Western Digital

Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue

  • quickfind code: 124228
  • manufacturer #: WD5000AAKS

Buying Information

881 in stock for next day delivery

Quantity

  • £39.76inc. vat

Need it fast? Order in just over 21 hours and 31 minutes for delivery on
Friday, 12th March

Overview

Product Description

Click here to discuss this product in the Ebuyer Forums!

WD Caviar SE16 7200 RPM next-generation SATA hard drives feature 16 MB cache for lightning-fast performance, cool and quiet operation and up to 500 GB of storage for capacity-hungry applications.
 

Price Breaks

The more you buy, the more you save!
Qty40-7980-119120-159160-199200+
ex VAT£33.69£33.60£33.50£33.41£33.31
inc VAT£39.59£39.48£39.37£39.26£39.14

Specification

Downloads

Documentation relating to this product is available in PDF format.

Product Specifications

General

Device TypeHard drive - internal
Width10.2 cm
Depth14.7 cm
Height2.54 cm
Weight0.63 kg

Hard Drive

Form Factor3.5" x 1/3H
Capacity500 GB
Interface TypeSerial ATA-300
Buffer Size16 MB
FeaturesData Lifeguard, Shock Guard, IntelliSeek, Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL)
Compliant StandardsS.M.A.R.T.

Performance

Drive Transfer Rate300 MBps (external)
Seek Time8.9 ms (average)
Track-to-Track Seek Time2 ms
Average Latency4.2 ms
Spindle Speed7200 rpm

Reliability

Non-Recoverable Errors1 per 10^15
Start / Stop Cycles50,000

Expansion / Connectivity

Interfaces1 x Serial ATA-300 - 7 pin Serial ATA
Compatible Bays1 x internal - 3.5" x 1/3H

Miscellaneous

Works with Windows VistaSoftware and devices that carry the Works with Windows Vista logo have been tested for baseline compatibility with PC's running.
Compliant StandardsRoHS

Manufacturer Warranty

Service & Support3 years warranty
Service & Support DetailsLimited warranty - 3 years

Environmental Parameters

Min Operating Temperature0 °C
Max Operating Temperature60 °C
Humidity Range Operating5 - 95%
Shock Tolerance65 g @ 2ms (operating) / 350 g @ 2ms (non-operating)
Vibration Tolerance0.75 g @ 20-300 Hz (operating) / 3 g @ 10-300 Hz (non-operating)
Sound Emission28 dBA

Product Reviews

Ebuyer.com customer reviews give you the chance to give your opinion on the latest technology products. See what customers had to say about this product below. To view more reviews or write your own review, use either of the buttons below.

01/03/2007 Review:
Great Drive but make sure u got a jumper for sata 1 use
review by: Anonymous rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows XP

Top notch drive had it in for a few days now its siting with its 250 gig wd brothers the only slight negative is if you are going to run this on a slightly older mother board with only SATA 1 (150mbs) then u need to jumper pins 5 + 6 easy enough to do but it doesnt come with any jumpers and they can be a pain to source if u havnt got any

(I know its OEM but its a jumper for gods sake thats like a value of 0.0000001 pence surely they can send one with a drive)

33 of 34 people found this review useful
10/08/2007 Comment:
Nice and Quiet - Make sure AAM is enabled !
review by: IAIN DUNCAN operating system: Windows Vista

Very big drive and whisper quiet.
If you have trouble with this drive sounding noisy then it is most likely because Acoustic Management has not been enabled.
To enable this download and burn to disc the utility used for Hitachi drives.(yes Hitachi)
Run the program in DOS and highlight the drive in the information screen.
Then press Alt and A together to bring up acoustic management settings and use the slide to set it how you want. The Hitachi utility works for many other makes of drive as well.

21 of 21 people found this review useful
21/05/2007 Review:
Fast, very fast.
review by: IBP rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows XP

I couldn't believe the speed when I backed up some data onto this drive.

I had looked at a few reviews and benchtests first to decide which 500 SATA drive I wanted. I think I made a good choice.

Quick, quiet and so far reliable. I didn't need a jumper for SATA 1.


** A note to other reviewers - please don't drop stars because you had bad customer service or delivery issues. The star rating is surely for how good the product is, it's misleading. We help each other by recommending a good product, not necessarily the service.**

14 of 16 people found this review useful
23/02/2007 Review:
Just WOW
review by: Anonymous rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows XP

What can I say about this product, I am certainly going to get one for home having had the pleasure of one at work, start up is amazingly quick and data retreival is blinding, I can\'t fault this hard drive, I don\'t think you will either.

