bit shaky. Bought one and started to see bad sectors within 3 weeks. Had a replacement, and noticed the drive would fail to mount from time to time and had to reboot the computer a few times to make the drive show up(maybe something with vista, I am not sure). A couple months later, more bad sectors.
  
  
• Noiser than CPU fans
  By A1ANXPTVTXHXUC on 2008-09-25
  The performance is OK.
  It's hot.
  
  Its vibration is too much and cause the whole case to resonant vibrate. That makes lots of noise, bigger than all fans in my case.
  
  
• Great HD for Great Price
  By A2PL35EGB4XCVK on 2008-07-12
  cash and rpm make this hd wonderfull
  when is transfare file it come with 35mb per second
  
  
• Western Digital 500GB SATA Hard Drive
  By A2O8CQO32ACLVK on 2008-07-18
  New rating: 5/5
  
  Just a quick note before I begin: I run 2x 1GB GeForce 8600 GT on an MSI n570 SLi motherboard with an AMD Phenom @ 2.6 Ghz with 8GB DDR2 RAM. I am not a hardcore gamer or PC enthusiast; this is the first rig of this calibur that I have ever built.
  
  That being said....
  
  There's really not much to say. It works, and it works well. I've yet to experience any problems with speed or corruption. Just make sure your motherboard supports SATA, as the device doesn't have IDE-in. Also, as mentioned in other reviews, it doesn't come with its own wiring, so make sure you have a spare SATA and SATA-power cables. All in all, a good product for the price.
  
  
• ¡mejor imposible!
  By AAG3X1ENS3ABE on 2008-07-28
  OEM Pack: no cables, no manual, no software, solo el disco duro en su caja... ¿y que? ...no necesito cables porque mi motherboard trajo de sobra, no necesito manual porque cualquiera puede instalarlo, no necesito software ¿para que? ¡500GB por 75us$ es un ragalo! ¿que si hace ruido? solo se puede oir el ruido a las 5am cuando todo esta muy muy tranquilo, por lo demas el ruido es imperceptible.
  
  
• Wow!!!
  By A31CEWKUNKCOR9 on 2008-05-18
  Talk about the space and speed of this drive. Western Digital is the best drive GB for GB on the market today. It's the only way to go.
  
  
• Working great
  By A2N5H5N3WBHP05 on 2008-06-06
  Needed a replacement drive and this seemed like a good fit. Good performance and low noice. So far so good.
  
  
• good 500GB SATA hard drive
  By A1DZX8O0GQ2OKM on 2007-12-02
  i use the WD5000AAKS HARD RIVE in my PC
  very stable and fast ... I recommend this hard drive
  
  3 years warranty from West digital ^__^
  
  
• Excellent
  By A1DSAS0TLXS4XP on 2008-02-15
  I got 2 drives for a Linux Fedora 7 installation (server and backup). The drive is noticeable faster. In a 1Gb LAN with rsync I reached 115Mbps of transfer speed between computers (5 minutes average). With the older 250 GB drivers the transfer speed was up to 80Mbps.
  
  
• it's a good hard drive for the bucks-- what more can one say?
  By A3QKYC4WM9K5W on 2008-05-29
  As expected, this drive is working fine thus far. Good speed and capacity for the dollar. I purchased in anticipation of purchasing a second "down the line" when I'm ready to set up a RAID mirrored configuration, and I trust this will tide me over until that time comes.
  
  
• Good deal
  By A1HB5V7EES9DY9 on 2008-07-18
  The item shipped in a reasonable time for super savor shipping (less than a week). I installed the drive, formatted it and already used about ¼ of its space (videos).
  
  You do have to get a cable (around $8.00) and mounting hardware (4 screws), but this seems to be a good deal.
  
  I can remember when we thought that $1 per gigabyte was cheep. This drive comes out to around 15 cents per gigabyte.
  
  I will have to wait to check on the longevity, but I have always found Western Digitals to be good quality drives.
  
  All in all a good deal!
  
