Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM SATA II WD1001FALS

Nothing I can say against this drive, ~$100 for 1TB and a caviar black at that.I have this on an ASUS Server board's Marvell RAID controller in a RAID 1 with another (identical drive) I had purchased previously from Newegg. Been great so far as my main data archive.-----------UPDATE----------------I've now used this drive in several different configurations since June 2009 when I originally wrote this review, and I'd like to supplement what I previously wrote. I'll probably be duplicating a lot of what other have written, but so what - my unique experience might help you with your situation (contact me with questions if you wish)First, general notes:This drive is fast, cool, and quiet. The only time I ever hear it is when it spools up from being asleep, and when its crunching on a particularly large file (or large series of files). Usually, my velociraptor (or NAS) drowns it out.Next, Pros and Cons:Pros:32 MB Cache, w/ Dual CPU - minimal use of my xeons to run this drivePrice per TB - falling every day5 Year Warranty - I can see this drive still working in 5 yearshigher density platter design - improves seek timeCons:Spool Up Time from power save - if I wanted a power saver I'd have bought a caviar GreenRAID - does not work well in RAID arrays (WD trying to sell more expensive RE versions)Bottom Line:So long as you know that you're getting a bulk drive (no cables or OEM packaging) and don't intend to try and do RAID arrays without working firmware magic, then this is an outstanding drive. The performance, reliability, and warranty make it a no-brainer purchase.If you want to do RAIDs, look at the samsung spinpoint raid drives or the deskstars (or spend the money to get the RE drives).If you want a power saver, go for a Caviar GreenIf you want more speed, then you're looking at setting up a RAID0, using a WD velociraptor, or using SSDsIf you think that your planned useage fits with the functionality of this drive, then go for it! You won't regret it!-------------------Configs and Notes------------------Workstation:ASUS DSEB-DG Server BoardDual Intel Xeon 52XX Dual Core CPUs (not a production chip)8 GB FBDIMM ECC Memory (DDR2 800)WD Velociraptor 300 GB 10,000 RPM SATA2PNY GTX 265Creative X-Fi Sound CardCorsair 1000W Power SupplyThermaltake Armor CaseUses of Drive:Configuration 1 - Software RAID1 on Marvell Raid controller on ASUS DSEB-DG mainboardConfiguration 2 - Hardware RAID1 on Synology DS 209 NASConfiguration 3 - Data drive on my main workstation (I sold its older brother)Config 1 notes - I discarded this usage because I was worried about my ability to rebuild the RAID array if a drive failed (or my motherboard). I had troubles building the array with the Marvel software, and was worried that in re-building I might lose all my data. Thus, I switched to a Synology DS 209 NASConfig 2 notes - these drives do NOT work well in a RAID1. Many have had this issue. Unfortunately I purchased mine AFTER WD changed the firmware to not allow RAID in their non-RE3 drives. Now, I've heard of a colleague successfully flashing the RE3 firmware onto this drive, but I have no idea how he did it. But, I simply purchased (2) Hitachi Deskstar 2TB drives for my NAS, and sold my second caviar black to a friend to subsidize the project (see my separate review of the hitachis)Config 3 Notes - Operating by itself (internal drive) is essentially what this was designed to do, and it does it well. The only con is the spool up mentioned - although it saves power, it takes about 15 seconds, which can be annoying

This highly advanced and high performance 2 TB Western Digital performs extremely well so far. The most unique feature of this drive is the off platter parking and locking when powered down. With this feature, the platters are not likely to suffer shock damages from the heads pounding from rough handling while being shipped. Speaking about shipping, Amazon.com as well as many other online retailer should do a better job of packaging OEM hard drives for shipping. My drive was shipped double boxed with the outer box slightly larger with an airbag pillow on one end. The inner box appear to be supplied by Western Digital with two plastic cushioning inserts on the ends and does appear to be adequate. The outer box practically does not offer any more protection from shock damages. The outer box should have been large enough to be fitted with some foam cushioning all around. The other desirable feature that this drive has is that it has dual processors and dual activators for the heads for precise tracking. The secondary activator utilizes piezoelectric technology to really fine tune in on the exact track on the platter quietly. This of course improved performance somewhat.I purchased this hard drive to use for additional storage on my computer. Because of the high-performance nature I feel this hard drive also makes an excellent boot drive for Windows. Of all the hard drive I ever purchase, it also produced the least amount of vibration when on. It's about as quiet as my Seagate hard drives. The only difference is that it makes the clunk sound occasionally when powered down when the heads park and lock. I'm paranoided from experience with my last two Seagate hard drive purchase that had growing reallocated section count shortly after placed in service. To make sure that I have a sound drive, right after installation I ran Western Digital's own Data Iifeguard For Windows to check for bad sections by running the complete surface scan. This software can be downloaded from Western Digital website. . I also ran a surface scan on this drive using HD Sentinel Pro. Both tests passed with no problems.Final thoughts: Because this Western Digital is better engineered than any of my previous hard drive, my hope is for longtime reliability. So far I'm fully impressed with the performance I have been receiving. When I ran a benchmark, the maximum read speed was almost 140 MB per second and the minimum was around 70 MB per second. Take for example when transferring files from one hard drive to another. I did an experiment on copying files on copying files from my old storage drive to my new drive. When the file is copy single file at a time the speed remains almost full of around 100 MB per second. But when I copy two files at the same time, the speed chokes down to around 25 MB per second for the two files. I try again on copying two files accept at this time, one file gets copied to the new drive and the other file is copied to my boot drive. The speed also get choked down again to around 25 MB per second for the two files. This proves in a way that the bottleneck is on my old storage drive.I tried this transferring test again except the new drive is the source this time. I copied one file to my old storage drive as well as copying another file to my boot drive at the same time. Only this time the speed remains the same on whether I copy one file or copying two or more files at the same time. The transfer speed remains close to 100 MB per second whether copying one file or two files at the same time.