NEW Reviews Beta Feedback

Western Digital WD Caviar Blue 500GB

73

Good

Avg User Rating
2 User Reviews | add yours »

Pros
Relatively inexpensive
Speedy
Cons
Lacks extras

Pricing: Inexpensive: $140 (10/7/2008)
Performance: Good: 75
Features: Good: 73
Design: Fair: 65

Find out how these four scores, and their relative weights, combine to produce the PC World Rating.

Pricing

Inexpensive: $140

Cost per Gigabyte - $0.28

Performance

Good: 75

PC World Tests (seconds)
Interface Tested	SATA-300
Primary Volume - Virus Scan	56.17
Primary Volume - Windows File Search	161
Internal Read - Ahead Nero Burning	462
Internal Read - WinZip	350
Internal Read - ACDSee	514
Internal Write - Files and Folders	141.57
Internal Write - Large File	106.54

Features

Good: 73

Basics
Drive size (GB)	500GB
Supported Interface(s)	SATA-300
Speed (RPM)	7200
Buffer Size (MB)	16

Other
Bundled Software	Google Desktop tools

Support & Reliability
Labor Warranty (years)	One
Parts Warranty (years)	One
Weekday Support Hours	9.6
Saturday Support Hours	9
Sunday Support Hours	0
Toll-Free Support	Yes

Design

Fair: 65

User Reviews for Western Digital WD Caviar Blue 500GB

Reviewed by: hagbard

Duration of ownership: 2 Weeks

Strengths: Quiet drive, none quieter. Appears rather fast despite the awful 19ms access rate.

Weaknesses: Access time on my drive is 19ms, which is slower than any drive I've owned in five years. WD customer support is non-existent.

Overall Evaluation: Was very impressed with the drive, especially that I couldn't hear it above my computer fans, until I started running tests on it. HD Tune and HD Tach report the access time as 19ms. The common access time on this drive is 13ms. Asked around and found four other people who've recently bought (past two weeks) this drive have the same poor access time. Emailed WD over a week ago with no reply. Emailed again a few days ago, same. May have been a good drive before but I suspect they've cheapened it up.
Reviewed by: uwss

Duration of ownership: 2 Days

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Poor customer service and terrible technical support. Long wait times between both customer service and technical suppport.

Overall Evaluation: I purchased a 250 gig hard drive. I called for support , waited for about an hour for help. The first tech partitioned the hard drive for only 2 gigs so when I loaded software I ran out of disk space. The next day I called and talked to Julie and she said the hard drive was not under warranty even though it was made in March of 2007. I had to threaten them with legal action to get help. Overall, the experience was a nightmare. Buy a hard drive from another vendor.