10 of 12 people found this review useful
07/03/2007 Review:
Superb drive
review by: Yusuf Budeiri rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows XP

I purchased this drive to replace a pair of 10K rpm 36Gb ultra-SCSI drives (great upgrade!) and an adaptec 29160 controller. For the price, this beast beats the older set up hands down!

The drive is incredibly fast, with WinXP booting faster and responding quicker in general. This is more noticible during gaming sessions. This is probably due to the SATA2 support which has greater bandwidth than the older SCSI setup.

To top it off, it barely makes a noise! I thought that was going to be too good to be true, as I was used to the "plane taking off" noises my older drives used to make, but this one just quietly comes to life and is more silent than a ninja! I am now in a position where the fans on my box are noisier than the hard drive. No clicks, nothing.

Very impressed with it and I intend to buy another one soon with a view to stripe them (1TB RAID ftw!)

If you can spare the cash, this is definitely worth the money (still cheaper than 2x250GB drives as I write this)

8 of 10 people found this review useful
07/05/2007 Review:
Excellent, very quiet
review by: Anonymous rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows Vista

I have bought this drive to fit in my Antec Fusion Media Centre case. Works excellently, very quick and very quiet so is perfect for Media Centre use (in fact, only my CPU fan is driving me mad just now!). 468GB available capacity in Windows. As other's mention, on motherboards which only support SATA/150Mbps (and not SATAII/300 which this drive supports), you will need to jumper pins 5 and 6 - See 'Opt1' configuration at the bottom of this page on the WD website.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=981&p_created=1052339456&p_sid=ChaZ9YAi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTA3JnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0xMjMmcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0xLjEyMyZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPXNlYXJjaF9mbmwmcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1qdW1wZXIgc2V0dGluZ3M*&p_li=&p_topview=1

And yes, it's mean of them to not give 1 x jumper ...a bag of silica gel is your limit of freebies ;)

5 of 6 people found this review useful
11/06/2007 Review:
Western Digital WD5000AAKS SATA 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEN
review by: Andrew Gallagher rating:
customer rating
operating system: Not Applicable

First of, what you get:-
1. A brown box which contains
2. Air spacer bags as packaging
3. A sealed anti static bag containing one drive

Thats it. Please note that if your motherboard is _NOT_ SATAII compliant then you will need to source a jumper to force the drive to SATA150 otherwise your motherboard will probably not see the drive. To be honest for the fraction of a fraction of a penny that jumpers cost, it would have been nice to have one included. Still thats OEM for you I suppose.

The drive itself is one of the quietest and speediest drives I have owned so far. All round I think that it was well worth the money. May even get another and RAID them up for a little extra data insurance. It was a tough decision between the Seagate 500 gig and this Western Digital 500 gig drive, but in the end a cooler and more quiet drive won. If you are on the fence between the two then just cave and buy this Western Digital.

4 of 5 people found this review useful
07/08/2007 Review:
Excellent product
review by: Adam rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows XP

Having upgraded from my old ide hard drive this is a massive improvement. Windows starts up in half the time. Very fast and very quiet. Also you can download an install application from support.wdc.com called 'data lifeguard tools' which enables you to do an exact partition copy from your old hd.

4 of 4 people found this review useful
13/08/2007 Comment:
OEM Definition
review by: Anonymous operating system: Not Applicable

For the people who review complaining about the lack of cables/screws/box...

Do you even understand what OEM means?

The whole POINT of OEM is that you just get the component, no manuals, no cables, no frills. That is why it is so cheap. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and PC components are no exception. Want a pretty box, cables and screws? Go buy the retail version for twice the price.

Seriously though, great drive. I have one already and I am ordering another one to run in RAID formation.

4 of 7 people found this review useful
27/03/2007 Review:
Great drive
review by: Anonymous rating:
customer rating
operating system: Windows Vista

Its very big, very fast, and very quiet. What else do I need to say?

3 of 5 people found this review useful

Product Discussion

Join in with the Ebuyer product discussions today to ask questions, exchange stories and share opinions with other Ebuyer customers who have bought this product.

So far there are 12 replies to the discussion.

Write a question or comment about this product



Where will my message be posted?
Your message will be posted on the discussion page for this product where you can also view responses and questions from other Ebuyer customers.