# WD10EZEX Review (WD Blue 1TB single-platter drive.)



## adridu59

I might buy one but HDD prices are still high here and the drive isn't widely available in store ATM...

Thanks for the link.


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## sussah

i'm not sure what all this jargon means but if you had to choose for a non-raid setup and just a SSD and HHD for storage, which of these drives would be better for that purpose of being a storage drive.

WD10EZEX
or
WD1003FBYX
or
WD10EFRX

I have all three on their way but I will keep one and send the other 2 back


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## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *sussah*
> 
> WD10EZEX
> or
> WD1003FBYX
> or
> WD10EFRX


Personally I would go for the EZEX... althrough I haven't heard much about the new Red drive. Isn't the Blue cheaper anyway ?


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## Kramy

The Red and RE4 drives are intended for RAID. The Red is 5400RPM with a 3yr warranty, while the RE4 is 7200RPM with a 5yr warranty.

The Blue is highly optimized for desktop use, is 7200RPM, and is using 1TB platters. It only has a 2yr warranty, but it is quiet, so the pros outweigh the cons. I too would opt for the WD10EZEX.


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## nleksan

I was always under the impression that the RE4 drives were Western Digitals best drives for any performance related purpose? I have been saving money to buy one and use my 320GB drive for misc stuff, but should I be looking for a different drive? I do intend to RAID0 after a bit...


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## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I was always under the impression that the RE4 drives were Western Digitals best drives for any performance related purpose?


Someone's gotta ask their marketing team why they did this but the new Blue is the way to go.


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I was always under the impression that the RE4 drives were Western Digitals best drives for any performance related purpose? I have been saving money to buy one and use my 320GB drive for misc stuff, but should I be looking for a different drive? I do intend to RAID0 after a bit...


They have very reliable access times, which is important in RAID environments and for servers.

It's less important for desktop use, but for desktop RAID they're still great drives to get.









Or you can try out the new blues - but I'd wait until LSI finishes his RAID testing before hopping on two of them. The new blues also have reliable max access times, so it's likely they'll perform fine. Just keep in mind you drop from a 5 year warranty to 2 years.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *adridu59*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I was always under the impression that the RE4 drives were Western Digitals best drives for any performance related purpose?
> 
> 
> 
> Someone's gotta ask their marketing team why they did this but the new Blue is the way to go.
Click to expand...

RE4 drives and Black drives have not yet been updated to 1TB platters. It's either harder to seek accurately at those densities, or they're waiting until all kinks are resolved to avoid any tarnish on the Black name. Regardless, I think they have a winner on their hards - aside from the flubbed Green launch (lots of early deaths), WD hasn't had any major issues with their recent drive launches. Firmware is fine, and reliability is fine. Performance is really really fine.


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## 161029

WD started making 1TB per platter drives? I can't believe I didn't hear about this.

Edit: So this is essentially Western Digital's Fine-Tune Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D drive with the same capacities available and double the cache...I wonder how the Seagate 1TB per platter drives compete.

I don't see WD marketing 1TB/platter anywhere on the product page so I assumed that they never decided to upgrade to 1TB platters yet.


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## duffman55

I just got my WD10EZEX today. I'm going to use it to replace my aging 2x250GB RAID 0 as my main OS drive. It's crazy to think that what would've taken eight platters back when I bought these drives now comes on just one platter.

I noticed Kramy stated it's not the best candidate for an OS drive, but hopefully it's good enough for me. The only thing I'm worried about is the slower average access times compared to my current setup. Maybe I'll break down and buy an SSD for my OS drive one of these days.

HD Tune is reporting UDMA Mode 6, which I think is due to me having SATA set to RAID in my BIOS, so I'll have to change that.

EDIT: Just finished doing an extended scan of the drive with WD's utility. It took almost exactly two hours. No problems or reallocated sectors :







. There was 6 power cycles on the drive when I first started it up, and around 20-30 minutes of use.

Reading the reviews on NewEgg for all HDDs; I saw a lot of people with DOA drives, or drives that failed after a few months. But I have to say, the packing was excellent, and I'm not at all worried about this drive failing any time soon. *Knock on wood*









My HD Tune results are pretty similar to Kramy's, but I figure I'll post them anyway:


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## candy_van

Impressive speeds but yea those access times are pretty bad. Still a good drive but youd be much better off w/ a ssd for your OS and this for w/e else.

Would be curious how much you could cut down the access times w 2x of these shortstroked tho.

Sent from Stugots Mobile


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Edit: So this is essentially Western Digital's Fine-Tune Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D drive with the same capacities available and double the cache...I wonder how the Seagate 1TB per platter drives compete.


It's going to be their mainstream part, I suspect. They are taking advantage of dense platters to reduce parts costs, increase reliability, and increase profit margins. They'll probably start pushing this model hard - mass producing them will again raise margins, so that they can reduce the MSRP. We may finally see drive prices dropping close to what they used to be.

Cache doesn't do much for a drive - although an advertised stat, pretty much every drive has 'enough' for the platter count/density and ECC type. Doubling it won't automatically provide a huge speed boost. It's all the unadvertised stuff that does. (Platter Density, Firmware, Seeking Style (Quiet/Aggressive), etc.)
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> I don't see WD marketing 1TB/platter anywhere on the product page so I assumed that they never decided to upgrade to 1TB platters yet.


They have never advertised platter densities. I couldn't say why - it seems like a good advertising point?
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *duffman55*
> 
> I noticed Kramy stated it's not the best candidate for an OS drive, but hopefully it's good enough for me. The only thing I'm worried about is the slower average access times compared to my current setup. Maybe I'll break down and buy an SSD for my OS drive one of these days.


It's not the best choice because of how performance degrades _when full_. If your drive is mostly empty, don't worry about it. If you get an SSD one day, you have even less to worry about. The high sequential speeds mean it should perform very well for a lot of tasks.


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## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Edit: So this is essentially Western Digital's Fine-Tune Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D drive with the same capacities available and double the cache...I wonder how the Seagate 1TB per platter drives compete.
> 
> 
> 
> It's going to be their mainstream part, I suspect. They are taking advantage of dense platters to reduce parts costs, increase reliability, and increase profit margins. They'll probably start pushing this model hard - mass producing them will again raise margins, so that they can reduce the MSRP. We may finally see drive prices dropping close to what they used to be.
> 
> Cache doesn't do much for a drive - although an advertised stat, pretty much every drive has 'enough' for the platter count/density and ECC type. Doubling it won't automatically provide a huge speed boost. It's all the unadvertised stuff that does. (Platter Density, Firmware, Seeking Style (Quiet/Aggressive), etc.)
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> I don't see WD marketing 1TB/platter anywhere on the product page so I assumed that they never decided to upgrade to 1TB platters yet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> They have never advertised platter densities. I couldn't say why - it seems like a good advertising point?
Click to expand...

It's rather impressive for a mainstream part. Can't wait to see what a 1TB per platter Caviar Black is going to be like. I'd be happy to consider WD again now that the prices are going to be near or of the same as Seagate's and Hitachi's 1TB per platter drives.

It's only a few MB compared to how much we're going to have in our hard drive. I doubt it would do anything.

It does seem like something they should advertise. It would also make it a lot easier to tell if they are using 1TB platters in their drives.


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## Kitarist

Why is there such a big deal on only 1 platter drive?


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kitarist*
> 
> Why is there such a big deal on only 1 platter drive?


Lower chance of failure?

Oh, and being single platter implies the platter is at least 1TB in size (currently the densest available) - that means very high sequential performance.


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## 161029

Update: I think WD is starting to possibly introduce 1TB-platter Caviar Black drives. I don't know if it is but it might be.

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Look at the WD5003AZEX. It's a possibility because it has similar weight to the other 1TB-platter drives. Short stroked drive?

I don't really know where to look to see if it is or not. I just checked drive size and weight (lower weight = less platters if they use the same weight platters. Component weight will probably vary slightly).


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## duffman55

I always consult this guy's site when looking for platter densities: http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_3899.html
He list the WD5003AZEX as being 1TB / platter with one read/write head.

I probably should have waited for the 1TB single-platter Black drive. Sometimes this WD10EZEX feels seriously quick, like how it gets to the Windows log in screen in 15 seconds from POST and creating thumbnails quickly for videos in a folder I haven't been to in a while. Other times it takes 10-20 seconds just to open a video. I think it might have to do with it doing other things in the background. Is it possible NCQ is causing this? Or maybe this drive just can't do more than one thing at a time.


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Update: I think WD is starting to possibly introduce 1TB-platter Caviar Black drives. I don't know if it is but it might be.
> 
> http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760
> 
> Look at the WD5003AZEX. It's a possibility because it has similar weight to the other 1TB-platter drives. Short stroked drive?


Interesting.

It's doubtful it's short-stroked, but it may be a single-platter single-side drive, which in theory should have _exceptional_ reliability. People deploying builds for businesses might be interested in them, as reliability is often a bigger concern than space.

I have not been able to locate any HDTune benchmarks for them yet, but the product spec sheets indicate sequential speeds that could only be from 1TB platters.

If the access times are good, it might be a winner of a drive. 500GB drives are dropping back into the $50 range. If the WD5003AZEX reaches that price point, it'd be reasonably good value.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *duffman55*
> 
> I probably should have waited for the 1TB single-platter Black drive. Sometimes this WD10EZEX feels seriously quick, like how it gets to the Windows log in screen in 15 seconds from POST and creating thumbnails quickly for videos in a folder I haven't been to in a while. Other times it takes 10-20 seconds just to open a video. I think it might have to do with it doing other things in the background. Is it possible NCQ is causing this? Or maybe this drive just can't do more than one thing at a time.


It could be your media player. Some take forever to open (Windows Media Player being one of them) while others open really quick. (VLC comes to mind) I'd look into that before blaming the drive. I've seen WMP open fast the first time it launched, then open super slow the second time - it's against all logic at times. Right now I'm using Media Player Classic HC, but I have it (and codecs) installed to SSD. Videos on my WD Green open quite quickly.


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## Brko

@ Kramy

Hi, I have a question:

Now, I use WD Caviar Black 640GB SATA2 aka WD6401AALS. I have 35GB partition for Win7 x64, and rest of the disk for software (programs and games), so no data.
I saw Your test with WD10EZEX and like it, so my question is: Which 1TB singleplatter SATA3 drive to buy to replace Blacky 640GB for same use (win7 + software - and no data):

WD10EZEX
Hitachi 7K1000.D
Seagate (that new 1TB model)

...or should I wait WD Blacky 1TB Singleplatter







?

I have SATA3 support on my Asus P8Z77-V board.

In Croatia, prices are more or less the same, few Euro is difference.

SSD is out of the question.


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## nleksan

I have been looking for a hard drive for general use, and while I intend to set up a RAID array using RE4 1TB drives in the future, I am finally seeing a drive that stands out, the WD Caviar Black 1TB with 1TB platter, as soon as it's released.


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## TheLombax

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I have been looking for a hard drive for general use, and while I intend to set up a RAID array using RE4 1TB drives in the future, I am finally seeing a drive that stands out, the WD Caviar Black 1TB with 1TB platter, as soon as it's released.


When they release it, I bet it will be a great drive. 1TB platter and 5 years warranty.


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## Kitarist

When is it coming out?


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Brko*
> 
> WD10EZEX
> Hitachi 7K1000.D
> Seagate (that new 1TB model)
> 
> ...or should I wait WD Blacky 1TB Singleplatter
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ?
> 
> I have SATA3 support on my Asus P8Z77-V board.
> 
> In Croatia, prices are more or less the same, few Euro is difference.
> 
> SSD is out of the question.


I'm waiting for the 1TB platter Blacks to come out. It looks like it'll be happening soon.







I also see there's 1TB platter Toshiba drives out now (Toshiba DT01ACA100), manufactured by Hitachi (WD). I'm not sure if they're using the same technology as Hitachi (7K1000.D) or if they are using WD tech.

I think now is probably a good time to sit back and wait a few weeks. I'm sure more drives will be coming out soon.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *TheLombax*
> 
> When they release it, I bet it will be a great drive. 1TB platter and 5 years warranty.


Yeah, I'm holding out for that too.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kitarist*
> 
> When is it coming out?


Well, it can't be too long now. Over the past 1.5 months they've rolled out about 6 models with 1TB platters? I'm betting within 1-1.5 months there'll be a bunch of 1TB-platter Blacks on the market?


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## parityboy

These Blues look pretty good - for my next build I might pull in four of these and put them in RAID 10 on my PERC 6/i...even with a 2 year warranty, if they're cheap enough I won't care.


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## CorossiNL

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Perks:
> -Tuned for low noise levels. May be quieter than Greens.
> -High sequential speeds matching the new Seagates.
> -No idle noise or chirping; no other 'Seagate strangeness'.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -Better firmware and NCQ algorithms.
> Cons:
> -With higher full-drive access times, performance will degrade more if you fill the drive to the brim.
> -Not the best candidate for a lone OS-drive.


I currently have a previous model of the Western Digital Blue (WD10EALX), as far as I know this one has two platters.
This new model WD10EZEX looks interesting to me to expand my internal storage.
I would like to use one drive as my primary drive (OS, programs, and some larger storage data) and use my current as WD10EALX only for large storage data.
Since the WD10EZEX seems to be more silent and has faster transfer rate it would be interesting to use it as a primary drive.
Mainly usage is for video editing, so adding a second HDD was already my plan.

As you explain, a single platter is faster then a multiple platter drive. But when you use the more outer areas of the platters, the data is accessed slower.
On a single platter drive the amount of slower accessed data will be larger compared to a multiple platter drive, which should make it not the best candidate for a lone OS-drive?

If I compare my results with the WD10EALX to WD10EZEX: EALX has a slower transfer rate (max 138.3MB/s min 56.9MB/s), but a lower acces time (12.9ms), a little higher burst rate (257.2 MB/s) in my test with HD Tune.










I would like to choose between the WD10EALX or the WD10EZEX.

Anyway, thank you for your review of this hard drive!


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CorossiNL*
> 
> I currently have a previous model of the Western Digital Blue (WD10EALX), as far as I know this one has two platters.
> This new model WD10EZEX looks interesting to me to expand my internal storage.
> I would like to use one drive as my primary drive (OS, programs, and some larger storage data) and use my current as WD10EALX only for large storage data.
> Since the WD10EZEX seems to be more silent and has faster transfer rate it would be interesting to use it as a primary drive.


It should be superior to the WD10EALX in almost every way. Access times suffer a bit, but it should have noise levels on its side, which you seem to be interested in. The higher sequential speeds and smarter firmware mean it'll probably still be a net gain in all performance (sequential/random) over your EALX.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CorossiNL*
> 
> Mainly usage is for video editing, so adding a second HDD was already my plan.
> 
> As you explain, a single platter is faster then a multiple platter drive. But when you use the more outer areas of the platters, the data is accessed slower.


It's not the quantity of platters - it's the density. This drive has a single platter, and it's 1TB in size, so it does end up being faster than your WD10EALX with two - but if there were a WD20EZEX drive (2TB with 2x1TB platters), it should have the same performance characteristics of the WD10EZEX despite having two. The density is the big thing, and also how aggressive the drive is programmed to be when seeking, and how smart. (NCQ, etc.)

Outer areas of the platter are faster. The whole platter spins at a fixed RPM, but the edge travels more distance, so the drive's heads can read more information.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CorossiNL*
> 
> On a single platter drive the amount of slower accessed data will be larger compared to a multiple platter drive, which should make it not the best candidate for a lone OS-drive?


It's a better candidate than your current drive. But this is Overclock.net... most of us want the _best_, which would be an SSD for our OS.







Small but fast.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CorossiNL*
> 
> If I compare my results with the WD10EALX to WD10EZEX: EALX has a slower transfer rate (max 138.3MB/s min 56.9MB/s), but a lower acces time (12.9ms), a little higher burst rate (257.2 MB/s) in my test with HD Tune.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I would like to choose between the WD10EALX or the WD10EZEX.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for your review of this hard drive!


Those access times are actually quite nice. It's a tough call, but I think if you aren't going to fill the drive up all the way, the WD10EZEX will still have an edge. The access times only become a major weakness if you're using a large percentage of the drive. Within the first 100-150GB it seeks just as fast as the WD10EALX, which means thanks to the higher sequential performance you are guaranteed better overall performance. You could install your OS/Apps/Programs/etc. on a smaller partition on the edge of the drive to take full advantage of that. You only have to worry about the access times if you use a single large partition and fill the drive up and then install new programs - they'll be located way out towards the end (inside) of the platter. (slower, longer seeks and lower sequential speeds)


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## CorossiNL

Thank you for the quick reply and explanation.

Indeed, I'm interested in a quieter drive, in my Antec Three Hundred case the EALX isn't really silent due to the straight to metal mounting in this case.
Started with a WDC Black (WD1002FAEX), but returned that one, because in my opinion it really was too loud.

