Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD10EADS

If you're looking for a low power drive, the Western Digital WD10EADS is one of the best options currently. It has by far the lowest idle and active power consumption statistics. That, not surprisingly, helps it run cooler than other drives as well.

There is some performance loss, though most users will probably not notice. For detailed stats, look up the Winter 2008 Hard Drive Guide at Tom's Hardware. (Though you may notice how quiet and cool it is!)

Also, note that this is the OEM or Bulk version of the drive, with no SATA data cable or power adapter, or screws if your system uses them.

WD engineering continues to impress me and I've been in the IT business for 20+ years as an engineer on all levels. When used in an Apple computer these drives impress with the hardware and OS ability to control the drive for increased performance. Some PC's are being built with this capability as well, but even without it the on-board processor performs fantastic. I would however not recommend this drive in a server due to it's variable spindle speed.

In an external enclosure SATA II through Firewire 800 sustained speeds matched a WD Black 1tb drive, basically maxing out the FW800 bandwidth. Through USB 2.0 they both performed identical as well but USB speeds are based on the external enclosures chip and since it's Serial (USB) it's ONE WAY at a time which makes it slow when compared to FW400/800.

Temps in an iMac were less than 109* at most times, rarely exceeding 110* which also resulted in lower fan noise.

Lower Heat, Less power generally equal longer life and higher reliability however these drives are still new. But as of this review our company has 2 in a NAS Enclosure running in RAID1 for the last 4 months non-stop without any issues.

The WD Black drives would be ideal when performance is what matters but in situations where energy consumption and more importantly heat is considered the ideal attribute these drives are best. The WD black is about 30% faster overall on either Mac/Pc.

Spindle speed varies from 4200rpm-7200rpm on newer models, first generation varied 5400rpm-7200rpm. Both are able to stop altogether through a spin down feature however this will never "spin-down" on a windows based machine due to the indexing Windows employs that access's the drive once every 3 seconds.

For those that don't know why you want a low-power drive:
It's not just for the environment or your electricity bill--those are just added bonuses. A hard drive can generate a lot of heat inside of your system. This means that (a) your fans will have to blow faster (and thus your computer gets significantly louder), but also that the rest of your computer (CPU, graphics card, etc) are operating at a higher heat. This means that they are running at a lower efficiency rate, as well as with an increased risk of failure. Long story short, your computer will run quieter, faster, and more efficiently, and will also last longer with fewer failures.

This particular drive runs faster than a lot of low-power drives, and has been incredibly reliable. It's 7200 rpm and 32mb cache are rather good specs, especially compared to other drives out there--make sure you check those two specs before you buy! The price also cannot be beat.

It unfortunately doesn't come with any cables, so I would strongly suggest getting this (as I did): Cables Unlimited Serial ATA Cable Kit. It comes with both the sata connector for your motherboard as well as a power adapter to power your drive from a 4-pin molex cable from your power supply.

These drives work great and are a fraction of the cost of WD's flagship 2TB drive. You are getting the same great drive for a much cheaper price.

These drives run extremely quiet and cool. I ordered two of these for use in RAID 1 and enabled them for TLER using Western Digitals WDTLER tool, they now support Time Limited Error Recovery just like WD's enterprise drives.

Don't expect these drives to be performance leaders, they are not designed for that. If you want something that runs cool and silent to store your data i.e. pictures, video and music you really can't go wrong here for the price.

I custom fabbed a NAS for file storage, backup, media streaming, etc. and am a fan (and shareholder) of Western Digital products. While some offer opinions between manufacturers, I'll just say that I need reliability and performance in any drive, and this drive delivers.

It's true; these drives run cooler due to having 3 platters for this capacity (reliability) yet not sacrificing on the rest just cause it's "green" by still producing 7,200 RPM & 32MB cache (performance). Don't be swayed by a lower price for the similar WD10EACS model; that one is an older generation that runs at 5,400 RPM at half the cache. Your drive is your investment on the data you keep on it, so it's worth the extra few dollars.

I have 2 of these set up on a RAID configuration on my NAS and they do run very quiet indeed and are great for storage, however don't look at this drive if this is to be your OS drive; look at a smaller capacity for optimum performance. Bear in mind this ships bulk (no retail box, cables, literature, etc.).