WD10EADS Western Digital, May be the “green” drive to..

Overall Rating3.673.673.673.673.67

May be the “green” drive to get right now

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.

UPDATE 2-2010: Western Digital has recently introduced a new WDxxEARS series of Caviar Green drives, with a number of enhancements. And, they are priced attractively. But they come with a wrinkle that means you’ll need to do some thinking about whether this earlier WDxxEADS series drive is still better for you.

The WDxxEARS series uses more dense 500GB platters - so a 1TB drive has just two platters, and drives up to 2TB are available - and has 64MB of cache. So far so good. But the wrinkle is that WD is using the new series to transition to 4KB sectors on the hard drive; they call it WD Advanced Format technology.

For some users - those using Windows XP, or those trying to clone a drive to the new drive - Advanced Format presents substantial issues, so the EADS seriews may still be the drive to use. For those doing fresh installs for Vista, Windows 7 or Mac systems, be sure to look at the newer drives. Read the reviews for the new drives for more info and some suggestions for where to get still more info.

PACKAGING UPDATE 2-2010: Read some of the recent reviews for comments about the completely unacceptable packaging that Amazon is using to ship these hard drives. You may want to consider choosing another source for the drive.

Update (5/19/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD10EADS Electronics, was written by snapcrackle.

The average rating for this item is 3.7 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.

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Reviews (3)

snapcrackle

March 22nd, 2010 at 12:08 am    


Overall Rating55555

May be the “green” drive to get right now
Rated 5 stars.


Heather Lion

March 25th, 2010 at 11:12 pm    


Overall Rating55555

Why you need this drive
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.

—-Update regarding WD’s changed rpm specs—-
WD has changed the specs on the drive since my last review, from 7200rpm to “IntelliPower,” and many other websites speculate as to what that exactly means. Some say it runs closer to 5400rpm, other say it’s a variable rate between 5400 and 7200. I don’t know what it is, but I did want to weigh in on performance.

I also have a 5400rpm drive in the same machine, and a proper 7200rpm drive in another machine. This green drive definitely outperforms the 5400 drive, and I personally do not notice the difference between this and the other 7200rpm drive when running Acronis backup or Photoshop/Gigapixel work. Apparently this has to do with the increased density of the plates used in the drive, although I do not know enough to weigh in scientifically on this. Of course I doubt that performance is comparable to the WD Black drives, but for normal use this drive will not be a “slow-down factor” like other 5400rpm drives tend to be.

The rest of my review about power consumption and temperature still stands, and I would also like to add that it’s great with fanless external enclosures, which often tend to generate excess heat with higher-power drives.


Imajica

April 2nd, 2010 at 10:21 am    


Overall Rating11111

No warranty support
Purchased two discs and they both failed within 90 days (in two different computers). The good news is that the function smart drive failure warning. You have a RMA number and returned to the Department for replacement … replacement has been approved …. and a month later, WD continues to signal that the discs are "sold out". They have a lot of things for sale at Amazon, but none for a replacement under warranty.


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