I always partition my HDD's with one smaller partition, currently 100GB for the OS/programs.

Overall still a "difficult" choice if you just look a the numbers.
EZEX is more quiet in exchange for slower access times, but should not have a big difference in the first 100gB.
EZEX has a higher transfer rate (better for large files?)

EALX a bit more noise for faster access times (better for OS/applications overall, but I don't use thát many applications)
EALX has a slower transfer rate

Actually, a combination of the EALX access times and quietness and transfer rates of the EZEX would be a "gold" winner









SSD's are the best in access times. Just got one on my work this week with access times of 0.2ms. Blazing fast indeed!
Maybe that's the next step after buying an extra HDD

More tests with my current EALX, just for the info:
Overview:








Random access:








Random access short stroke 100gB:


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## 161029

I've been checking the WD website for a FAEZ 1TB model every day. lol


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## HiCZoK

wow.

Mine ezex doesn't look so good as it seems










Keep in mind that steam is turned off. Other downloading apps etc are also turned off.

I have it partitioned 50gb for C and rest for D.
I am running win 7x86 from C:
My pc is crippled so it might be it but how can I check it more?

I don't think it should be this bad even if it's a system drive. if so, then I am formatting my old wd500 and installing C for it only


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HiCZoK*
> 
> wow.
> 
> Mine ezex doesn't look so good as it seems
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Keep in mind that steam is turned off. Other downloading apps etc are also turned off.
> 
> I have it partitioned 50gb for C and rest for D.
> I am running win 7x86 from C:
> My pc is crippled so it might be it but how can I check it more?
> 
> I don't think it should be this bad even if it's a system drive. if so, then I am formatting my old wd500 and installing C for it only


What are the other specs in your system? Motherboard/chipset?

Sequential speeds are capped in that screenshot. Seems to me you're either running in SATA1 mode, or some other setting isn't set right. (AHCI, etc.)

You should also run the benchmark once in safemode just to be sure it isn't software interfering.


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## HiCZoK

p5n-e sli
c2d e6300 2,45
2gb ram geil 800mhz

It is an old rig and seems I have problems with motherboard. I am upgrading soon.
Oh btw. Inwhich precise section I should ask for mobo/cpu/ram/chasis builds. I am deciding phenom x4 965 black vs 2500k ratio price ?







(sorry for very offtopic but this forum is HUGE)


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## Kramy

Probably the CPU section. I gather lots of builds end up there. I went for a Phenom II X6 because the price couldn't be beat - $99









Did you install Windows with the BIOS set to AHCI mode? Did you install AHCI drivers?

http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5NE_SLI/#specifications
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce-vista-win7-64bit-15.57-driver.html

Check that, and then re-run the benchmark in safemode?


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## HiCZoK

ok I will check that cpu and visit that section. Thanks

Now back on topic- there is no ahci setting in bios. At least I can't find it.
Safemode gives me the same speeds but more stable. not deeps. still. only 100mb average, while You guys have much more









ok, will check those drivers

edit: I totally have chiset drivers installed bu reinstalled them for good measure, restarted. turned of steam etc. still the same. just like image I posted. safemode is the same but line is more straight


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## dmasteR

Have they released a Black version 1TB platter yet? I prefer the longer Warranty....


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## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *dmasteR*
> 
> Have they released a Black version 1TB platter yet? I prefer the longer Warranty....


I've been checking every day. lol. No EZ** model yet for a 1TB Caviar Black.

They seem to have a 500GB short stroked model though. I think it was an AALX 500GB. Go check the website.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HiCZoK*
> 
> ok I will check that cpu and visit that section. Thanks
> 
> Now back on topic- there is no ahci setting in bios. At least I can't find it.
> Safemode gives me the same speeds but more stable. not deeps. still. only 100mb average, while You guys have much more
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ok, will check those drivers
> 
> edit: I totally have chiset drivers installed bu reinstalled them for good measure, restarted. turned of steam etc. still the same. just like image I posted. safemode is the same but line is more straight


You could try swapping ports and SATA cables. Sometimes drives can get locked to lower speeds, and it requires a port swap or new cable to get bumped back up. Your board is SATA2, but your drive is definitely limited to SATA1 speeds.

Hmm... what operating system are you running? Could you download AS SSD and post a screenshot? You don't actually need to run the benchmark - I just want to see what info it shows on screen.
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4&file_id=9
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *dmasteR*
> 
> Have they released a Black version 1TB platter yet? I prefer the longer Warranty....
> 
> 
> 
> I've been checking every day. lol. No EZ** model yet for a 1TB Caviar Black.
> 
> They seem to have a 500GB short stroked model though. I think it was an AALX 500GB. Go check the website.
Click to expand...

The 500GB 1TB-platter single-side WD Black is the WD5003AZEX

Following the naming scheme, the WD 1TB Black (with a 1TB platter) should be the WD10AZEX or WD1003AZEX


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## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> The 500GB 1TB-platter single-side WD Black is the WD5003AZEX
> Following the naming scheme, the WD 1TB Black (with a 1TB platter) should be the WD10AZEX or WD1003AZEX


I'm sort of curious as to how they come up with a naming scheme. Having a WD10AZEX doesn't make much sense, because the WD Blue (people, remember they don't call it Caviar anymore) 1TB/Platter model is WD10EZEX and then the WD Green is WD10EZRX. Why not the WD10EZAX?

Well it doesn't really matter, but I'm dying for it to come out.


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## iEATu

Who cares how the hard drive adjusts files? You need to defrag your HD every once in a while anyway. But using the regular defragmenter program on windows is meh.

UltimateDefrag lets you choose where you want every file on your disk to be. So files on the outer part of the disk can be OS startup files, some main programs, and then a game further on for fast loading times. Unused files can be sent to the inner part of the disk.

I've been using this program for years and it's really amazing. Not as much now that I'm using SSD, but I still like to organize larger files that I use more often that I dont put on my SSD to the outer part of my HDDs.


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## HiCZoK

@Kramy

Switched sata ports and used different cables. Unplugged other hdd and dvdrom and used other power plug. nothing. Still the same slow and full of dips graph. Win7 32bit

I will get 2500k and asrock p67 p3 b3 mobo tomorrow







That is a huge upgrade for me. If YOu want tor ecommend anything else do it now. Maybe that mobo will work better

You want to see this screen?


----------



## Kramy

Yep, that's the screen. Looks like everything is aligned properly, and AHCI drivers are installed. Perhaps it just doesn't like that nVidia SATA controller, for some strange reason?

Well, once you get it set up with your new board, we'll find out for sure.


----------



## HiCZoK

We will know on monday after I get new cpu, mobo and ram.
I will install win x64 and we will see.


----------



## jonjryjo

Just wondering, can this drive have its APM or AAM tuned at all? I don't care about noise, so I would prefer to get the most out of this drive regardless of it.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jonjryjo*
> 
> Just wondering, can this drive have its APM or AAM tuned at all? I don't care about noise, so I would prefer to get the most out of this drive regardless of it.


Not that I know of. Few to no recent drives allow this. I don't think the new 1TB Platter Seagates or Hitachi 7K1000.D allow it either. We'll just have to be patient and wait for a Black version, I suppose.


----------



## Migi06

Screenshot Z77 asus gene V Sata III(6gps) WD10ezex vs WD10efrx.. My earlier "Steam" drives were samsung F4 320gb and seagate ST1000DM003 I will update this post later with some comments..


----------



## jonjryjo

Placed an order for two of these drives, should be here Thursday. Thinking of putting them in Raid 0...


----------



## HiCZoK

update:
I got 2500k and new motherboard - asrock p67 pro3.

Hdd works as intended now







Graphs and speeds seems ok. Using motherboard sata cables and sata 3 inputs

the graph is still unstable but that is because I am running windows on it.









edit:
Here is a screenshot.









Should I enable ahci in bios? Right now it is set to IDE in uefi.


----------



## nleksan

Yes, you want AHCI, but I am not the person to ask as to how best to enable it with Windows already installed.

I believe that AHCI is necessary for Native Command Queing (NCQ), which is a great thingffor performance as it allowstthe HDD itself to determine the best way to get to the files requested, and should drop your latency down 25-40% from what I'm seeing now.


----------



## Kramy

You definitely want AHCI mode. NCQ is only enabled under AHCI mode, and that's where these HDDs shine - how well they perform under load. Somehow they perform better than Seagate 7200.14's in non-synthetic benchmarks, despite having an extra 7ms access times. That's NCQ at work!

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313676

You can't just flip to AHCI mode or you'll get a BSOD when you next boot - follow the instructions in the thread, then enable it in your BIOS. Finally, finish up by installing the latest Intel RST drivers.









http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=21730

*iata_enu.exe* is probably the one you need.


----------



## HiCZoK

I wjll jsut enable ahci then and reinstall windows. Its easier and fatser









What else should I learn about my new otherboard?
It is my firs new mobo in 5 years. That ahci stuff is new to me


----------



## adridu59

Check this out : Sean's Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs.


----------



## M3TAl

I'm way out of the loop on what's a good HDD these days. What makes a drive good for Raid-0? These WD10EZEX are going for 69.99 at newegg so... thinking two for my first raid-0? I seriously need some more space (have 640gb black WD6401AALS) and whats wrong with more speed eh?


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> I'm way out of the loop on what's a good HDD these days. What makes a drive good for Raid-0? These WD10EZEX are going for 69.99 at newegg so... thinking two for my first raid-0? I seriously need some more space (have 640gb black WD6401AALS) and whats wrong with more speed eh?


They work fine in RAID-0.

As always, if you have anything important on your computer, make sure you do regular backups.


----------



## 161029

Still no sign of that 1TB/platter WD Black. I'M DYING HERE, WESTERN DIGITAL!


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Still no sign of that 1TB/platter WD Black. I'M DYING HERE, WESTERN DIGITAL!


not before New Year. inside info.


----------



## Xanatos

what is the platter size for WD4000FYYZ?


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Xanatos*
> 
> what is the platter size for WD4000FYYZ?


5 actually.

http://www.back2gaming.com/review/western-digital-re-sata-4tb-enterprise-hard-drive/

Edit: question was size not count







883GB.


----------



## HiCZoK

So I've installed win7x64 and all the needed intel drivers (rapid storage) under enabled ahci in bios.

the driver says ncq is enabled,

I am not sure if hdd is working faster or not but it seems louder? or maybe it is just almost full


----------



## M3TAl

Just finished testing all the sectors on both HDD's (they're for xmas so can't play with them till then). Did a quick HDTune on both of them. Are these results inline with what they should be scoring? This is the microsoft AHCI driver, never tried the AMD driver.

Drive 1:


Drive 2:


----------



## CorossiNL

The results look very familiar to me, I will check my results tomorrow (not at my PC right now).

I bought two of them last month (really like them) and put my WD10EALX in an external enclosure.


----------



## Brko

My Samsung F3 1TB Spinpoint is reday to go to external USB 3.0 case as backup drive. I cannot wait any longer for 1TB singleplatter Black. On Monday, I'm buying WD10EZEX, because, WD Black 1TB SP will not be available for 2-3 months. Also, it is a prediction that new 1TB Black will have 2 x 800 platters, since singlepatter cannot give good RAT (11-13 ms) which almost all Blacks can achieve.

I suggest You do the same if You are desperate to get 1TB singleplatter.


----------



## CorossiNL

These are my results with the WD10EZEX:


----------



## M3TAl

What is burst rate? I have no idea lol.


----------



## Kramy

Everyone's graphics look good - don't forget Intel RST or AMD AHCI drivers. It doesn't hurt to get more speed.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> What is burst rate? I have no idea lol.


Burst Rate reflects the repeat read speed - it applies when dealing with files that mostly fit in cache. It doesn't matter much anymore because modern operating systems do so much read caching themselves. If you were setting up a DOS point of sale system, you might want to factor in a drive's cache size and burst rates when choosing a drive, since DOS does no read caching and will re-read the same things over and over.

Windows XP was the last Windows OS to have lackluster read caching. Vista onward cache reads to RAM, eliminating repeat reads. (Except when memory starved.)

Here's a WD Green - when the data doesn't fit in cache, you get this:









Here's the same WD Green when the data fits entirely in cache. You can see the repeat reads are vastly accelerated.









One final note: Intel RST drivers may affect the burst rate, since they add extra read caching. If your burst rate is in the thousands, you're probably seeing your RAM's speed rather than the drive's.


----------



## blued

I was considering the caviar blue myself but went for the Seagate 1tb single platter.



Still have a preference for WD over Seagate for quality control and not needing frequent firmware updates, but this performance is too good to ignore.


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *blued*
> 
> I was considering the caviar blue myself but went for the Seagate 1tb single platter.
> 
> Still have a preference for WD over Seagate for quality control and not needing frequent firmware updates, but this performance is too good to ignore.


I agree with You but... Seagate warranty is half WD's, only 1 year. And failure rate of Seagate is far larger that WD's.

BTW, great result. Which MBO are You using?


----------



## Brko

Today, got my WD10EZEX. I am pretty pleased with out-of-box performance. I run HD Tune with HDD "as is" from antistatic bag, no initialization or formating.



It is Intel SATA 3 controler on Z77 based MBO, Asus P8Z77-V.


----------



## M3TAl

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Brko*
> 
> Today, got my WD10EZEX. I am pretty pleased with out-of-box performance. I run HD Tune with HDD "as is" from antistatic bag, no initialization or formating.
> It is Intel SATA 3 controler on Z77 based MBO, Asus P8Z77-V.


That's how I ran mine, straight out of the bag. Guess when I get them for xmas I'll be trying the AMD AHCI driver. Most people seem to be scoring a little bit better than what I got.

O ya. I also ran them one at a time from the X-Dock thing on the top of my case. You just slide it in right at the top of the case. But I don't think it causes any performance difference.


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> That's how I ran mine, straight out of the bag. Guess when I get them for xmas I'll be trying the AMD AHCI driver. Most people seem to be scoring a little bit better than what I got.
> O ya. I also ran them one at a time from the X-Dock thing on the top of my case. You just slide it in right at the top of the case. But I don't think it causes any performance difference.


If this X-Dock is connected directly to SATA3 port, it should not have any difference larger than 1-2%. Maybe my HDD is faster because of Z77 chipset.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Brko*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> That's how I ran mine, straight out of the bag. Guess when I get them for xmas I'll be trying the AMD AHCI driver. Most people seem to be scoring a little bit better than what I got.
> O ya. I also ran them one at a time from the X-Dock thing on the top of my case. You just slide it in right at the top of the case. But I don't think it causes any performance difference.
> 
> 
> 
> If this X-Dock is connected directly to SATA3 port, it should not have any difference larger than 1-2%. Maybe my HDD is faster because of Z77 chipset.
Click to expand...

Or you got a slightly newer revision. HDD manufacturers do make improvements as they go.

I'd be curious to see what firmware revision yours has. A picture of the sticker (or even a screenshot of HDTune Pro's info screen) might reveal a lot.


----------



## M3TAl

Well once I finished scanning them both for sector errors they got put away so I can't touch them untill Xmas.

However odd thing though. As you can see from my two HDTune results 1 of my hdd scored like what 10mbps better? That drive took ~1hour 49min to scan. The other drive took 1hour 59min 55sec to scan.


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Or you got a slightly newer revision. HDD manufacturers do make improvements as they go.
> I'd be curious to see what firmware revision yours has. A picture of the sticker (or even a screenshot of HDTune Pro's info screen) might reveal a lot.


Will post SS from HD Tune if You like. I am too lazy to disassemble housing to get HDD out just for photo session









EDIT: HD Tune says: Firmware revision *80.00A80*
Is this something useful for You?

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> so I can't touch them untill Xmas.


For a God sake - WHY???


----------



## nleksan

C'mon Western Digital, I have been VERY PATIENT in waiting for the 1TB/platter Blacks and RE4's (in 1TB size), so get a move on! These files won't store themselves!

I am tempted to just grab a pair of the 300GB WD Velociraptor's that are $69/ea right now, although I am p****ed that when I went to buy two of the 600GB models, the price was way back up to $180 from the $99 sale price (I thought the sale ended today at midnight :'( ).

I am not really sure what to do.... At this point, I have removed 3 of 6 HDD bays from my Switch 810 for water-cooling (bottom rad), although I suppose I COULD fit one or maybe two drives in a 5.25" bay (i.e. stick my SSD's there, or use one 5.25" bay for SSD and 1xHDD). I don't know if I should go with 2x very-fast medium-to-low capacity drives in RAID0 + 1x larger drive (OS drive is Samsung 830 256GB) and then use an external USB3.0 1-2TB drive for on-site but out-of-case backups until I get my Home Server setup, or if I should go with 2x larger-but-somewhat-slower drives in RAID0 + 1x very large drive?
The internal drives I am really leaning towards are: WD VR's in 300GB/500GB/600GB (whichever is biggest and under $100/ea), WD RE4 500GB/1TB, WD Black 1TB, or maybe even the newer Seagate Momentus XT 750GB 2.5" drives(?)...

