WD Blue 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch Desktop Hard Drive (WD10EZEX)

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Product Specifications

IntelliSeek: Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.
Data LifeGuard: Advanced algorithms monitor your drive continuously so it stays in optimum health.
NoTouch Ramp Load Technology: Safely positions the recording head off the disk surface to protect your data.
Package includes a hard drive only - no screws, cables, manuals included. Please purchase mounting hardware and cables separately if necessary.
2-year manufacturer limited warranty

Product Description

Capacity:1TB | Style:3.5” Desktop HDD - 7200 RPM Class Boost your PC storage with WD Blue drives, the brand designed just for desktop and all-in-one PCs with a variety of storage capacities.

Product Reviews

Good, practical desktop drive

I gave this drive to someone as a gift, and they’ve been using it for backups for 10 months without issue.My review is based on another unit of this drive which I bought for myself some months later. I’ve been using it as my primary desktop OS/programs drive since 5/29/2014, so it’s about 5 months now. There have been no problems thus far. It’s really quite a bargain for desktop use if 1TB is all you need.The actual capacity of this drive is 931.5GB. That’s an old marketing trick which can be blamed for the pointless redefinition of all our real, long established data measurements with those silly “i” characters. I won’t dwell on it any further, but 931GB is the true capacity when measured in base 2, as all data is correctly measured.This 1TB Blue drive uses a single 1TB platter spinning at 7200rpm. There are 2 heads (each side is 500GB).A single platter design is usually better for reliability than having multiple smaller platters, because there are fewer points of failure, the assembly is lighter, the motor doesn’t have to work as hard, and less heat is generated.Single platter drives will also tend to be quieter, but due to my configuration I can’t judge the noise level.There has been much discussion and testing among users in online forums, including WD’s forum, which repeatedly show that the 1TB Blue and 1TB Black perform the same. It appears the only benefit of the 1TB Black is a longer warranty. Some Blacks are faster than this drive, but the 1TB model is not.Compared to a Green, the Blue is faster owing to it’s faster rotation speed. The Green drives also have an “intellipark” feature which causes them to keep parking the heads after a few seconds of inactivity. This can cause laggy response and extra wear. I dislike that design - I believe power management functions should be left under the control of the operating system, which can account for user preferences and what is happening in the rest of the system. Hardcoding this behavior into the drive is ridiculous, in my opinion. The Blue behaves the way I prefer - it does not use “intellipark”, it stays ready to roll until directed otherwise through power management commands from the OS.I wish they were making the Blue series in larger sizes - it seems this 1TB is the end of the line. I don’t care for the Greens and the Blacks are more expensive.Partition/Sector Alignment——————————–Please be aware that like most modern drives, this drive uses 4KB sectors (also known as “advanced format”). If you are using Windows 2003, Windows XP or older, as I am, don’t let Windows handle the partitioning of this drive. This is even an issue on unpatched versions of Vista and Windows 7. These older versions of Windows will believe that the physical sectors are 512 bytes, when in reality they are 4KB. As a result, the partition(s) will not be aligned with the physical sectors. It will still work, but performance will be reduced.Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP and older do not have any update to fix this, but it’s not a problem as long as you do the partitioning with a suitable 3rd party utility. I think Western Digital offers a tool for this, but I’ve never tried it. Once the partitions are set, it’s fine to let Windows format them.For my Windows XP install, I used a recent version of GParted to partition the drive. GParted can be downloaded and burned to a bootable CD, or installed to a USB flash drive. Just use the option to align your partition(s) on 1MB boundaries. This is the easy way to ensure they are aligned correctly for the best performance. Then boot your WinXP install disc and let it format the partition that you already created. It sounds harder than it is, it’s a minor hassle but it’s simple.If you ever change the partitions, once again use GParted or a similar utility that handles alignment for modern hard disks. Don’t use the built-in XP partitioning. But again, once the partitions are created, it’s fine to let Windows format them.The built-in partitioning is fixed in Windows 8.According to Microsoft, it is fixed in Windows 7 after installing Service Pack 1 - you would need to have that service pack before partitioning the drive, not after.Again according to Microsoft, it is also fixed in Windows Vista after installing update MS KB 2553708 - I assume this is automatically installed for people who use automatic updates, but I don’t know that for a fact. This won’t do you any good if you’re doing a fresh install and your install disc predates the required update.The partition alignment detail I’ve described above is an issue you will encounter with any recent hard drive, it’s not unique to this model. If you ignore it, performance will be affected but it will still work. You may see Seagate drives implying that they are immune from this, but in reality, they are not. All modern “advanced format” drives, of any brand, will perform better if sectors are properly aligned. But it’s not a big deal - just use a modern partitioning utility and then you’re set.———————-I just tested this drive using “Roadkil’s Disk Speed” on Windows XP 32-bit. I’ll cut out all the variables and just give the linear transfer results with large block sizes. My drive has a few partitions and there are lots of files on it, so this might affect results.First partition (first 20GB): 170-178MB/sec linear read3rd partition (physical location range is from 28-628GB): 153-177MB/sec linear readLast 300GB is unpartitioned so I can’t test that range.I don’t think the random access test is useful, because my partitioning greatly influences the result.There’s a test mode for the whole physical disk, but it’s results are too inconsistent.This drive is a great bargain if you just need a simple, inexpensive, well performing 7200rpm hard disk. I was tempted to try a Seagate SSHD, but I couldn’t justify the cost compared to this. If I was shopping today, I’d look carefully at the HGST and Toshiba offerings as well, but from the WD side this is my pick for a general purpose 1TB desktop drive.Update: It is now ¹¹⁄₂₀₁₅. This drive is in my desktop PC, used daily, and still works fine.Some months ago I ran a benchmark on this drive using the linux utility “gnome-disks”. The random access performance measured out to a 15.7ms average. This is mediocre, but expected from a quiet drive. Screenshot is attached. It also shows the transfer rate across the disk (read test only, I didn’t test writes).

