Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital 250 GB Caviar Blue SATA 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD2500AAKS

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.

I build computers as a hobby. Why pay for someone else to build one (one size fits does not fit all) when building your own is not too difficult and you can build with quality parts tailored to your own specific needs. Case in point, the WD 640GB HDD. Large hard drive prices are economical right now. Generally speaking, the larger the drive, the less the cost per gigabyte (GB). At Amazon's prices the WD 640GB drive was about $10 bucks more than the WD Caviar 16 320 GB drive with the same cache. Western Digital has recently color coded their drives: Black (high performance), Blue (mainstream) and Green (no brainer: ecologically friendly-for a hard drive). Where does marketing get these ideas? The Caviar 16 640GB falls into the Blue category. It is amazingly fast and quiet, thanks to its 16 MB cache and 3 Gb/s transfer rate. The technology is interesting in that WD utilized two 320GB platters which gives this drive an edge as compared to say 750 GB drives with similar cache size. The drive itself is nearly silent and the quietest HDD I have used. Its rated over 90MB/sec read and write speeds, which is very fast. Yes there are faster hard drives, but for the money this drive is an excellent choice.

My only complaint: the drive is warranted for 3 years not 5.

Amazon had the lowest price I found, and shipped the drive quickly. Turn around time from placing the order to delivery at my door step was four days. Stable, reliable and excellent price to performance ratio, this drive is a great choice for everyday computing needs.

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.
Update January 2009. This drive is still going strong and works great every day.

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!

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.