Would the Blue EZEX really be a better choice over the above??


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I am tempted to just grab a pair of the 300GB WD Velociraptor's that are $69/ea right now, although I am p****ed that when I went to buy two of the 600GB models, the price was way back up to $180 from the $99 sale price (I thought the sale ended today at midnight :'( ).


300GB Raptors? One generation before the 600GB ones? Odds are the WD10EZEX is faster.

500GB Raptors? Those would be one generation _after_ the 600GB ones? Those are definitely faster.

It all comes down to price vs performance. I'd rate performance like this:

300GB Velociraptor < WD10EZEX < 600GB Velociraptor < 500GB/1TB Velociraptor

Assuming of course the 300GB Raptor is from the previous generation, and not the 600GB generation, I would go with...

$70 - WD10EZEX
$100 - whichever one is higher in the list. If you can get a 500GB Raptor for that price, take it over the 600GB. Otherwise get the 600GB.
$150 - 1TB Velociraptor; definitely worth $150, but where will you find it that cheap?








$200 - Give me a big SSD.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> It all comes down to price vs performance. I'd rate performance like this:
> 300GB Velociraptor < WD10EZEX < 600GB Velociraptor < 500GB/1TB Velociraptor


Curious why you'd rate the 600GB VelociRaptor higher than the WD10EZEX. Is it because of the lower access times and better random performance? I'd be quite interested to see how a WD10EZEX short stroked to 600GB would perform compared to a VelociRaptor.


----------



## M3TAl

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Brko*
> 
> For a God sake - WHY???


Because, they're for xmas lol.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> It all comes down to price vs performance. I'd rate performance like this:
> 300GB Velociraptor < WD10EZEX < 600GB Velociraptor < 500GB/1TB Velociraptor
> 
> 
> 
> Curious why you'd rate the 600GB VelociRaptor higher than the WD10EZEX. Is it because of the lower access times and better random performance? I'd be quite interested to see how a WD10EZEX short stroked to 600GB would perform compared to a VelociRaptor.
Click to expand...

Way lower access times. Aren't they around 7ms full-drive? The WD10EZEX will do very well at single tasking, but heavy multitasking (especially when you fill the drive) makes that 15-20ms access time hurt it more than the Velociraptor can be hurt.

The WD10EZEX's rotational latency is also 8.333ms, while the Velociraptor's is 6ms. When push comes to shove, the Velociraptor will still manage to get more seeking and sequential reading/writing done. Also keep in mind that one area where the WD10EZEX is strong (NCQ - how it rearranges requests) is also an area where the Velociraptor is strong. Seagate drives often have weak NCQ, but we're comparing WD to WD here.









The 1TB Velociraptor takes the crown because it can push over 200MB/sec sequential while maintaining those ultra low access times.


----------



## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Way lower access times. Aren't they around 7ms full-drive? The WD10EZEX will do very well at single tasking, but heavy multitasking (especially when you fill the drive) makes that 15-20ms access time hurt it more than the Velociraptor can be hurt.
> The WD10EZEX's rotational latency is also 8.333ms, while the Velociraptor's is 6ms. When push comes to shove, the Velociraptor will still manage to get more seeking and sequential reading/writing done. Also keep in mind that one area where the WD10EZEX is strong (NCQ - how it rearranges requests) is also an area where the Velociraptor is strong. Seagate drives often have weak NCQ, but we're comparing WD to WD here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 1TB Velociraptor takes the crown because it can push over 200MB/sec sequential while maintaining those ultra low access times.


I see, but value wise I don't see a point.









Might as well get an SSD though with the sales you can get sometimes. IIRC there's a deal on a $79 or so 128GB M4. You can snatch a few of those for the price of a single Velociraptor.


----------



## nleksan

Thanks for the awesome break-down, and I wish I could post a full reply right now, but I'm already late for class... I will respond in full ASAP, though!


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Way lower access times. Aren't they around 7ms full-drive? The WD10EZEX will do very well at single tasking, but heavy multitasking (especially when you fill the drive) makes that 15-20ms access time hurt it more than the Velociraptor can be hurt.
> 
> The WD10EZEX's rotational latency is also 8.333ms, while the Velociraptor's is 6ms. When push comes to shove, the Velociraptor will still manage to get more seeking and sequential reading/writing done. Also keep in mind that one area where the WD10EZEX is strong (NCQ - how it rearranges requests) is also an area where the Velociraptor is strong. Seagate drives often have weak NCQ, but we're comparing WD to WD here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 1TB Velociraptor takes the crown because it can push over 200MB/sec sequential while maintaining those ultra low access times.


Hmm, excellent points. I guess my viewpoint is skewed as all I require in HDDs is fast sequential performance since given my usage scenario, access times aren't very important. For heavy multi-tasking and stuff that would greatly benefit from ultra-low access times, it's either SSD or RAM disk for me. Still, I can see how the VelociRaptor's low access and seek times and higher IOPS will benefit those buying the HDD as their primary OS drive or those with extremely large Steam folders where an SSD might be too expensive.


----------



## Brko

I bought one more EZEX today. Results are nearly the same as I posted earlier. And I'm using one of them for OS drive (50 GB partition), and rest of HDD is 2nd partition where is software (and games). It is working fine. No difference between WD10EZEX and WD6401AALS /SATA2 640GB Black), except EZEX is less noisy and colder.
So, afterall, WD10EZEX is okay for OS drive


----------



## nleksan

Well, for someone like me who is looking to constantly expand their storage (and when I say this, I mean essentially my entire home network, so not just one PC), and who will be building a dedicated home server/media server/HTPC/part-time folder, the WD Velociraptor's seem quite promising. Especially as I will be getting at least one, likely two, "pretty good"-to-"very good" RAID Controller Cards (8-port SAS, at least 512MB cache and upgradeable, ideally 1GB+, new controller with SSD capabilities...) after the prices drop a bit from their initial boom, and use a PERC6/i to tide me over til then.

For someone who does humongous amounts of audio editing, some video/photo editing, wants to be able to have multiple 1080p streams, etc all from one Home Server, the Velociraptor's make a lot of sense, just as they do for people who want very fast game drives. The cost of a 500GB VR on sale is around $100-125, and the cost of a "true" enterprise 15krpm 450-600GB SAS drive ranges from $300-500+. Take one of those Awesome(!) new Lian Li D8000 square cases, fill it with a dual-processor board that's a year old and two formerly-high-end 6-core Xeon CPU's, add in a couple of nice RAID cards and of course stuff it with RAM, and then fill all 20 HDD racks with say 12x 500-1000GB VR's in RAID0 and 8x WD RE 2TB drives in RAID5 or 6 acting both as it's own array as well as a "critical file" backup for the VR array, and you end up with 6-12TB of maxxed-out throughput from the VR's, and another ~12-14TB (~9-11TB after "critical" backup space) of extremely fast storage from the RE's.
I can honestly say that I wouldn't have to add more storage for at least 3-4 years, and I save EVERYTHING!

Anyway, the point behind this "thought exercise" is that some people, such as myself, have a need for a lot of very fast storage, yet don't have any room in their case to hold it (I can hold 4x 3.5" and up to 4x 2.5" if I get creative...). While external hard drives are handy, I definitely don't want a bunch of them hanging out of all my eSATA and USB3.0 ports. Instead, one big, localized, self-controlled file server makes a lot of sense. Plus, I can always use it as a game server









Anyway, that's about a year off. For now, I am just going to be patient and watch and see what comes down the pike. The EZEX is nice, no doubt about it whatsoever, but a 1TB Black using 2x 1TB platters each short-stroked to 500GB would be awesome.


----------



## Brko

WD10EZEX is not good for OS afterall. I ran some tests and when it come to simple multitasking (instaling a game and browsing on the internet), I got glitches and stops for 0,2-0,3 seconds. Nothing serious, but annoying. WD Caviar blakc 640GB SATA2 was better choice for OS drive/software/games than WD10EZEX. I'm returning my OS on WD 640GB Black until I got myself OCZ Vertex4.


----------



## blong48

For the people wondering about the naming scheme. Here is a page from WD's website about the model numbers.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-001028.pdf

Blues, Greens and Reds use a 2 digit representation of the capacity.
Blacks and enterprise drives use a 4 digit representation of the capacity with the first 3 digits representing capacity(add a zero to get actual capaciy) and the 4th digit being a product code that is not specified.


----------



## [CyGnus]

Just bought one of these today for my storage what do you guys think of the results?


----------



## parityboy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Brko*
> 
> WD10EZEX is not good for OS afterall. I ran some tests and when it come to simple multitasking (instaling a game and browsing on the internet), I got glitches and stops for 0,2-0,3 seconds. Nothing serious, but annoying. WD Caviar blakc 640GB SATA2 was better choice for OS drive/software/games than WD10EZEX. I'm returning my OS on WD 640GB Black until I got myself OCZ Vertex4.


Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a common trait with is model? I was gonna pick up a few of these for a RAID10 array, but now I'm beginning to wonder...


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *[CyGnus]*
> 
> Just bought one of these today for my storage what do you guys think of the results?


You got older revision. My second drive have similar results. It is Made in Malaysia. Older revision of the drive, obviously.
I also have newer revision, and it is 10-15% faster. Check my post 1-2 pages earlier.

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *parityboy*
> 
> Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a common trait with is model? I was gonna pick up a few of these for a RAID10 array, but now I'm beginning to wonder...


Maybe on RAID will be better, but as lone drive for OS and software, not so good. I bought OCZ Vertex4 128GB for OS, 640GB Blacky is used for games and Steam ****s. Faster WD10EZEX is used for storage, and other "slower" WD10EZEX is in USB 3.0 as backup drive. No need to buy those green **** ever again


----------



## Zaz3

Hi, im from Perú. I need a HDD of 1TB. Which of these 3?

*Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB ST1000DM003 $95

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX $120

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB WD10EZEX $95*

All are SATA III and with 64MB cache.

Thanks for the help.

Greetings from Perú.


----------



## Kramy

I favour warranties over all else, so I'd probably go for the WD1002FAEX. (5 years!)

That said, the WD10EZEX will be faster and the most quiet. Downside - 2 year warranty.


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I favour warranties over all else, so I'd probably go for the WD1002FAEX. (5 years!)


I wouldn't.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *adridu59*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I favour warranties over all else, so I'd probably go for the WD1002FAEX. (5 years!)
> 
> 
> 
> I wouldn't.
Click to expand...

I would.









Except when the price difference is more than the cost of replacing a drive, warranties can be quite valuable. Keep in mind that modern drives (especially when moving to higher platter densities) _always_ have reliability and early death issues. Some end up DOA, some perish in 1-3 months, some in 2 years, and a few make it longer - but regardless of how long the drives last, we know for certain it's more failures than the "1.6%" we're being quoted.







Lots of businesses have stories of 50% RMA rates for new models of drives. All it takes is one bad batch... or several, because most businesses are often smart enough to scatter their purchases for any drives making their way into a RAID array to mitigate risk.

There's two main reasons I'd pick WD1002FAEX with a price difference that close - first, if it fails... WD often upgrades you to a newer faster (sometimes larger) model. That means although it's not a 1TB platter Black right now, you may end up with one in the future. (if misfortune strikes) The second reason is a continuation of the first - WD transfers the warranty over, so you're good to go if you need to RMA more than once.

The WD10EZEX is currently faster and more quiet, but... warranties can be valuable.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I favour warranties over all else, so I'd probably go for the WD1002FAEX. (5 years!)
> That said, the WD10EZEX will be faster and the most quiet. Downside - 2 year warranty.


Between the Black and Blue, which is more faster and quiet?


----------



## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> Between the Black and Blue, which is more faster and quiet?


1TB/Platter WD Blue until they come out with a 1TB/Platter WD Black. I'd expect that to come out (the 1TB/Platter WD Black drives) in the next few months as they already have a WD Black 500GB drive that crams 500GB onto one side of a platter (so I guess all they need to do is cram 500GB onto the other side).

Quiet...SD Blue too as of now. 1TB/Platter WD Blacks in the future should be just as loud since they're both spinning at 7200rpm.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> 1TB/Platter WD Blue until they come out with a 1TB/Platter WD Black. I'd expect that to come out (the 1TB/Platter WD Black drives) in the next few months as they already have a WD Black 500GB drive that crams 500GB onto one side of a platter (so I guess all they need to do is cram 500GB onto the other side).
> Quiet...SD Blue too as of now. 1TB/Platter WD Blacks in the future should be just as loud since they're both spinning at 7200rpm.


My HDD is dying











I dont know if my HDD can stay alive for a few months


----------



## 161029

Get the WD Blue 1TB/Platter (WD10EZEX like stated in thread title). It's a good drive.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Get the WD Blue 1TB/Platter (WD10EZEX like stated in thread title). It's a good drive.


The problem is the access time of the Blue is very low (according to the benchmarks of this topic) and the Black is noisy, so i'm undecided.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> My HDD is dying
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I dont know if my HDD can stay alive for a few months


Best guess - I'd be surprised if it lasted until the end of January. It could keel over dead within weeks.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Get the WD Blue 1TB/Platter (WD10EZEX like stated in thread title). It's a good drive.


The WD10EZEX is not a bad choice, as long as you're aware of its weaknesses. You want to minimize the impact of those higher access times by creating a smaller partition at the start of the drive for your active data. (OS, Apps, Games) You can use the rest for storage, but when you're firing up apps or playing a game, you _don't_ want it seeking towards the end of the platter.

Upside: It'll be even more quiet if you follow that advice, because it'll be almost completely limited to short/quiet seeks.

The "small" partition can be whatever size you require, but smaller is better. If you have about 100GB of space used by OS/Apps, and 300GB of Steam games, then make it half the drive... but again, smaller is better.


----------



## M3TAl

I've been wondering about the same thing... Am I going to be better off making small partitions on my 2 WD10EZEX or should I use my WD6401AALS for OS and important games?

Thing is I took my HDD cage out so atm can only fit 2 HDD. Can always put the cage back in, just not sure it's worth it to run all 3 of those drives and putting the cage back in.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> I've been wondering about the same thing... Am I going to be better off making small partitions on my 2 WD10EZEX or should I use my WD6401AALS for OS and important games?


Both.









Are you still thinking of doing RAID-0?

These drives are great when dedicated to games, so I'd keep your OS on the WD Black and then split the WD10EZEX array in two. Use the first partition solely for games, and use the second for storage. Backup anything critical to a second partition on the WD Black. That way you get speed, your OS/apps can't interrupt the WD10EZEX's (preventing one of their weaknesses from affecting you - access times), and all your critical stuff is still on at least two drives.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Best guess - I'd be surprised if it lasted until the end of January. It could keel over dead within weeks.
> The WD10EZEX is not a bad choice, as long as you're aware of its weaknesses. You want to minimize the impact of those higher access times by creating a smaller partition at the start of the drive for your active data. (OS, Apps, Games) You can use the rest for storage, but when you're firing up apps or playing a game, you _don't_ want it seeking towards the end of the platter.
> Upside: It'll be even more quiet if you follow that advice, because it'll be almost completely limited to short/quiet seeks.
> The "small" partition can be whatever size you require, but smaller is better. If you have about 100GB of space used by OS/Apps, and 300GB of Steam games, then make it half the drive... but again, smaller is better.


I was thinking in:

C: 150 or 200GB (OS, Apps and games) (In this moment i use 100GB aprox. just for OS and apps, without games.)

D: 400GB (music, movies, series, etc, etc)

E: 400GB (other)

Is ok?

Thanks a lot.


----------



## 161029

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> The WD10EZEX is not a bad choice, as long as you're aware of its weaknesses. You want to minimize the impact of those higher access times by creating a smaller partition at the start of the drive for your active data. (OS, Apps, Games) You can use the rest for storage, but when you're firing up apps or playing a game, you _don't_ want it seeking towards the end of the platter.
> Upside: It'll be even more quiet if you follow that advice, because it'll be almost completely limited to short/quiet seeks.
> The "small" partition can be whatever size you require, but smaller is better. If you have about 100GB of space used by OS/Apps, and 300GB of Steam games, then make it half the drive... but again, smaller is better.


I'm aware of the higher access times.







I'm just running an SSD though which I have basically everything on so I don't have to worry about too much (just that I don't use a WD10EZEX alongside the SSD, but its smaller 500GB brother) so I forgot to check if he had one.


----------



## M3TAl

Kramy, I think you might be a genius







. Sorry for all the stupid questions but I really am a storage newb.

Not sure if you will know the answer to this one but I'll ask anyways.