Amazon and WD - your customers deserve better support than this

Ordered 3TB hard drive. 2.79TB should register given windows seeing 1024 instead of 1000 per kilobyte, etc. It only registered as 850GB. I received this today, and Amazon will not take it back. I must pay to return it through WD’s RMA process. Amazon and WD - your customers deserve better support than this.

Great backup drive

I’ve been using this as a sequential backup drive for about a year now. My internal drive is a 1 TB drive so 2 TB allows a bit of archiving in case I discover I need to get an old version of something. 5400 rpm isn’t the fastest thing but I use automated backup software so it is all happening in the background in its own good time every 3 hours and I don’t care about speed. I also use older Mac computers and I believe there’s something about them not being able to boot from drives larger than 2 TB. Anyway, this meets my needs.As for reliability, this one has been running for a year with backups every 3 hours. I think with this kind of thing you’ll either get something DOA and have to take the luck of the draw, or it will work and keep on working for several years. I do own a couple of green drives too but I prefer a blue (a quality step above greens, plus slightly different operational behavior) for a backup drive.

Works Great in DVR Application

At home, using a robust Internet connection, I’ve been spoiled to be able to watch streaming videos at times that are convenient for me. During my motorhome travels, where reliable high-speed Internet connections are usually NOT available, I’ve depended upon satellite TV movie channels. Unfortunately the satellite movies have been scheduled at their convenience and not necessarily mine. The solution for me was a Digital Video Recorder (DVR).I bought this hard drive in combination with a Sabrent USB 3.0 SATA 3.5-Inch Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure (EC-GD35), so I could use it with the Dish-TV VIP211K satellite receiver in my motorhome. The combination of those two items from Amazon ($87.18) cost between $10 and $50 less than similar offerings on Dish-TV’s Website. According to Dish-TV, a 1TB hard drive will record 120 hours of video, but they don’t say if it’ll record that many hours in HD.Installing this hard drive into the Sabrent enclosure took no more than three minutes, which I felt was time well-spent considering what I saved. After I plugged this “enclosed” hard drive into the satellite receiver’s USB port, turned it on and had Dish-TV activate the hard drive, which costs $40, it took about five minutes to format. Completing this installation, I’ve been able to automatically record movies from my satellite receiver and then play them back at a time when it is convenient for me to watch.In this DVR application, I could not ask for better performance. I can set up the DVR to record movies automatically and have those movies waiting for me when it’s convenient for me to view them. The recordings are as clear and sharp as the original programming and play without pauses, stuttering or glitches. Compared with buying a hard drive that was already in a housing with a power supply, this combination costs less and provides flawless performance.

Faster than the original “green” drives I’ve used.

A hard drive died on my 2010 vintage Acer All-in-One which came with a 5200 RPM “green” 1 tb drive. I had replaced the “green” one with another “green” one that lasted about a year and two months and then puked, so I decided to give this cheap higher speed drive a try. It is noticeably faster with the same processor/operating system configuration that was on the drive that died, and since I seldom “idle” my system or use power saving settings to put it to sleep, etc. This drive may be a little less efficient with my electric bill, but it loads Windows 10 quicker on my now old fashioned dual processor intel chip than the “green” drives did.