WD Caviar SE16 SE16 500 GB Internal Hard Drive

great drive

Strengths: all out champ the drive is big,quick, and quiet

Weakness: there are none that i can see

I HAVE TWO,AND THEY ARE GREAT. THE DRIVE IS BIG,QUICK, AND QUIET. I CAN'T ASK FOR MORE. I HAVE THEM IN SMART DRIVE EXTERNAL ENCLOSURES WITH NO FAN THEY GET PRETTY WARM, BUT NOT HOT. THEY ARE USED A LOT, AND LEFT ON FREQUENTLY. SOMETIMES FOR DAYS AT A TIME, AND THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM. I WILL PURCHASE AT LEAST 2 OR 3 MORE SOON. CAN'T SAY ENOUGH ABOUT THEM!

By ANFRAE - Jan 15, 2007

Great silent 500 GB drive

Strengths: fast and silent

Weakness: n/a

I did investigate a lot before deciding to buy it and I have to say I do not regret my decision. Great drive, fast and silent at the same time. The perfect backup medium. I think I will get a 2nd one.

By HMan; - Oct 18, 2006

Time does tell...

Strengths: Size, obviously

Weakness: High failure rate, not so great speed in a RAID configuration.

I've had a high failure rate so far. I have 5 of these in an nVidia RAID5 using SATA II. I've had 2 drives fail within an 8-10 week period after first use. Thankfully, they come with a 3 year warranty, and my RAID 5 is holding up, but 2 out of 5 seems high to me. No, heat was not a factor. I have kept a thermometer between the drives for weeks. During heaviest use, temperature was 110F (43C), and...
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I've had a high failure rate so far. I have 5 of these in an nVidia RAID5 using SATA II. I've had 2 drives fail within an 8-10 week period after first use. Thankfully, they come with a 3 year warranty, and my RAID 5 is holding up, but 2 out of 5 seems high to me. No, heat was not a factor. I have kept a thermometer between the drives for weeks. During heaviest use, temperature was 110F (43C), and nominal was about 95F (35C). I keep these 5 drives in 2 disk bays, each bay with a 120mm fan blowing front-to-back. I even modified the top of my computer case to punch 2 large holes and mount 2 more 120mm case fans to suck the hot air up and out from directly over the back half of both drive bays. After implementing this 4-fan configuration, temperature never reached higher than 95F at worst.

By PotomacMd-NetEng - Mar 8, 2007

As Advertised - Good Drive

Strengths: SATA, small, quiet, fast Works great for RAID

I decided to WD another chance after having some problems with their drives a few years back. After a few months, the drives seem to be holding up well. I use 2 of them for a small RAID JBOD.

By G; - Feb 2, 2007

Quiet but HOT

Strengths: Quiet, Quick, Large

Weakness: Too Hot

I use a couple of these drives in a fanless enclosure (4 drives total), and have had 3 failures. I have two Samsung drives in the same enclosure (even with these hot bricks), and they have never given me a problem. As someone else mentioned, thank goodness for the 3 year warranty, but when you are constantly replacing drives in an enclosure that requires you to remove about 2 dozen screws, it's...
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I use a couple of these drives in a fanless enclosure (4 drives total), and have had 3 failures. I have two Samsung drives in the same enclosure (even with these hot bricks), and they have never given me a problem. As someone else mentioned, thank goodness for the 3 year warranty, but when you are constantly replacing drives in an enclosure that requires you to remove about 2 dozen screws, it's annoying. The replacement drives I just got are going on ebay, and my new 500GB Samsung drives should be arriving shortly.

I would not buy these drives again, at least, for this application. The drives (WD 500GB) I have in my regular computer, and in an external enclosure, work just fine though.

By geogecko - Sep 17, 2007