Which HDD/partition do you think a DAW (Desktop Audiio Workstation, using Cakewalk Sonar X1) program should be run from? Again, I'm a storage newb so not entirely sure what all kind of HDD activity goes on with a DAW or how it all works, but (I think) it's mostly reading multiple .wav files and typically (for my uses) writing a single .wav file all at once.

My "storage" needs are pretty minimal. Unlike like most people I do ZERO video. My HDD's only contain games (probably the largest), DAW (probably 2nd largest), music, os, programs, and that's pretty much it.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> I was thinking in:
> 
> C: 150 or 200GB (OS, Apps and games) (In this moment i use 100GB aprox. just for OS and apps, without games.)
> 
> D: 400GB (music, movies, series, etc, etc)
> 
> E: 400GB (other)
> 
> Is ok?
> 
> Thanks a lot.


Should be okay. Although if you listen to music while gaming, I'd classify that as "active" data which should go next to the OS/games.

Also keep in mind that if you run out of space and stick games on E:\, that _completely_ defeats the purpose. Make C:\ larger (as large as you think you'll need) before doing that.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> Which HDD/partition do you think a DAW (Desktop Audiio Workstation, using Cakewalk Sonar X1) program should be run from? Again, I'm a storage newb so not entirely sure what all kind of HDD activity goes on with a DAW or how it all works, but (I think) it's mostly reading multiple .wav files and typically (for my uses) writing a single .wav file all at once.
> 
> My "storage" needs are pretty minimal. Unlike like most people I do ZERO video. My HDD's only contain games (probably the largest), DAW (probably 2nd largest), music, os, programs, and that's pretty much it.


I'm not familiar with that program, but I'd probably stick it on the OS partition. Or if the wave files get _huge_, stick it in the games partition - after all, it's not like you'll be accessing it simultaneously as a game. Those WD10EZEX's are going to fly when single tasking.


----------



## Brko

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Those WD10EZEX's are going to fly when single tasking.


I can confirm this. I tried to use WDEZEX for OS and games. I took 40GB for Win7 + 300 GB for Apps and games + 500+GB for other crap.
It was slower, significantly slower than WD6401AALS (WD 640GB Black) because of big RAT (approx. 15 ms).

On the other hand, do not wait fo WD 1TB/singleplatter black because is not gonna happen. It will probably be 2 platers of 1TB, but shortstorked to 500GB and, maybe, 128MB cache. And they will be fast as hell







my bet is on that option, but like I said month or two ago, they will arrive in 2013, not this year.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Should be okay. Although if you listen to music while gaming, I'd classify that as "active" data which should go next to the OS/games.
> Also keep in mind that if you run out of space and stick games on E:\, that _completely_ defeats the purpose. Make C:\ larger (as large as you think you'll need) before doing that.


Ok, i understand. I didn't know about the music location. I have 80GB of music aprox. so 250GB for the C is ok i think so.

Kramy, thanks a lot.

Greetings from Perú


----------



## fortunesolace

Kramy, will these WD Blue 1TB, be okay for a 4 software RAID 0 setup? Or should I just buy WD reds?


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *fortunesolace*
> 
> Kramy, will these WD Blue 1TB, be okay for a 4 software RAID 0 setup? Or should I just buy WD reds?


Reds are 5400 RPM's... the Blue's will be significantly faster. And since they have high sequential performance and low noise they're a great choice for RAID.


----------



## fortunesolace

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *adridu59*
> 
> Reds are 5400 RPM's... the Blue's will be significantly faster. And since they have high sequential performance and low noise they're a great choice for RAID.


I'll be using the drives for my YT video recording, transferring or probably installing my steam games w/ backup to a different drive, saving my to-be edited videos on Adobe CS6 there.

Will that be okay? Thanks for answering +rep!


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *fortunesolace*
> 
> Will that be okay?


Yes, as I said they have great sequential performance!


----------



## fortunesolace

Ok. Thanks again!


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *adridu59*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *fortunesolace*
> 
> Kramy, will these WD Blue 1TB, be okay for a 4 software RAID 0 setup? Or should I just buy WD reds?
> 
> 
> 
> Reds are 5400 RPM's... the Blue's will be significantly faster. And since they have high sequential performance and low noise they're a great choice for RAID.
Click to expand...

I agree. Software RAID-0 has a bit higher CPU overhead, but with modern CPUs it's not a huge concern... sequential performance increases a lot in RAID-0, so anything involving raw video is going to benefit a lot.


----------



## dmasteR

Anyone have any issues with these drives so far?

They seem fairly reliable so far at least. May consider grabbing one tomorrow. I'm down to 20 GB's of storage...









Been holding out due to the flood prices on HD's... 70 bucks at the Egg seems like a good price.


----------



## duffman55

The WD10EZEX has been reliable for me. I'm sitting at 1,020 power on hours with 361 power cycles on mine. Of course that's just one drive. Not exactly a large sample size.

After using the WD10EZEX for a few months, I ultimately I decided to go with an SSD and I cloned the C: and recovery partitions over to the SSD using the WD version of Acronis and I'm using the disk drive for storage. It's not that the WD is exceptionally slow or anything, but with SSDs getting so cheap, they're definitely worth the cost to upgrade. It's also not as bothersome managing two drives as I thought it would be. Only problem is some programs (like GIMP) still link to the default location on the C:\ drive for pictures, videos, etc., instead of the updated library locations I set.


----------



## Zaz3

Please, i need help... This is ok?



EDIT:

I changed the Sata cable and...


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> Please, i need help... This is ok?


Can you re-run it in safemode? (Tap F8 while booting to get into safemode)

In safemode, less software is running - that rules down the cause to some piece of software that you've got installed.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Can you re-run it in safemode? (Tap F8 while booting to get into safemode)
> In safemode, less software is running - that rules down the cause to some piece of software that you've got installed.


In safemode:



I feel the HDD a little slowly. An example: When i open my images folder, take more time in charge all archives than with my old hdd(same folder)


----------



## Kramy

Safemode looks a lot better. A few more questions...

1) Are you in AHCI mode in the BIOS? If not, follow this guide:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1227636/how-to-change-sata-modes-after-windows-7-installation

2) Do you have AHCI drivers installed? (For AMD Chipsets, see: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx )

3) You may need to experiment with disabling software to find the worst culprit causing your lag. I suggest using CCleaner to turn stuff off - reboot, then turn it on again if there's no difference.
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

4) This write caching tweak might help a bit too:
http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-server-2008/enable-disk-write-caching-to-improve-performance-in-windows-7-windows-server-2008/


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Safemode looks a lot better. A few more questions...
> 1) Are you in AHCI mode in the BIOS? If not, follow this guide:
> http://www.overclock.net/t/1227636/how-to-change-sata-modes-after-windows-7-installation
> 2) Do you have AHCI drivers installed? (For AMD Chipsets, see: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx )
> 3) You may need to experiment with disabling software to find the worst culprit causing your lag. I suggest using CCleaner to turn stuff off - reboot, then turn it on again if there's no difference.
> http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
> 4) This write caching tweak might help a bit too:
> http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-server-2008/enable-disk-write-caching-to-improve-performance-in-windows-7-windows-server-2008/


1) Done



That's ok?

2) when i did the point 1), windows install the drivers

3) 

4) that's ok from the start

In normal mode, HD Tune threw almost the same result of the first test.










EDIT:

Now in safe mode



:'(


----------



## Zaz3

In normal mode:



i dont know what's going on









Pleeeeease Kramy, tell me it's just software problem


----------



## TheLombax

Just had a look at my WD10EZEX SMART using PC Wizard. All good and it's total power on hours is 768. My SG05 rig has been powered for that long as the hard disk was purchased when I built it. I love this hard disk.


----------



## duffman55

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> i dont know what's going on
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pleeeeease Kramy, tell me it's just software problem


Having dips in the read speed like that is completely normal for benchmarking a drive that's also the OS drive. If you really want to, you can make a Linux live CD or USB, boot from that, and then benchmark the drive using the built-in disk utility which will eliminate the software/OS using your drive while you benchmark it.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> 2) when i did the point 1), windows install the drivers


Windows installs generic unoptimized msahci drivers. You still need AMD AHCI drivers or Intel RST drivers if you want good performance.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> Now in safe mode
> 
> 
> 
> :'(


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> In normal mode:
> 
> 
> 
> i dont know what's going on
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pleeeeease Kramy, tell me it's just software problem


The dips are in different locations every time, so it's highly likely it's a software issue. Do you have anything running in safemode? Some Antivirus (AVG in particular) can be annoying and cause I/O problems regardless of whether you're in normal Windows or Safemode. You'll never get a pristine graph with Antivirus like that.

I'd install AMD AHCI drivers if you haven't, then try one more run. If that doesn't solve it, it may require some tinkering (Disabling stuff in CCleaner and rebooting) to find whatever is interrupting the drive while it is running benchmarks.


----------



## Zaz3

Sorry Kramy, I didn't see your post.


----------



## Zaz3

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Windows installs generic unoptimized msahci drivers. You still need AMD AHCI drivers or Intel RST drivers if you want good performance.
> The dips are in different locations every time, so it's highly likely it's a software issue. Do you have anything running in safemode? Some Antivirus (AVG in particular) can be annoying and cause I/O problems regardless of whether you're in normal Windows or Safemode. You'll never get a pristine graph with Antivirus like that.
> I'd install AMD AHCI drivers if you haven't, then try one more run. If that doesn't solve it, it may require some tinkering (Disabling stuff in CCleaner and rebooting) to find whatever is interrupting the drive while it is running benchmarks.


Ok, i installed the driver.

I think is my antivirus (Kaspersky Internet Security) because when the hd tune was running, a a notification appeared

With Kaspersky disable

in safe mode 1:



in safe mode 2:



CCleaner:



What most bothers me is the delay in opening the "my pictures" folder. It has the same files as my old hdd. :S (EDIT: SOLVED this problem)


----------



## Zaz3

In normal mode 1:



In normal mode 2:



I did nothing after "in normal mode 1"

Too weird


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zaz3*
> 
> I did nothing after "in normal mode 1"
> 
> Too weird


In that case, it was just a piece of software accessing it. It finished whatever it was doing after the big spike downward, so the second graph was much better.

Looks like it's solved.


----------



## M3TAl

Got the RAID-0 setup (drives are still blank and unformatted) and windows 8 installed on my black drive. But I'm not sure the AMD RAID driver actually got installed? I browsed my usb flash drive during windows install and selected it but when I look at driver info in device manager it says Windows 6/21/2006.

I've also tried updating driver from device manager by browsing my computer but it says the best driver is already installed. What am I doing wrong?

Also here is my HD Tune for this RAID-0:


----------



## Kramy

Did you install the RAID drivers from here?

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx

If so, then it should be using the AMD drivers. I'm not sure why it would say otherwise? Could you post a screenshot of what you're looking at?

The graph looks quite good.







The only thing I'm not sure about is the burst rate - usually that's higher, indicating... something? (Wrong driver? Don't know.)


----------



## M3TAl

During windows install I installed the driver from my motherboard (said it's a pre-install driver for windows installations). While in windows that driver from AMD is the one I've tried. Here's some screenshots.


Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!









Maybe something is set wrong in BIOS? But I set SATA 0-3 to RAID and SATA 4-5 As SATA Type (or whatever the option is). My WD10EZEX's are connected to SATA 0 & 1. Or do I need to re-install windows and use the AMD provided drivers instead of the motherboard ones?

EDIT: I'll have to tackle this tomorrow, time to sleep.


----------



## Kramy

Disk drives always use Microsoft drivers. It's the IDE/ATAPI adapter or SATA Controller that must have an AMD driver.


----------



## M3TAl

This is what happens when you spend 10+ hours zombied out trying to install/transfer things and figure out this Metro UI







. What an idiot







.

Does this look about right? Different date and version...


----------



## Kramy

Looks fine to me. I think you're good to go.









In case you haven't stumbled across it, ClassicShell can get rid of that Metro UI. You can still get to it from the launcher that comes up in the right corners of your screen, but by default it takes you to a Windows Desktop... _with_ a Start Menu.









http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/


----------



## Beryus

Hey guys,

i am searching for an cool and quiet but fast primary HDD for OS and especially Games. I want no SSD please.
I already read the whole thread an Kramy said for this I have to make 1 partition with around 400 GB for OS + Games + Music and 1 partition for Movies etc. If I buy a WD10EZEX and do it like that will I have a nice gaming setup or will it be too slow?
Before I thought about buying one ST1000DM003 because it's quite fast but also becomes much "hotter" and louder and that's the problem in my mITX case.
So I want one HDD between 500-1000GB storage for OS + Games + Multimedia + etc. Is the WD10EZEX the way to go or not?

Thanks.
Beryus


----------



## senna89

anyone can do some screen about HD-Tune in Write mode with this hard drive ?


----------



## Zensou

Not sure if this is the issue with hard drive on motherboard or cable or what. But one day I wake my computer from sleep and it BSoDs. I restart and it takes forever to get to desktop (usually instant on 3770k), i go to my computer and notice the WD10EZEX drive is missing (it barely had anything on it, couple games). It doesn't show up at all at "My Computer". I go to Disk Management and this instantly pops up for the drive  I click "OK" and it says "The system could not find the file specified". I click "OK". I right click the missing drive and click properties, everything seems fine. 

Any ideas?


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zensou*
> 
> Any ideas?


Shutdown, tighten cables, then boot up again.

Check it with WD DLG - run the extended SMART test. You may have received a dud drive.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=612&sid=3

If it passes, then I'm not sure what garbled it. I'd be interested in seeing some SMART stats from a program like Defraggler or HDTune. (both have Health tabs that can reveal a lot)
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
http://www.hdtune.com/

TestDisk is capable of restoring partitions that go missing like that, by rewriting the partition table. If you haven't re-initialized it yet, TestDisk can probably make everything accessible again.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step


----------



## lurker2501

Can I raid 0 this drive with a Samsung F3 same size?


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lurker2501*
> 
> Can I raid 0 this drive with a Samsung F3 same size?


Yes you can RAID 0 this drive with a Samsung F3 of same size. But note that your array will only be as fast as the slower drive among the two.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *chip94*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *lurker2501*
> 
> Can I raid 0 this drive with a Samsung F3 same size?
> 
> 
> 
> Yes you can RAID 0 this drive with a Samsung F3 of same size. *But note that your array will only be as fast as the slower drive among the two.*
Click to expand...

Making it pointless.

The higher access times of a WD10EZEX with only 190% of the sequential speed of an F3? The RAID-0 array will only be marginally faster than a single WD10EZEX... you would gain more speed by running the drives independently and using them for separate tasks. (OS/Apps on one, Games on another, etc.)


----------



## lurker2501

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Making it pointless.
> 
> The higher access times of a WD10EZEX with only 190% of the sequential speed of an F3? The RAID-0 array will only be marginally faster than a single WD10EZEX... you would gain more speed by running the drives independently and using them for separate tasks. (OS/Apps on one, Games on another, etc.)


What about two of these drives in a raid performance wise?


----------



## M3TAl

That's how mine were day 1 unformatted in Raid-0.



Here's today with two partitions and 196GB used. Not sure what's with the big dips... maybe that's normal?