  
  
  
• UBUNTU AND VISTA IN ONE DRIVE
  By AG5WSXI52FPKH on 2008-07-28
  Everything is working properly, i installed vista ultimate sp1 with a q6000 in 8 min, and later after, i made a partition with the ubuntu cd and installed ubuntu hardy heron in 6 min, no joke, this drive is crazy fast up to 66 mb/s (HD TACH) transfer rate, i was migrating from old eide drives, sata is the way, also note for vista media experience users, HARDDRIVE SCORE 5.7 NOT 5.9, i had before with ide drives 5.2, it isint a big difference may i say, but the boot time and install time are much shorter and speedy for such a huge drive. And for 79.99 it's a steal. if you want 5.9 get a raptor or velociraptor.
  
  
• Lots of storage and a great price.
  By A27RUI1J75LJF9 on 2008-08-06
  I have 4 of these drive's in 2 seperate boxes. The 1st drive in each box runs XP with a seperate partition for storage. The 2nd drive is mainly for video and storage. I couldnt be any happier with them. They run alot quieter than my old drives and the r/w times are great. I've tried drives from Seagate to Maxtor, but will keep buying WD drives. If the prices drop anymore I'm going to go broke from buying more.
  
  
• Great drive
  By A241A7W4WQXEDX on 2008-08-25
  Fast and quiet drive at a great price. Windows did not recognize the drive at first, but after downloading their setup utility from the WD site, it was a snap. Be warned though it doesn't come with any cables. Some people have written that theirs' did, and some have written that it did not. Play it safe and order a SATA data and power cable just in case if you don't have any spares.
  
  
• WD 5000AAKS hard drive
  By A206W487NUF0WI on 2008-09-01
  This is a really good hard drive. It boots up very quietly and holds tons of files. I didn't have to use any software to get it to work with my computer so it didn't matter that it didn't come with any software. would definitely buy one again.
  
  
• Big, Fast, and Quiet
  By A3NVI9PGM1RCO1 on 2008-09-08
  Not a lot to say here, but this drive is very quiet, very fast, and keeps quite cool. I work in the business and we actually carry this exact model and so far we haven't had hardly any come back with problems. I bought mine here because Amazon's price is cheaper than what my "adjusted cost" is at work. I have 4 drives in my machine and have only used Western Digital. I have 2 Raptors and 2 of these 500GB. If you are looking for a big drive that's also quiet and reliable look no further. Oh, 5 out of 5 eggs in the reviews over at Newegg...
  
  
• Good drive, no problems
  By A1KSTH3S1COKUU on 2008-09-09
  Ordered two of these together. Both arrived in good condition and worked out of the box in a Mac desktop. Packaging was good. No mounting hardware or cables are included, but I knew that and did not need them anyway.
  
  
• Faulty Hard Drive
  By APOFQFXC8K645 on 2008-09-30
  Sorry to say folks. As much as i have great respect for WD hard drives. This new 500gig is a total failure. It just doesn't show up on my windows XP,Neither on Linux(mandriva & Ubuntu),neither on the Apple Mac Book. Presently i am disappointed. This hard drive i wanna return for a replacement. Buying this hard drive i would not recommend especially as this happened at a time that i needed space for all my music.
  
  
• sold as new arrived used
  By A1DSUV37KLKLJT on 2008-10-03
  This HD was sold to me as new and arrived used with no hardware or paperwork then Amazon charged me for the return
  
  
• No instructions
  By A2NWGM8A0S5FY0 on 2008-10-30
  It works fine, but there isnt instructions with it. I had to call to Western and they helped me to Initialize it. BTW, Excellent Attention to Customers...!
  
  
• Drive works ok but vibrates too much
  By A2PREU4LOFQRB1 on 2008-11-09
  I don't know if it's just the one I received but mine vibrates more than normal and causes my computer case to make noise. I think I got a defective one because HDDs are NOT supposed to vibate too much especially 7200 rpm drives. It sounds like the platters or something inside is not balanced hence the vibration. The drive itself does not rattle or anything but it vibrates.
  
  

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