Western Digital Caviar GreenPower 1TB SATA Hard Drive - 5400 RPM, 16MB

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review




Runs cool and never lags in video playback, December 4, 2008
By Pigumon (Bay Area, CA)
I installed this in a Network Media Tank HDX-1000, which is a fanless media server that outputs (upscaled or full HD) to 1080P via HDMI or Component. The fanless part worried me, so I looked for a slower drive that would run cool. Well turns out this is the PERFECT drive for this situation. My NMT never reached 90°F because this drive never even came close to getting hot! It stays as slow as possible, therefore staying cooler, while never skipping or causing jittery video.

It's also fairly quite though if I have it in front of a tv, you can hear it accessing every few seconds during quiet scenes, if it's next to or behind, I can't hear it. Also, in a cabinet it's almost silent. You can definitely hear it wind up when it first starts if you have it out in the open (in a drive case). It's also great how it winds down whenever possible.

I should point out since I've seen some confusion on other boards even in the description, this is a 5400 TO 7200RPM drive. It will adjust to the lowest speed necessary, but if the lowest happens to be 7200RPMs, you got it!

7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's! 7200RPM's!



WD GreenPower - Great for External Drive Enclosures!, December 4, 2008
By KeriJane (Chicago IL USA)
The WD GreenPower 1TB SATA Hard Drive is ideal for use in external drive enclosures or in the poorly ventilated drive bays often found in store-bought computers.

I put two of these in a hot running LaCie 2Big Triple external drive and it vastly reduced the noise as well as heat. It now runs so cool that the 2Big's temperature-controlled fan seldom comes on. It would be even quieter If I were to activate the Automatic Acoustic Management feature on the GPs.

The GreenPower drives are not meant for extreme speed at 5400rpm, but are still reasonably fast. About the only thing you wouldn't want to use them for is either a System or Scratch disk in a high-end Workstation or Gaming PC... they're fine for everything else including non-HD video capture.

I recommend them as primary drives for system builds or upgrades for one reason: slower and cooler running drives usually last a lot longer and people usually store all their stuff on the primary drive without backups..



One of my favorites, November 28, 2008
By Lantana Al (Lantana, TX USA)
This is my favorite STORAGE drive. It runs quiet and cool and it is relatively inexpensive. I have bought several, with the first one being for my TiVoHD and it's been working great for almost a year now. However, I would not use this drive as a main drive for someone who wants great performance. NOTE: Newer models of this drive use 3 platters instead of 4 and are faster and even more efficient. These drives run at 5400 RPM.



Nice Drive for the Drobo, November 24, 2008
By Hawkman (United States)
I got 2 of these to use in the Drobo. I don't know how Green it is, but I wanted reliable drives and Western Digital drives are that. I can hear them in the Drobo being cooled so don't know if the Drobo is sensitive or the Drive actually needs it. Either way, they are fine.



Flawless install and runs quiter and cooler..., November 5, 2008
By M. L Rogers (Vista, CA United States)
Flawless install... been running for about two weeks in my HP ex470 Home Server with out powering down. Very quite, no access delays noticed and speed is as fast as other 1TB drives. One items to note on the temperature monitoring this drive runs about -12 degrees F. cooler consistently, And when all of the drives are working (non-Green) harder there is a greater span in temperatures. This will makes big difference as you start stacking more drives together with minimum airflow in servers and PC. I plan to replace my other drives with this green drive.