----------



## nleksan

Apparently I was correct about the 5-7ms drop in latency from using 2 in RAID0 vs a single drive
















~~~
**M3TAl* - Those speeds are really, quite impressive! The "dips" are usually from software trying to access the disk at the time of the benchmark, but I would assume that something like a bad sector could cause a dip (although it seems highly unlikely to be the cause for you).

How does it "feel", I am curious?
Also, would you be willing to try a few other benchmarks? Specifically: AS-SSD/ATTO/CrystalDiskMark to get the 512K, 4K, and 4K-QD32 speeds/IOPS of the RAID array... as well as running HD Tune again, this time with it set to "short-stroked" at ~300GB (150GB per drive), ~500GB (250GB/drive), 750GB (375GB/drive), and 1TB (500GB/drive)?

I am extremely interested to see how these drives respond to short-stroking WHILE in RAID0, as the access times you are currently getting in "just" RAID0 are what I would have predicted for BOTH RAID0 and short-stroked drives (i.e. each drive short-stroked to ~300GB for 600GB total). The fact that you're down to 13.8ms while using the entire 2TB makes me wonder how low the access times will go when the drives only have to use around 1/8th to 1/4th of their platter....

Could it be that 2x WD10EZEX short-stroked to ~250-500GB/ea and put in RAID0 are the "poor-man's" VelociRaptor??? $120 total for the 2 drives when on sale vs ~$220 for a 1TB VelociRaptor that is slower sequentially? :O


----------



## M3TAl

Does the free 2.55 HD Tune do short strokes? Does any other free program do short strokes? Btw the OS partition is on my Black drive, this Raid-0 is only used for games (partition 350gb) and storage (partition 1.47tb).

Edit: So I've never used any of these benchmarks before (as-ssd, ATTO, CrystalDiskMark), do I use the default settings or specific settings? Also they all want a specific partition and I've got two partitions on this raid-0 (350gb and 1.47tb) so what do you want me to run exactly nleksan?


----------



## nleksan

Now I am confused... Haha, I hope Kramy can help. I actually must admit that I do not know how to set these programs up on RAID Arrays that have multiple partitions..... :S


----------



## M3TAl

Well I ran AS-SSD and it took over 30min to finish. I'll add the rest of these benches on here when some one tells me what settings they should be set to.



Here's the other two using the default settings, hope this helps.


----------



## nleksan

Rep to you!


----------



## M3TAl

I went ahead and added the rest of the benches using the default settings, hopefully it's useful to you. Let me know if there's anything else you need me to run.


----------



## Kramy

Looking good.









It's worth noting though that HDTune v255 only tests the first 1TB of a drive to determine access times. HDTune Pro is required to get a more accurate reading, or to perform short stroke tests.

For partition-specific tests, I'd test the first one. That's the edge, which is fastest - might as well aim for the highest numbers.







Note: For partition tests, empty ones perform better than full ones, as the empty ones create the read/write test file closer to the edge.


----------



## dukeReinhardt

Here's my bench:



I'll just remind people that aside from the now defunct (as an HDD manufacturer) Samsung, WD drives above 1tb have the lowest return rate, and that Seagate tried to cut warranties in half and has spent over a year refusing to acknowledge the unanimous complaint that chirping and APM are a huge problem/design fault in their current drives.

I'm on Win8 pro, and the WD10EZEX is a secondary HDD that's split into 2 partitions, one 200gb (empty) and the other 800gb (750gb full) - I'm not sure how these things affect results. I bought the drive because it's quiet and doesn't have APM, but by chance got the revised version, which just makes it even sweeter. Evidently the first batch was unintentionally slower than expected, or the drive was redesigned later? Anyway Kramy was right - BUY this drive!


----------



## lurker2501

Got one as well. Compared to Samsung F3:


----------



## tonus

I can't make RAID 0 with 2x1tb WD Blue ezex on my GB P55-Ud6. When i try to install intel preinstall sata raid driver in win7 x 64 from usb flash drive, tells me that the driver is unsigned.
Anyone can help me.


----------



## M3TAl

Quote:


> Disable User Account Control (UAC) and reboot if you are using Vista;
> Go to Start and type cmd in the search box;
> Right-click on cmd.exe (should be at the top of the list) and select Run as administrator;
> In the newly created command prompt box, type the following and press enter:
> Code:
> bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
> Note: DDISABLE is NOT a typo!
> Go to NGOHQ.com and download the latest Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider (DSEO) ;
> There is no need to install the app, just copy it to a safe location and run it;
> Click next and please take your time to read the license agreement, then click 'Yes';
> Optional: select How-to-use and click 'Next'.
> This will open a new browser page with information on this software and how to use it.
> Though it's useful, you might not fully understand the steps outlined there.
> Select Enable Test Mode and click next;
> Now select Sign a System File and click next;
> In the text box, type the path and name of the file (see the example included), then click on OK to sign the driver;
> Note: see below if don't know what files need signing.
> After being told that the file was signed successfully, continue signing the other files (if there are any left) and then reboot;
> Your driver should now load successfully and you may now enable UAC!


----------



## tonus

I tryed and i have the same problem.
I can't make a clean installation of win7 x64 on these ezex hdds. Where can i find a proper intel sata raid driver.


----------



## tonus

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> That's how mine were day 1 unformatted in Raid-0.
> 
> 
> 
> Here's today with two partitions and 196GB used. Not sure what's with the big dips... maybe that's normal?


What is your stripе size.


----------



## M3TAl

I think 64kb was the default and I left it at default. Don't really remember.


----------



## sweetpoison

I have a samsung ssd for OS. I am using WD 640 blue aaks for games. But now my drive feeling up and planning to get a new drive - only for gaming. I confused with WD10EZEX or WD1002FAEX. The price difference is almost 1.45 th but black comes with 5 yrs of warranty which give me more value for money in a long run. But what about the noise ? how noise is black ? I am sure after 2 yrs, HDD and SSD will be better and cheaper, shall I gamble and go with the blue save some cash or stick with black. Please note , this drive will have a single partition only for games. I am also using a seagate baracuda 1tb sata 3 for data (the drive died got RMAed).


----------



## Deceit

So this is faster than the WD1002FAEX?


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Deceit*
> 
> So this is faster than the WD1002FAEX?


Yup this is the fastest consumer 1TB drive WD has to offer.


----------



## nleksan

Here's a benchmark of one of mine, showing the improved access times. Just FYI, the drive was fragmented to the tune of about 21% at the time this HDTune Pro run was performed, and it's about 31% full.


----------



## petsasj

Just curious guys: concerning the "revised" version with slower access times, what's the manufacturing date on the HDD Label?

I want to buy one tomorrow and I want to make sure to get the new batch.


----------



## Fir3ball

Hi, here are my results, with Windows 7 installed:
*IDE*:



*AHCI*:



How should I keep it? On IDE I have bigger minimum transfer rate, but on AHCI I have bigger average and maximum transfer rate, but lower minimum.

My motherboard is Asus M4A785TD-M EVO.


----------



## nleksan

You have the low access time "version" of the drive, but your speeds are about 30MB/sec low... That, combined with the huge dips and extremely high CPU usage, leads me to believe that there is something not quite setup right.... Have you disabled indexing, run a GOOD defrag (O&O is where it's at! Defraggler and Ultra Defrag are the best free ones; do a BOOT TIME DEFRAG, or you'll never be able to get it fully done; doing it at boot will allow the MFT and whatnot to be defragmented, and it's also WAY faster)... Run CCleaner after downloading CCEnhancer3.7 and running it's "Update" first (always "run as admin" for these; works better); do the regular clean first, run "analyze" then "clean" until it doesn't come back with any results, then go to the "Registry Cleaner" and do the same. Check everything that doesn't give you a warning pop-up box, it'll get rid of a TON of stuff if you haven't run it before.

Since you have switched from IDE to AHCI without reinstalling Windows, I'd suggest a LEGIT registry cleaner, I've always had good luck with Eusing Registry Cleaner. MAKE A FULL BACKUP FIRST! I am not a big believer in constantly "cleaning" and "defragging" the registry, but WinMend Registry Defrag and Eusing Registry Defrag have actually had noticeably beneficial effects for me, after I've done a lot of installs and/or uninstalls.

Lastly, go into msconfig and remove all the start up junk, both in "start up" and in "services" (click "hide MS services", and disable all the crap in there).

Just to give you an idea, I have 31 services running right now (including FF, Foobar2000, and something else), and I have 100% functionality with my system; no compromised security, networking, etc. Some of the services simply don't need to run all the time. I don't agree with "Black Viper's" guide, but if you are smart enough to figure some stuff on your own, it's a good BASIS for getting started. Keep in mind, it won't have the same effect on performance that it did in XP, but some is better than none; plus, why have stuff running that doesn't have to be??


----------



## Fir3ball

Thanks nleksan, new results:

Safe mode:


Normal mode, Avast stopped:


Normal mode, Avast on:


CPU usage is still high, I will try a boot time defrag later today. Let me know if there is something else I can try to reduce CPU usage. Thanks.


----------



## lagittaja

So, this might not be the proper thread for this but what's the fastest™ 1TB (or bigger) drive out there right now?
Couple of these WD10EZEX's would cost me around 120-135€ depending on where I'd buy them.
I would plan to use them in a RAID0 setup with my motherboard as a scratch disk, Handbrake and such stuff.
I currently have 1Tb Samsung F1 and 1Tb Samsung F3 in RAID0 and I have these results, and of course would like some moar speed.

P.S. That dip is there because some program accessed the disk lol, normally it's not there of course.


----------



## nleksan

You'll get almost exactly the same speeds from a single WD10EZEX as you're currently getting from your RAID0 array.

Personally, for scratch-disk use, I'd not only RAID0 them, but either partition them or short-stroke them to leave the outer 1/3-1/4th of the discs as the only part you'll be accessing. This cuts down even further on access times since the drive only has to seek across a 1/4 or 1/3 of the platter, and will also result in extremely consistent sequential speeds (and much higher IOPs in Random R/W). However, you'd have to examine your storage needs and short-stroke the discs in the array based on what you expect to use + 15-20% for "buffer space" (we always use more storage than we think).

With two in RAID0, you'll be transferring files (say, a 5GB Blu-Ray ISO) from your array to a Solid State Drive pretty much at the max sequential write speed of the SSD, it's that fast. Of course, no RAID array of mechanical drives can compete with SSD random performance, but for your likely workloads of large files, the mechanical drives' sequential speeds will be extremely beneficial.


----------



## lagittaja

How do I actually go about short stroking them when they're in RAID? Setting the array to smaller size when I'm setting it up in the Intel raid thingy?

I'll probably grab a pair of these. I'll buy couple of external enclosures for these Samsung's and use them to backup my HTPC's HDD.
E: Also I don't need much space really. One quarter or third would probably suffice. I have a big 3TB drive for my storage and I'll be buying another 3TB drive soon as well.

E2: Well went and now I've got this. Meh, well this will have to do until I'll order the new drives.


----------



## nleksan

I'm pretty sure that you just set the volume sizes for the drives to whatever you want them to be, before creating the array. I am not the expert on this, though, so I would recommend doing some more research or waiting for Sean or another far-wiser-than-I member to assist you with the specifics.... I somehow managed to get mine setup but I honest to God have NO idea how, lol!!!

It's funny, the HD Tune graphs you keep posting are almost identical to what you'll see from a single WD10EZEX in the same given configuration. That newest graph, it looks almost identical to a single WD10EZEX short-stroked to 333GB... So, since you use RAID0 already, you are probably familiar with the scaling of drive speed vs number of drives, you can imagine how much faster two of these $65 HDD's in RAID0 will be!!

Oh, here's a few HD Tune Pro graphs I managed to find (I lost a lot of them somehow, not really sure what happened; anyway, these are with the drive ~30% full or so and intentionally between 20-45% "HEAVILY" Fragmented, as I was testing the benefits of defragging; it's the "After" graphs that I lost)

[IMG alt="HDTune Pro 5.0 Graph of one of my WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX HDD&#039;s, although this was done (intentionally) when the drive was ~21% fragmented and 38% Full. After a full defrag with O&O Professional (first a "space" complete defrag, then a "Last Accessed" defrag + Optimization), then a reboot, the speeds increased to: 204.2MB/sec Max 166.9MB/sec Avg 112.4MB/sec Min And the Access Time decreased to 14.2ms. (5-06-2013 4:52PM)"]http://www.overclock.net/content/type/61/id/1456738/width/500/height/1000/flags/LL[/IMG]

and this is short-stroked (you have to click or it won't show up, I don't know why)


----------



## lagittaja

Yeah well I just booted my rig, hit CTRL+I at POST and deleted the array, created it again, selected my disk and when I set the size instead of the erm 1863gb I just put 621gb (=(931/3)*2)) there and went ahead. Seems to be properly short stroked since that read result looks about right.

Now I'm thinking I'll probably be limited by the SATAII if I go and RAID0 two of these WD10EZEX's right?
I've got two SATAIII and four SATAII at my disposal. Right now my SSD is in one of the SATAIII ports and the second is vacant. All my other stuff are on the SATAII ports (DVD, WD30EFRX and the 2x Samsung's).
I could just toss the SSD to one of the SATAII's and use the SATAIII's with the WD10EZEX's...


----------



## nleksan

Nope, SATAII is not a limit. With RAID, each drive has its own SATA port so the theoretical max bandwidth is SATA Port 1 + SATA Port 2.

The ONLY benefit from having mechanical drives on the SATA3 ports is that the cache speed is 2x higher, but in practice it's something that you will never notice.

You will hit the full speed of HDD1 + HDD2, no issues.

I would suggest that you ONLY use the drives on the native Intel ports, and use the added 3rd party ones for ODD's. The Intel ports are worth a few dozen extra MBs and a few ms access times.


----------



## lagittaja

Hmm haha, didn't know that, had no clue it was like that. So good then








Also all the SATA ports on my MB (2xSATAIII+4xSATAII) are provided by the Z68 chipset. There's the JMicron controller for 2x SATAII but they're eSATA and I don't even have that enabled anyway.


----------



## Spawne32

Just bought two WD10EZEX for my new system, contemplating which raid to actually run, i prefer having a backup of my information myself, but the improved performance of Raid0 seems very nice. Unfortunately my motherboard only supports SATA 3.0gb/s and RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and JBOD. http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4305#ov

Has anyone tried running RAID 1+0?


----------



## lagittaja

You need four drives for RAID1+0 (also known as RAID10)


But if you do have four of these then I'd rather make two arrays, one with two drives and RAID0 (+short stroked to 1/3-1/4 of space) and the other with two drives and RAID1.


----------



## Spawne32

I keep hearing about the short stroking, I get the concept but does it reduce the overall available storage or does it just divide it up in smaller partitions?


----------



## lagittaja

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157.html


----------



## nleksan

It depends.

YYou can configure the drives to have a small partition and a large partition, which retains all the space. However, if you have to access data on both partitions it slows everything down quite a bit.

Alternatively, and preferably, you keep it to one partition per drive, but make it 1/3rd the maximum capacity (or, if doing2 in RAID0, yyou can have each drive @ 1/6th capacity, but it depends on how much space you need). This is the faster method, but it's also the most expensive per GB.

If you can set it so that the only thing that ever goes to the larger inner partition (slow part) is backups or some other type of data that is never touched unless you specifically request it, then the first option can work and be as fast as the second. However, if you are not organized with your storage setup, and can't be bothered to take the time (not a criticism, some people just don't have the time), then the second method is better.

Short Stroking isn't necessary, but it does ensure that you get extremely consistent read and write speeds, and it also boosts random speeds (by however much you short-stroked the drives) due to the head having to move only a max of say 1/3rd the distance. In practice, I have noticed faster game loads and significant benefits with photo/video editing, and a huge increase in performance for audio editing.


----------



## Spawne32

got mine in today, any way to confirm single platter?

http://hostthenpost.org
http://hostthenpost.org


----------



## nleksan

You need to pop it in and run HDTune (I use HDTune Pro v5.5, I believe) and see what kind of speeds and access times you get. Be sure to go into "settings/options" and move the slider all the way towards "accuracy" as you want it to be as accurate as possible; I only use the "quicker" testing for back-to-back comparisons where I've only changed one variable, just to get an idea of the effect it may or may not have had.


----------



## lagittaja

And just to clarify

I use 5.0 so it might have changed in 5.5 though


----------



## AboutThreeFitty

I just picked one up today and I'm really pleased with it. This is first hard drive that I have used that makes no clicking or buzzing noise when idling or in use. It just makes a small hum noise when it's on. Feels a lot faster than the 2.5 inch 5400 rpm drives that I've used in the past. $67 well spent.


----------



## chip94

All the EZEX's are single platters!


----------



## Angelus359

This means EZEX is faster than black. Jeezus


----------



## M3TAl

Black still has better access times.


----------



## Spawne32

so heres a test of my old RE3 drive's on my old comp (raid was lost so just tested a single drive)

http://hostthenpost.org

and the new drives in Raid0

http://hostthenpost.org

not sure why its so jumpy, gonna defrag it tonight, its a fresh install that just got done doing 200 some odd updates.


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Spawne32*
> 
> so heres a test of my old RE3 drive's on my old comp (raid was lost so just tested a single drive)
> 
> http://hostthenpost.org
> 
> and the new drives in Raid0
> 
> http://hostthenpost.org
> 
> not sure why its so jumpy, gonna defrag it tonight, its a fresh install that just got done doing 200 some odd updates.


Anything running in the background?


----------



## Spawne32

antivirus and trillian


----------



## nleksan

Disable both and run again. They are likely the source of the jagged graph line, due to accessing the HDD while the test is running


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Spawne32*
> 
> not sure why its so jumpy, gonna defrag it tonight, its a fresh install that just got done doing 200 some odd updates.


If I had to guess, it's 'jumpy' because HDTune reads fairly small blocks by default (64KB), which may or may not even be as large as your stripe size. Bump the block size up to 512KB in the HDTune settings and then retest to see if it's any better.


----------



## EDVurd

Has anyone heard anything about the 1tb platter blacks? I emailed WD but never heard back, though I really didn't expect do. Debating on picking up a (cheaper) blue or waiting for the new blacks.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EDVurd*
> 
> Has anyone heard anything about the 1tb platter blacks? I emailed WD but never heard back, though I really didn't expect do. Debating on picking up a (cheaper) blue or waiting for the new blacks.


At this point I've waited so long to roll out my array, I may as well keep waiting. In 2014 they may put out SSHD Blacks, which would be superb for storage/games/etc.

But if buying today, WD10EZEX's are still at the top of my list.


----------



## Rockosmith

Does this look right? Burst speeds look really low.

HDTune_Benchmark_WDC_WD10EZEX-00ZF5A0.png 38k .png file


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Rockosmith*
> 
> Does this look right? Burst speeds look really low.
> 
> HDTune_Benchmark_WDC_WD10EZEX-00ZF5A0.png 38k .png file


Are you by any chance on SATA 1.5Gb/s?


----------



## Rockosmith

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Are you by any chance on SATA 1.5Gb/s?


It's a Sata 2 MB. Dell E521. Do I have to enable this?


----------



## Kramy

You're definitely limited to SATA1's speed. There's a variety of reasons that this might be - a bad cable, a bad port, a jumper on the drive, a jumper not on the drive. (SATA3 might default to SATA1 mode due to a compatibility issue, unless you force it into SATA2 mode.)

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/981/c/123/session/L3RpbWUvMTM3Mzc3NzA5MS9zaWQvTHNOTko5dmw%3D#satadesktopjump

Look around on the drive for a bunch of pins, then bridge 5 and 6 with a jumper.


----------



## themaster1

I just bought a WD Blue wd10ezex 1TB, i thought i should share the benchmark i just did with hdtune pro v5 (read speed)

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=415743WDBluehdtunepro130713.png

The burst rate is faster than my transcend ssd: 330 MB/s vs 278 MB/s
the access time is 15.4 ms compared to my Green Caviar (500GB) which is 17.9ms it's not bad i'd say. Not faster than my (very old) samsung spinpoint 200 GB/ 7200rpm which is 14ms

One thing i don't understand is why is it so far of the sata3 (6gb/s) max speed which is ~ 600 MB/s

I got the MSahci drivers plus the latest AMD's southbridge SB950 which is the best AMD southbridge overall according to a tom's hardware benchmark. I have to investigate this.

Perhaps 500-600 MB/s speed are only possible in RAID i'd like your opinion on this.

http://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/ssd-controleur-SATA,2-58-6.html


----------



## Rockosmith

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> You're definitely limited to SATA1's speed. There's a variety of reasons that this might be - a bad cable, a bad port, a jumper on the drive, a jumper not on the drive. (SATA3 might default to SATA1 mode due to a compatibility issue, unless you force it into SATA2 mode.)
> 
> http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/981/c/123/session/L3RpbWUvMTM3Mzc3NzA5MS9zaWQvTHNOTko5dmw%3D#satadesktopjump
> 
> Look around on the drive for a bunch of pins, then bridge 5 and 6 with a jumper.


Wow! Thanks for the help. Installed the jumper and the burst speed jumped to 236mb and average read speeds jumped to 152mb.

I just assumed Sata did not need jumpers installed. Thanks again!


----------



## yeahi

i have 2 drives The seagate barracuda 7200.14 1TB and The WD Blue 1TB wich one will be fasTer as a booT drive ?


----------



## manny123

Just got one of these, running OS+programs on a 130gb partition and the rest for everything else.

What you guys think of these benchmarks? Default settings, nothing running in the background. I wasn't happy with the spikes in the first run so I ran another one.

I am by the way running this on an old motherboard which only has sata2 ports.

 

EDIT

For less interference ran one in safe mode giving a better graph.


----------



## dmasteR

Have they released a Black version 1TB Single-Platter drive yet?


----------



## yesitsmario

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *dmasteR*
> 
> Have they released a Black version 1TB Single-Platter drive yet?


^ I'd also like to know too.


----------



## CravinR1

I have one for my program drive, and loved it so much bought my brother one for his main drive when I went in half on his 5600k upgrade. Love the drives. Mine is half full and still gets over 150 mb/s

My brothers gets 145 seq read


----------



## kalston

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CravinR1*
> 
> Mine is half full and still gets over 150 mb/s


HDDs don't "lose" speed when you fill them (unlike SSDs). As long as the drive is not busy when you benchmark it that is.
And a full drive can still run at its full original speed if the data is properly organized on it (by partitioning and defragmenting with something like MyDefrag). It's just that the speed of the drive varies depending on the position of the head (outer edge, inner edge, in between etc), just like the benchmarks show.

My gaming drive is 5 years old (and has been spinning for more than 30000 hours but SMART still reads flawless values, so it will make a nice backup drive) and like 90% full yet my games load as fast as they did on day one. (3 partitions, all of them optimized with MyDefrag) - and yes I do measure my loading times with a stopwatch sometimes so I'm not talking about a "feeling"







My benchmarks are also 100% similar to what they were when the drive was fresh, empty and not even usable by windows yet.

Anyway I should be getting my WD 1tb platter drive to replace my old gaming drive (old Caviar Black 500gb FYI) in a couple of days. Can't wait!

It will be faster, quieter, cooler and bigger and yet it only cost me 60€.


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *dmasteR*
> 
> Have they released a Black version 1TB Single-Platter drive yet?


No but that Blue is great tbh, aside from warranty there's nothing much to gain from an eventual Black imo.


----------



## m4paws

I just got 2 of these drives. I put one of them in my work PC and am using it for the operating system and programs. I only made one partition. Would it be better to resize the partition and make more partitions?


----------



## kalston

If you can be bothered organizing your data and optimizing the movements of the head, then yes it's better to make multiple partitions. It can be a bit of hassle and time consuming and you might have to use symbolic links and such though (so it's not for everyone IMO)

But at the very least you should make a small partition for the OS (at the start of the drive) so that the performance of your OS doesn't degrade over time (just defragment it every now and then but if the data is packed at the outer edge of the drive even fragmentation won't hurt the performance too much anyway)

Ever since I started doing that my Windows installs never lost their "fresh" feeling (even when keeping the same install for years)


----------



## adridu59

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m4paws*
> 
> I just got 2 of these drives. I put one of them in my work PC and am using it for the operating system and programs. I only made one partition. Would it be better to resize the partition and make more partitions?


Shortstroking to 500GB might turn into slightly stronger performance for the OS, WD does it on their WD5003AZEX it's a 500GB drive but uses 1TB platter.


----------



## m4paws

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> If you can be bothered organizing your data and optimizing the movements of the head, then yes it's better to make multiple partitions. It can be a bit of hassle and time consuming and you might have to use symbolic links and such though (so it's not for everyone IMO)
> 
> But at the very least you should make a small partition for the OS (at the start of the drive) so that the performance of your OS doesn't degrade over time (just defragment it every now and then but if the data is packed at the outer edge of the drive even fragmentation won't hurt the performance too much anyway)
> 
> Ever since I started doing that my Windows installs never lost their "fresh" feeling (even when keeping the same install for years)


Thanks a lot for your reply. Since the OS and programs are already on the drive, I'm assuming that I'd have to do a reinstall to make that small partition for the OS?

Another question, for my home PC, I'm going to have a 256gb SSD for my OS and programs, and then I'm planning on using the WD10EZEX for my data. These are both brand new unformatted/unpartitioned drives. For the SSD, would you recommend putting the OS at the beginning of the drive in small partition, and then the programs on a second partition? Or, doesn't it matter for an SSD? For the WD10EZEX, can I just leave it as one partition without any loss of performance? I know I could make partitions for videos, pictures, documents, etc, but it seems like it would be easier just to have one single partition.

Thanks again, much appreciated.


----------



## CravinR1

Ssd doesnt matter since short stroking helps with the read heads and spinning of the platter


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CravinR1*
> 
> Ssd doesnt matter since short stroking helps with the read heads and spinning of the platter


True but leaving 10-20% of the SSD unpartitioned as over provisioned space helps maintain SSD performance and life.


----------



## m4paws

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> True but leaving 10-20% of the SSD unpartitioned as over provisioned space helps maintain SSD performance and life.


Interesting. So on my 256gb SSD, I would make the partition 225gb, and then leave the rest unpartitioned?


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m4paws*
> 
> Interesting. So on my 256gb SSD, I would make the partition 225gb, and then leave the rest unpartitioned?


Yeah, pretty much.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Ever since I started doing that my Windows installs never lost their "fresh" feeling (even when keeping the same install for years)


Same here. It's because Windows/NTFS is quite silly about where it sticks stuff. Things like the USN journal, system volume information, randomly written files, etc. may be tossed 50%+ through the partition. Fill the whole drive with one partition, and odds are a lot of data will land somewhere towards the end. That means long slow seeks and lower sequential speeds. To top it off, it's noisier and may wear out quicker. In my own no-stopwatch hardly-scientific personal testing, I found that it made things like Java take about 60-80% longer to install/update. (Yikes!) That's mostly because the system restore point takes longer to create.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *m4paws*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> True but leaving 10-20% of the SSD unpartitioned as over provisioned space helps maintain SSD performance and life.
> 
> 
> 
> Interesting. So on my 256gb SSD, I would make the partition 225gb, and then leave the rest unpartitioned?
Click to expand...

People say 10%, but it's actually a certain amount in gigabytes depending on workload. For light desktop use, probably 16GB left unpartitioned would be fine. Most SSDs can function perfectly well with only a few extra GBs, though it does vary from controller to controller. If you ever do write intense stuff (like video encoding a 40GB file) you may want to increase the amount of unpartitioned space left in reserve to at least that size.

Fun fact - doing the same stuff gets harder and harder on our drives over time. Games get larger and more read/write intense, programs get larger, and operating systems get larger. It's not huge, but I'm sure year after year our drives are writing at least 5-10% more for the same workload. A few years back Firefox was 40MB... looks like now it's about 100MB, and my profile has ballooned to about 700MB. Lots of that is cache that's continually checked/updated. Although it's unlikely that the extra writes could kill my drives any time soon, it does mean their algorithms are getting a slightly harder workout.

Oh - updated the first post with an HDTune bench that's newer.


----------



## ZeVo

Interesting, I didn't know about the SSD unpartitioning. I have my OS on my SSD, and only have a couple of games and programs on there. Does the unpartitioning still apply to me? And if so, how should I 'unpartition' it?

And many thanks for the review Kramy. I am going with the WD10EZEX for storing my games. Looks like an awesome drive and I can finally replace my six year old Seagate!


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ZeVo*
> 
> Interesting, I didn't know about the SSD unpartitioning. I have my OS on my SSD, and only have a couple of games and programs on there. Does the unpartitioning still apply to me? And if so, how should I 'unpartition' it?
> 
> And many thanks for the review Kramy. I am going with the WD10EZEX for storing my games. Looks like an awesome drive and I can finally replace my six year old Seagate!


If you want some free space that cannot be consumed, you can go into Disk Management (run *diskmgmt.msc* or use the start menu search box) and shrink the volume slightly. 1024MB = 1GiB. Even shrinking it by a small amount like 4096MiB ensures you've got some spare space as your drive fills up.

While your drive's space is free, there's not much benefit to leaving space unpartitioned - performance will be the same if you do or if you don't. But if you partition the whole thing, you never know when a stray video encode (or a crashed program writing a debug file over and over) will gobble up all your space. At that point you'll have hammered the SSD with writes, overworking its wear leveling algorithms and severely dragging down performance due to all the internal NAND fragmentation. I find it best to over provision slightly to prevent that. It'd be a far bigger hassle doing a secure erase if performance did drop in the future.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> While your drive's space is free, there's not much benefit to leaving space unpartitioned - performance will be the same if you do or if you don't. But if you partition the whole thing, you never know when a stray video encode (or a crashed program writing a debug file over and over) will gobble up all your space.


Or, you know, something as seemingly innocuous as running chkdsk with scan and recover bad sectors enabled.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Or, you know, something as seemingly innocuous as running chkdsk with scan and recover bad sectors enabled.


Oh jeeze - some automated tuneup apps actually do that, don't they?

It reads and rewrites every single sector. Performance will be nuked from orbit for most SSDs!


----------



## lurker2501

So I've finally set up RAID 0. Is this an OK performance?


----------



## bigsnyder

I could be wrong, but I don't think all those drops in the first half of the test is normal. Looks like something was running in the background. I think your numbers could be better. One suggestion, unless you absolutely need the storage, I would short stroke your capacity to 1TB. Your performance will stay more consistent.


----------



## kanaks

Here is mine with [email protected]

Disks are on z77 integrated controller (not marvell). I used SATA2 ports but I don't think this could be an issue. SATA mode is set to RAID, also I am using an SSD for OS on the same controller (had to do the registry thingy to avoid BSOD after changing SATA mode).

I don't know what that burst rate is but i don't like the look of it. Furthermore HD tune doesn't show temps firmaware of the drives and SMART options.



And Crystal Mark


----------



## lurker2501

Has anybody encountered this error after reboot on RAID 0?


----------



## kanaks

Can you Access the rest of the volume? If yes maybe there are bad sectors, maybe you could run a health check.


----------



## kanaks

I bought the drives from 2 different vendors, and I got 2 different Firmwares!

Is there a way to update to the latest?


*80.00A80*
*15.01H15*


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kanaks*
> 
> I bought the drives from 2 different vendors, and I got 2 different Firmwares!
> 
> Is there a way to update to the latest?
> 
> 
> *80.00A80*
> *15.01H15*


No you can't because WD hardly puts out firmware updates for their drives because they seldom give trouble.

Why don't you bench both and see if they're similar in performance!


----------



## lurker2501

So I tried the steps from this thread http://www.overclock.net/t/1341922/fixing-a-current-pending-sector-count/0_30.
So far so good:


----------



## petejones7

I want to buy the WD10EZEX, but there's something i'm not quite understanding. Kramy says that the performance goes down over time when it gets full, but don't all hds? What about WD1002FAEX, would the same thing happen? I'm buying one of these two for my only drive (until I get an ssd but don't know when) unless I find something better I didn't know about, but if only the blue drives have that issue I guess the black would be better.


----------



## Sean Webster

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *petejones7*
> 
> I want to buy the WD10EZEX, but there's something i'm not quite understanding. Kramy says that the performance goes down over time when it gets full, but don't all hds? What about WD1002FAEX, would the same thing happen? I'm buying one of these two for my only drive (until I get an ssd but don't know when) unless I find something better I didn't know about, but if only the blue drives have that issue I guess the black would be better.


all hdds get slower as you fill them.

Seagate barracuda 7200.14s beat the WD blues out slightly...


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *petejones7*
> 
> I want to buy the WD10EZEX, but there's something i'm not quite understanding. Kramy says that the performance goes down over time when it gets full, but don't all hds? What about WD1002FAEX, would the same thing happen? I'm buying one of these two for my only drive (until I get an ssd but don't know when) unless I find something better I didn't know about, but if only the blue drives have that issue I guess the black would be better.


Yep, all HDDs do. (And SSDs too!)

HDDs get progressively worse seek times and lower sequential speeds - but you can mitigate that by partitioning the drive and organizing your data. (So put important stuff like games or your OS on the start/edge of the drive(s).)

SSDs generally have lower 4K and sequential speeds once the drive fills up. Partitioning has no effect, because SSDs wear-level across the entire drive. That said, the speed drop isn't that noticeable, but it may annoy you if you like to bench your drive.

Some older SSD controllers (such as the Indilinx and early SandForce ones) could also enter panic states from too much fragmentation, "killing" them. (Gone from the BIOS) However, we now know that it's just a matter of doing a destructive firmware flash (wiping out all data) to ressurect them. There are documented procedures for how to do this to Indilinx SSDs, but newer ones usually lock down such procedures, and would require an RMA.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> SSDs generally have lower 4K and sequential speeds once the drive fills up. Partitioning has no effect, because SSDs wear-level across the entire drive. That said, the speed drop isn't that noticeable, but it may annoy you if you like to bench your drive.


It can be if you drive the SSD hard enough (worse performance than HDD in some cases). This is why TRIM is so important or if the system doesn't support TRIM, overprovisioning.

In any case, whether HDD or SSD, performance loss can be mitigated with a good set-up (smart partitioning in HDD; TRIM or OP in SSD).


----------



## chip94

Okay, So I just grabbed another two of these disks and they're running a new firmware now *01.01A01*. They're a batch from Malaysia.

I benched both of them and the access times are now slower ,16ms compared to the 15ms of my older Blues from Thailand . Anyone else got a drive who can confirm?


----------



## nleksan

I'm curious, where are you located, and where did you purchase them? Also, what's the date of manufacture?


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> I'm curious, where are you located, and where did you purchase them? Also, what's the date of manufacture?


Located in India, bought them from a local computer store over here. Date of Manufacture - AUG 2013 Malaysia.

Bought my older Blues from the same local computer store and they seem to be faster.

EDIT- I just checked another new BLUE that my brother bought recently. Its running an older firmware *80.00A80*. This drive is also made in Malaysia with a manufacturing date of July 2013 too. But its faster with access times like my older blues of 15ms.

has the firmware made a difference?


----------



## nleksan

I honestly don't know how much is the firmware versus how much is the normal drive to drive variation. My slowest is within a few MB/sec of yours, while my fastest is over 210MB/sec...

So,I wish I had a better answer for you, and hopefully someone else will, but I am thinking you just got one that is a little slower than usual?


----------



## ZeVo

Just curious, why doesn't HDTune show the temp of my Blue 1TB?


----------



## nleksan

Honestly, I don't know. None of mine show either, and I'm using the Pro (paid) version of HDTune. The SMART values are there, they just don't read...


----------



## chip94

Though these blues are great drives, I'm sure some of them are buggy. For instance one of my blues shows me two unknown smart values while the others don't. But all running fine.

Have you tried using another version of HDTune for the temp issue?


----------



## mohit9206

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *chip94*
> 
> Located in India, bought them from a local computer store over here. Date of Manufacture - AUG 2013 Malaysia.
> 
> Bought my older Blues from the same local computer store and they seem to be faster.
> 
> EDIT- I just checked another new BLUE that my brother bought recently. Its running an older firmware *80.00A80*. This drive is also made in Malaysia with a manufacturing date of July 2013 too. But its faster with access times like my older blues of 15ms.
> 
> has the firmware made a difference?


Hey i am buying a WD Blue 1TB as my primary drive for OS,games,movies and other crap but the price i am being quoted is 4650rs which seems to be high. What are the current prices of wd blues 1Tb these days ? also i hope using wd blue as primary drive will not affect performance of games,os,etc atleast not enough to be noticeable.


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *mohit9206*
> 
> Hey i am buying a WD Blue 1TB as my primary drive for OS,games,movies and other crap but the price i am being quoted is 4650rs which seems to be high. What are the current prices of wd blues 1Tb these days ? also i hope using wd blue as primary drive will not affect performance of games,os,etc atleast not enough to be noticeable.


I got mine two days back for Rs 4100. Try your local dealer because Flipkart has increased them recently.If you do buy one, partition it to about 200gigs, so you can use the outer side of the platter for your OS and games.


----------



## VegetarianEater

i was thinking of getting this (and possibly 2 of them for raid?) or getting 1 of these and a 600gb velociraptor (WD6000blhx). which would be best for gaming?


----------



## CravinR1

120 gig ssd for $75 (kingston x300)

And 2 ezex 1tb raid 0 is your best setup and cost about the same as the velociraptor

Or a 250 gig ssd for $150 + 1 tb backup


----------



## Cyrious

Had a friend buy me one of these drives because my storage (all 2.8TB of it) was quickly becoming full. Stuck it into my bedside computer once it showed up and its been running with nary a hiccup ever since then. Works great for its intended purpose (network storage drive. Anything i dont want on my desktop drives gets shoved across the network to it.), and should i get more funds soon i'm thinking about purchasing a nice pile of them and building a dedicated storage system for them. Might go so far as to set up my LGA 775 system as the storage box and let the ICH10R southbridge handle things.


----------



## M3TAl

My 2 in RAID-0 are still doing fine. Should of made the games partition bigger though, almost full.


----------



## mohit9206

I use my 1TB blue drive as primary drive and i experience occasional lags when multitasking and gaming even with 8gb of ram.Is the drive too slow to to used as a primary drive ?


----------



## CravinR1

Seems the power savings does this for most hard drives. Thats why I love my SSD


----------



## VegetarianEater

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CravinR1*
> 
> 120 gig ssd for $75 (kingston x300)
> 
> And 2 ezex 1tb raid 0 is your best setup and cost about the same as the velociraptor
> 
> Or a 250 gig ssd for $150 + 1 tb backup


yeah thanks i think i'll just try and get a 250gb ssd on sale and get the ezex to go with it (or 2)


----------



## EDVurd

So I just pulled the trigger on a 10EZEX and it seems to be just as good as everyone has said.

It's running at 28C when my older black 1tb (1001FALS) is running at 34. Sequential reads and writes are just about 2x the black's.


----------



## M3TAl

Haven't been able to get the temps for any of my drives even though I'm pretty sure the black used to show up in my programs. Nothing in HWiNFO64, CPU-ID HW Monitor, Open HW Monitor, etc. Maybe it has something to do with RAID being enabled? I gave up/stopped caring about it long ago







.


----------



## homestyle

Are there still 2 different revisions shipping?

How would I tell between the revisions besides running hdtune?

What did they change?


----------



## ZeVo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *homestyle*
> 
> Are there still 2 different revisions shipping?
> 
> How would I tell between the revisions besides running hdtune?
> 
> What did they change?


I am almost 100% sure they are only shipping the newer, better ones now. Once you get it you can see the access times. The newer ones have a lot better access times than the older batch. Or you can just check the date on the drive itself. I think they started making the better revisions sometime around June this year.


----------



## CravinR1

Wd may only ship new ones but retailers like newegg will sale their existing stock


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ZeVo*
> 
> I am almost 100% sure they are only shipping the newer, better ones now. Once you get it you can see the access times. The newer ones have a lot better access times than the older batch. Or you can just check the date on the drive itself. I think they started making the better revisions sometime around June this year.


Actually they're newer ones are indeed slower by 1ms. I've got 3 batches. The first one has an access time of 20ms, the second of 15ms and the latest at 16ms.


----------



## ZeVo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *chip94*
> 
> Actually they're newer ones are indeed slower by 1ms. I've got 3 batches. The first one has an access time of 20ms, the second of 15ms and the latest at 16ms.


Gotcha. Thanks


----------



## kalston

Well the one I bought earlier this year (only 3 months ago) is going bad







5 bad sectors so far, 4 at the beginning of the drive and 1 right in the middle.
I'll get it replaced but I bought another one meanwhile since sometimes it takes a while to get the replacement (I'm also afraid they do what Seagate did to one of my mates, they just formated the drive and sent it back to him 1 month later, while the bad sectors were sort of fixed the SMART still showed warnings and it is the exact same drive...).

I've owned about 15-20 HDDs in my life and this is actually the first one that fails on me (on the other hand I've had 3 SSDs and 2 bad ones







), funny that it failed so fast too but I think the old Google survey basically said that if a drive didn't fail in the first few months chances are it would run perfect for years. All my other HDDs are at least 2+ years old.


----------



## M3TAl

My 2 WD10EZEX are still doing fine, going on 10+ months now. Think my black WD6401AALS is 4+ years now. Had a Maxtor drive get bad sectors, but repaired it with some tool. Had a Toshiba laptop drive get bad sectors and Samsung that came with an HP desktop started clicking with tons of errors and bad sectors, useless now.


----------



## kalston

Well, when a drive starts doing weird things I just can't trust it anymore, even if bad sectors can sometimes be repaired they are still not supposed to happen so I'm not going to take any chances. If they send me back the same drive I'll maybe keep it but only as a scratch drive then.

BTW still no sign of Black Drives with 1tb platters, right?


----------



## kalston

It is just bad luck







My OS drive is still a SSD (soon 3 year old running 24/7) and I heartily recommend SSDs as OS drives to people who can afford them, but I only recommend brands that I consider as "good" - Intel, Crucial, Corsair etc.
One of those SSDs that failed me is an old model in a laptop (not even sure about the manufacturer) and the other is a OCZ Vertex 2 drive (and well, OCZ has a certain reputation in the world of SSDs so it's not too surprising)


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *M3TAl*
> 
> My 2 WD10EZEX are still doing fine, going on 10+ months now. Think my black WD6401AALS is 4+ years now. Had a Maxtor drive get bad sectors, but repaired it with some tool. Had a Toshiba laptop drive get bad sectors and Samsung that came with an HP desktop started clicking with tons of errors and bad sectors, useless now.


DITTO. I've got the same drives as you and almost same usage. Going fine.

I really love my 640 black.


----------



## freitz

Just picked up 1 10EZ as a second data drive might pick up a second. Does anyone know if the 2tb Blues are using the 1tb platters yet?


----------



## Sean Webster

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *freitz*
> 
> Just picked up 1 10EZ as a second data drive might pick up a second. Does anyone know if the 2tb Blues are using the 1tb platters yet?


there are no 2TB Blues.


----------



## freitz

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Sean Webster*
> 
> there are no 2TB Blues.


Thats a shame. Highly considering a second one of these for either more redundancy or running raid 0. Currently backing up to a NAS then using an external to back up the NAS. adding one more back up internally should complete my 3 part redundancy.


----------



## Scrubls

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Spawne32*
> 
> so heres a test of my old RE3 drive's on my old comp (raid was lost so just tested a single drive)
> 
> http://hostthenpost.org
> 
> and the new drives in Raid0
> 
> http://hostthenpost.org
> 
> not sure why its so jumpy, gonna defrag it tonight, its a fresh install that just got done doing 200 some odd updates.


Is the second benchmark from 2 RE4 drives? (Just to be sure)

Also, whats the reliability of these WD10EZEX drives?


----------



## ZeVo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Scrubls*
> 
> Is the second benchmark from 2 RE4 drives? (Just to be sure)
> 
> Also, whats the reliability of these WD10EZEX drives?


They are pretty good from what I've read. My first one unfortunately came DOA, but the replacement I got has been solid for the four months I have owned it so far. If you are worried about the 2 year warranty, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go with the Black series. But I like these Blue drives as they are really fast and not loud (unlike the Blacks are.)


----------



## Scrubls

I actually want to set up 2 drives in RAID0 but I don't know if I should do it with Blue, Red or RE4..

I know Red and RE4 have TLER but how much faster are the Blues?? I'm only interested in sequential speeds.


----------



## chip94

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Scrubls*
> 
> I actually want to set up 2 drives in RAID0 but I don't know if I should do it with Blue, Red or RE4..
> 
> I know Red and RE4 have TLER but how much faster are the Blues?? I'm only interested in sequential speeds.


I've been running two EZEX's in RAID 0 for about 1 year now. Still going solid.


----------



## Sean Webster

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *chip94*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Scrubls*
> 
> I actually want to set up 2 drives in RAID0 but I don't know if I should do it with Blue, Red or RE4..
> 
> I know Red and RE4 have TLER but how much faster are the Blues?? I'm only interested in sequential speeds.
> 
> 
> 
> I've been running two EZEX's in RAID 0 for about 1 year now. Still going solid.
Click to expand...

4 in RAID 0 here.









www.overclock.net/t/1403316/benches-4x-wd10ezexs-raid-0-10-and-5-on-z68


----------



## M3TAl

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *chip94*
> 
> I've been running two EZEX's in RAID 0 for about 1 year now. Still going solid.


Same as me, two in RAID-0 for almost a year now.


----------



## Scrubls

I ordered a Blue one to see if it fulfills my needs and expectations along with a 2TB Red for storage.









EDIT: Here is the WD Blue:



It doesn't look so good compared to some on this thread.... Old version or something?









Here is the WD Red:



I was quite surprised considering this is a 5400 RPM drive!!


----------



## bamafamily

Good morning All,
First time poster!!

Just purchased a pair of WD10EZEx drives..(not for RAID but for system drives fro mine and my wifes machine)
My current setup is a Desktop Studio 540, SATA3 ICH10 controller. Below is my first benchmark of this drive.. (Safe mode)
Can I ask you guys how it looks??? Two things that stick out are the spikes..(partition breaks??) and the burst rate...
Is the 9.0.0.1005 driver (2/25/2008) for the ICH10 the latest and best controller driver I should be running???
thx
Bama


----------



## xakashi

Sorry to bump up this thread but I've been contemplating to get a new HDD to replace my old Samsung F3 1TB so decided to get a WD Blue 1TB today, was thinking about the Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 though but still decided to go with the blue. This is my result!

didnt get to get the newer batches as mine is produced in jan 2013 and I'm using it on SATA 2 intel port as my SATA 3 are occupied by my Samsung Evo and Crucial M4











is this result acceptable?


----------



## kalston

Yeah that's a good drive you got, I have one from a December batch and it performs exactly the same as yours.

Btw I read in another thread that new single platter Blacks are out, is that true? Are they as good or better than the Blues?


----------



## xakashi

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Yeah that's a good drive you got, I have one from a December batch and it performs exactly the same as yours.
> 
> Btw I read in another thread that new single platter Blacks are out, is that true? Are they as good or better than the Blues?


Where's the single platter Black thread? Can link? Hehehe


----------



## kalston

Someone mentioned them here : http://www.overclock.net/t/1459974/shoul-i-get-a-wd-500gb-velociraptor-or-a-250gb-ssd-for-storage/10
One guy says it's only 800gb platters though (but that should be pretty close to 1tb platters, speed wise)


----------



## xakashi

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Someone mentioned them here : http://www.overclock.net/t/1459974/shoul-i-get-a-wd-500gb-velociraptor-or-a-250gb-ssd-for-storage/10
> One guy says it's only 800gb platters though (but that should be pretty close to 1tb platters, speed wise)


I just got my blue ytd man


----------



## kalston

So there are 1 tb Black drives after all, but they aren't any faster it seems and some suffer from higher access times. http://www.overclock.net/t/1446170/how-good-is-this-drive

Funny enough the replacement drive I got has a _Black_ sticker on it... but still shows up as WD10EZEX on HDtune (so it's still a Blue...). They are probably exactly the same drives anyway besides the warranty (and the Black is supposed to have some extra features but I haven't even seen proof of that)


----------



## Lukeroge

Here are my benchmark results for my wd10ezex! The drive is super quiet, too:


http://imgur.com/4vb9A


----------



## stn0092

How's the performance with 500GB and 750GB filled? I'm sure someone has said something about it, but there's 28 pages to sift through.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *stn0092*
> 
> How's the performance with 500GB and 750GB filled? I'm sure someone has said something about it, but there's 28 pages to sift through.


The info you're looking for can be found on the first post...


----------



## M3TAl

Thought I would give an update on my drives. Had them in RAID-0 now for ~1 year 4 months. Haven't had a single problem with them. Used for games partition (350GB) and storage partition.

Just updated AMD RAID driver from 2012 to latest 2013 version, here's an HD Tune.



This is from Dec 26th 2012 when I first got the RAID-0 running, no data on the drives yet.


----------



## EasyC

Got one of these drives to replace my dying F3. Did a full format, nothing on the drive currently. Going off other people's benchmarks, doesn't seem terribly impressive does it?


----------



## Techie007

    Is it plugged into a SATA III port, or is it plugged into a SATA II port?


----------



## EasyC

Sata 3


----------



## kalston

Can't believe this, it's my second blue and it seems to be going bad as well. Performance is fine but odd constant rattling noise on idle... What the hell, SMART shows nothing but this noise is annoying as hell (it's quiet though, can only hear it in a quiet room with nothing covering my ears). This can't be happening lol, I got a spare one but this still sucks. Backing it up on the spare drive now :/


----------



## 161029

Has anybody benched the 1TB/platter Blacks yet?


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Sata 3


Make sure you're on the Intel ports and have Intel RST installed, if you haven't already.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Can't believe this, it's my second blue and it seems to be going bad as well. Performance is fine but odd constant rattling noise on idle... What the hell, SMART shows nothing but this noise is annoying as hell (it's quiet though, can only hear it in a quiet room with nothing covering my ears). This can't be happening lol, I got a spare one but this still sucks. Backing it up on the spare drive now :/


I had a Raptor that made odd noises when idle for almost a decade. It died after I powered it down for a month or two, so it must've been some sort of cleanup/maintenance algorithm.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *HybridCore*
> 
> Has anybody benched the 1TB/platter Blacks yet?


http://www.overclock.net/t/1456760/new-hdd-wd2003fzex-vs-st2000dm001/0_100#post_21561608
http://www.overclock.net/t/1446170/how-good-is-this-drive/0_100


----------



## 161029

Huh, well that's disappointing. $20 for a extra 2-year warranty...not a bad thing to have a better warranty but still...


----------



## ZeVo

May have to return my drive for the second time. Randomly makes noises with me not doing anything and hear clicking from time to time. Don't even have a single file on it because I think it'll fail soon.


----------



## Techie007

    You could try full formatting it from Windows Explorer to see that pushes it over the brink, or if it takes a very long time (more than a day) to complete.  If a full format seems to go OK, check the SMART information for numbers (raw/actual values) that should be zero but are not.


----------



## EasyC

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Make sure you're on the Intel ports and have Intel RST installed, if you haven't already.


Thanks for the reply. It's plugged into the white Intel Sata 3 port (SSD is in the other one). I'm using 12.8.0.1016 RST drivers.


----------



## kalston

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I had a Raptor that made odd noises when idle for almost a decade. It died after I powered it down for a month or two, so it must've been some sort of cleanup/maintenance algorithm.


Yeah, must be that. It stopped after a while. I got my backup but this still stinks.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I had a Raptor that made odd noises when idle for almost a decade. It died after I powered it down for a month or two, so it must've been some sort of cleanup/maintenance algorithm.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, must be that. It stopped after a while. I got my backup but this still stinks.
Click to expand...

WD drives often have such features. That's the main reason I buy them. If the drive is clicking, that could be bad, but idle chatter isn't necessarily bad.

The backup guys at backblaze charted survival rates for modern drives. My results are pretty similar on a sample size around 30.

I wouldn't immediately panic about a noisy drive, but I would be searching through Youtube to find a similar sound to corroborate it isn't an issue.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/









Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Make sure you're on the Intel ports and have Intel RST installed, if you haven't already.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the reply. It's plugged into the white Intel Sata 3 port (SSD is in the other one). I'm using 12.8.0.1016 RST drivers.
Click to expand...

It's odd that yours is significantly slower. How does the RandomAccess test fare?


----------



## kalston

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> WD drives often have such features. That's the main reason I buy them. If the drive is clicking, that could be bad, but idle chatter isn't necessarily bad.
> 
> The backup guys at backblaze charted survival rates for modern drives. My results are pretty similar on a sample size around 30.
> 
> I wouldn't immediately panic about a noisy drive, but I would be searching through Youtube to find a similar sound to corroborate it isn't an issue.


You're probably right, but because my previous blue did really fail me I am a bit paranoid







I've had a good experience with WD for the most part (besides the two external drives I had but that was a power supply issue). And the noise was really faint, haven't really found anything similar. It sounded like it was defragging but _slowly._ I did notice it after running a defrag, that's the funny part. After a reboot the noise came back once the drive was idle again though (so it's not like it was still defragging after the application had shutdown). But some minutes or hours later it disappeared. SMART and benchmarks all show flawless values so perhaps it's really nothing to worry about.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> You're probably right, but because my previous blue did really fail me I am a bit paranoid
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've had a good experience with WD for the most part (besides the two external drives I had but that was a power supply issue). And the noise was really faint, haven't really found anything similar. It sounded like it was defragging but _slowly._ I did notice it after running a defrag, that's the funny part. After a reboot the noise came back once the drive was idle again though (so it's not like it was still defragging after the application had shutdown). But some minutes or hours later it disappeared. SMART and benchmarks all show flawless values so perhaps it's really nothing to worry about.


I keep a close eye on SMART stats - I've never had a WD drive fail without first putting _something_ alarming in SMART. Usually Offline Uncorrectable and Current Pending Sectors. Multi-Zone Error Rate and Read Error Rate being non-zero is also very concerning, although other brands report anomalous info there. (Every Seagate drive that I have has a high Read Error Rate - doesn't seem to mean anything for them.)

Ironically, none of the tools that claim to watch drive health have ever alerted me to a failing drive, even when it was plainly visible in the SMART stats. I don't think they interpret the stats correctly.

My Raptor made a similar sound... in the BIOS, just after I powered it on. Almost like it was reading and rewriting tracks. Leaving it off for a couple months, it couldn't do that, so that's how I deduced it was likely some maintenance routine. Raptors were designed for 24/7 servers and workstations, so they don't have offline time, and have to do all their health checks and maintenance on the go. Perhaps with track densities far higher now, WD is implementing the same sort of routines in their desktop drives?

Just a thought. Not guaranteed to be correct, but seems plausible.


----------



## ZeVo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Techie007*
> 
> You could try full formatting it from Windows Explorer to see that pushes it over the brink, or if it takes a very long time (more than a day) to complete. If a full format seems to go OK, check the SMART information for numbers (raw/actual values) that should be zero but are not.


Alright, I'll check the the numbers again since its been a few months since I last checked them. Thanks!



Does anything seem out or out of place?


----------



## EasyC

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> It's odd that yours is significantly slower. How does the RandomAccess test fare?


Hey mate, here you go. Not sure what to think of it.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *ZeVo*
> 
> 
> 
> Does anything seem out or out of place?


The Data column is the one to pay attention to.

Read Error Rate - 0
Spin Retry Count - 0
Calibration Retry Count - 0
End to End Error - 0
Uncorrectable Error - 0
Command Timeout - 0
Reallocated Event Count - 0
Current Pending Sector - 0
Offline Uncorrectable - 0
CRC Error Count - 0
Write Error Rate - 0

Looks healthy.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> It's odd that yours is significantly slower. How does the RandomAccess test fare?
> 
> 
> 
> Hey mate, here you go. Not sure what to think of it.
Click to expand...

Hmm... definitely not as fast as my 4TB Black:










Yours seems to have lower platter density and higher access times. About the only positive that I can think of is it must be much more quiet than my own drive.


----------



## ZeVo

Sweet. Thanks a bunch Kramy!


----------



## EasyC

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Hmm... definitely not as fast as my 4TB Black:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yours seems to have lower platter density and higher access times. About the only positive that I can think of is it must be much more quiet than my own drive.


Hmm....I guess there's not much I can do?


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Hmm....I guess there's not much I can do?


Not really. Not unless you want to go through the effort of returning it for the _chance_ of getting a faster one.









I don't think I'd bother. For all I know, using lower density platters might improve its reliability. They've always used lower density ones in their Blacks than they do in most Green and Blue drives. I do prefer reliability over speed, which is why I have so many WD Blacks.


----------



## kalston

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Hey mate, here you go. Not sure what to think of it.


Any reason you ticked the 4KB align box?

My results don't look much different, though. Just a bit lower access times. On the sequential speed test my drive fares better (line goes from 185MB/S to 90MB/S and access time is 15.2ms). Got another drive and it delivers exactly the same numbers (and also the one I had before, that I had to get replaced due to bad sectors).

My burst rate is only about 200MB/S though, not sure why most people seem to have much more than me, I think my motherboard is just a bit crap and doesn't have the best SATA controller. (and yes, SATA 3 + AHCI)


----------



## EasyC

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Not really. Not unless you want to go through the effort of returning it for the _chance_ of getting a faster one.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think I'd bother. For all I know, using lower density platters might improve its reliability. They've always used lower density ones in their Blacks than they do in most Green and Blue drives. I do prefer reliability over speed, which is why I have so many WD Blacks.


Yeah no worries, can't be bothered returning it. Thanks for your help Kramy









Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Any reason you ticked the 4KB align box?
> 
> My results don't look much different, though. Just a bit lower access times. On the sequential speed test my drive fares better (line goes from 185MB/S to 90MB/S and access time is 15.2ms). Got another drive and it delivers exactly the same numbers (and also the one I had before, that I had to get replaced due to bad sectors).
> 
> My burst rate is only about 200MB/S though, not sure why most people seem to have much more than me, I think my motherboard is just a bit crap and doesn't have the best SATA controller. (and yes, SATA 3 + AHCI)


Na no reason, it was already ticked.....just assumed it should've been. I find it interesting that my benchmark test just after my drive was formatted with nothing it is almost identical to any benchmark I do now with all my games on the drive (500gb or so). I guess that doesn't affect the results?.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> Any reason you ticked the 4KB align box?


These are advanced format drives - like SSDs, they perform better when everything is aligned to 4KiB boundaries. I think the firmware figures it out regardless, but there's no reason not to tick it.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> My results don't look much different, though. Just a bit lower access times. On the sequential speed test my drive fares better (line goes from 185MB/S to 90MB/S and access time is 15.2ms). Got another drive and it delivers exactly the same numbers (and also the one I had before, that I had to get replaced due to bad sectors).
> 
> My burst rate is only about 200MB/S though, not sure why most people seem to have much more than me, I think my motherboard is just a bit crap and doesn't have the best SATA controller. (and yes, SATA 3 + AHCI)


Hey, how are you guys mounting your drives? I was surprised years ago to see the difference a good HDD mount makes. (Like the ones in my Fractal case!) Decreased access times by ~0.4ms on my Greens over my prior case. (That said, I do have a _lot_ of drives in my case. Lots of vibration.)
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *EasyC*
> 
> Na no reason, it was already ticked.....just assumed it should've been. I find it interesting that my benchmark test just after my drive was formatted with nothing it is almost identical to any benchmark I do now with all my games on the drive (500gb or so). I guess that doesn't affect the results?.


HDTune tests the whole drive, regardless of what is on it. The average speed is the average across the entire drive. If you want something that tests partitions within a drive, you need a benchmark like CrystalDiskMark.

The results from CrystalDiskMark will be the speed that you get for the next thing you install or do. (Keeping in mind that nothing is perfectly sequential, except perhaps screen recording, so HDD speed is usually inbetween the 4K and 512K results. I like that HDTune lists 64K... that's a good middle-ground and likely often reflects the real-world performance that we're getting from our hard drives.)


----------



## Blackspots

I'm currently defragging my WD10EZEX to see if I can improve the tests, but something of interest with my Seagate 500GB drive (it was an external drive in an enclosure that I took out of the enclosure and made in an internal). I don't think I've ever seen "airflow temperature" before. (Its because Perfect Disk defragger doesn't display that)

Oh, I should mention that its approximately 5 years old.



Here's the Seagate's performance (SATA II)



Also, the WD1003FZEX Black is not a better drive than the WD10EZEX Blue?


----------



## Kramy

HDTune doesn't interpret Airflow Temperature quite right - try Defraggler and see what it reports under its Health tab.

The two different models are pretty comparable right now, except for warranty duration...


----------



## Blackspots

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> HDTune doesn't interpret Airflow Temperature quite right - try Defraggler and see what it reports under its Health tab.
> 
> The two different models are pretty comparable right now, except for warranty duration...


What I was thinking of doing was getting the WD1003FZEX Black, and using it as the OS drive and the current WD10EZEX as a storage (now being used as an OS drive)


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> HDTune doesn't interpret Airflow Temperature quite right - try Defraggler and see what it reports under its Health tab.
> 
> The two different models are pretty comparable right now, except for warranty duration...
> 
> 
> 
> What I was thinking of doing was getting the WD1003FZEX Black, and using it as the OS drive and the current WD10EZEX as a storage (now being used as an OS drive)
Click to expand...

You could - but from what I've heard and seen, they seem to be the same drive internally. Just slightly different firmware, model number, and warranty duration. Unlike past Blacks (and larger Blacks), they don't have aggressive seeking.

If your current drive is healthy, you could use either of them as your OS drive. (Although I actually lean towards having an SSD for your OS drive.)


----------



## daffy.duck

My 2 EZEX drives together with their health tabs.

78GB free



132GB free


----------



## Blackspots

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> You could - but from what I've heard and seen, they seem to be the same drive internally. Just slightly different firmware, model number, and warranty duration. Unlike past Blacks (and larger Blacks), they don't have aggressive seeking.
> 
> If your current drive is healthy, you could use either of them as your OS drive. (Although I actually lean towards having an SSD for your OS drive.)


I thought about getting a 128GB M.2 SSD, Installing Windows on it (and perhaps Office -- Windows 8.1 clean install with drivers uses 28-30GB! - Although 16GB of that is the hiberfile), then using this EZEX for storing bigger programs like games (my steam library). I'd probably then get another EZEX for storage (currently sitting at 270GB in total space used on the 500GB Seagate).


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *daffy.duck*
> 
> My 2 EZEX drives together with their health tabs.
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Screenshots
> 
> 
> 
> 78GB free
> 
> 
> 
> 132GB free


Looking good.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> I thought about getting a 128GB M.2 SSD, Installing Windows on it (and perhaps Office -- Windows 8.1 clean install with drivers uses 28-30GB! - Although 16GB of that is the hiberfile), then using this EZEX for storing bigger programs like games (my steam library). I'd probably then get another EZEX for storage (currently sitting at 270GB in total space used on the 500GB Seagate).


Where do you live?

Crucial, which makes some of the most reliable SSDs out there, just released a new line...

512GB for $200 in the US - I am envious!









http://www.overclock.net/t/1494260/amazon-crucial-mx100-512gb-199-w-prime-oos-atm-back-to-219/0_100

They also have M500 240GB models for about $120-130 on sale. Quite reasonable.

With SSDs everyone seems to focus on the benchmarks and speed, but most SSDs are pretty similar for desktop and gaming use. They're all lightyears ahead of hard drives - why spend an extra 60% for speed and no other benefits? (There's still 240GB SSDs being sold for over $200!)

Reliability, size, and price are the three most important factors to me. Crucial seems to be a leader in all three. I also like that they're producing some of the only consumer SSDs with power loss protection capacitors. If your computer shuts off suddenly, it'll have time to finish writing whatever files it was writing, which means no file or filesystem corruption. (Well, as long as the task completed successfully - if you interrupt video encoding with a sudden BSOD or power failure, don't expect that file to play properly.







)


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> They also have M500 240GB models for about $120-130 on sale. Quite reasonable.


No good reason to get those, either. The MSRP for the MX100 256GB is $110 and it can be found on sale for $100.


----------



## Blackspots

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Looking good.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Where do you live?
> 
> Crucial, which makes some of the most reliable SSDs out there, just released a new line...
> 
> 512GB for $200 in the US - I am envious!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.overclock.net/t/1494260/amazon-crucial-mx100-512gb-199-w-prime-oos-atm-back-to-219/0_100
> 
> They also have M500 240GB models for about $120-130 on sale. Quite reasonable.
> 
> With SSDs everyone seems to focus on the benchmarks and speed, but most SSDs are pretty similar for desktop and gaming use. They're all lightyears ahead of hard drives - why spend an extra 60% for speed and no other benefits? (There's still 240GB SSDs being sold for over $200!)
> 
> Reliability, size, and price are the three most important factors to me. Crucial seems to be a leader in all three. I also like that they're producing some of the only consumer SSDs with power loss protection capacitors. If your computer shuts off suddenly, it'll have time to finish writing whatever files it was writing, which means no file or filesystem corruption. (Well, as long as the task completed successfully - if you interrupt video encoding with a sudden BSOD or power failure, don't expect that file to play properly.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> )


I live in the US, Texas to be specific. I'm kind of on the line with an SSD, for the most part, per GB price is still too high. I could buy a 128GB SSD, but I'm not completely sure yet.

Also, here's my WD10EZEX benchmark


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> They also have M500 240GB models for about $120-130 on sale. Quite reasonable.
> 
> 
> 
> No good reason to get those, either. The MSRP for the MX100 256GB is $110 and it can be found on sale for $100.
Click to expand...

Known 0.5% failure rates would be a reason. (Reliability!) That's only 10x better than a reliable hard drive, and 50x better than an unreliable one.

http://blog.backblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/blog-survival-drives-by-month.jpg

For home use you generally go large and cheap, but until the 16nm NAND has been out there for a while, all my business customers are getting super reliable M500's.









I'll let someone else be the guinea pig. OCZ bit me once when I picked up a large & cheap TLC model (Octane S2), which ended up having a 100% failure rate. They eventually replaced it with a Vertex 4 of the same size, but I had to RMA it several times before that happened.

I don't believe Crucial would do the same thing (putting out such a buggy product), but even so, I'll let other people snatch them up first. 6 months from now I'll read the posts from all the buyers and have a good guess at their reliability.








Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> I live in the US, Texas to be specific. I'm kind of on the line with an SSD, for the most part, per GB price is still too high. I could buy a 128GB SSD, but I'm not completely sure yet.


Once you get one, you start finding more stuff to put on them. Don't cut yourself short on space, longevity, and performance to save a few dollars. The smaller ones usually populate half the channels, so they often drop to almost half the speed... The 120/128GB models are shockingly close in price to the 240/256GB models, at least up here in Canada.

Consider the 240GB model, or 480GB if you can stretch your budget down the line or see an awesome sale price. For most people, it's worth it to spend a bit more than a hard drive to get something super fast and reliable. ($70 for HDD, $110 for SSD? Obvious choice to me!)


----------



## Blackspots

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Consider the 240GB model, or 480GB if you can stretch your budget down the line or see an awesome sale price. For most people, it's worth it to spend a bit more than a hard drive to get something super fast and reliable. ($70 for HDD, $110 for SSD? Obvious choice to me!)


Well, I first thought of getting a 1TB Samsung 840 series TLC drive (SATA 6Gbps, not M.2) as the OS drive, but that's $500. (This one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147251 ) Is it really a good idea to use an SSD as an OS drive these days?

If I got an M.2, I'd probably get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147349 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148797

Note: On the Asus Maximus VII Gene, when the board is in mPCI-E mode, the speeds are 2x for the 4x PCI-E slot, 1x for the M.2 slot and 1x for the mPCIE slot. I've got an mPCI-E WiFi card installed (Intel 7260MHW AC/Bluetooth), so it wouldn't matter if I used a regular M.2 or an M.2 with only the M slot.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Well, I first thought of getting a 1TB Samsung 840 series TLC drive (SATA 6Gbps, not M.2) as the OS drive, but that's $500. (This one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147251 ) Is it really a good idea to use an SSD as an OS drive these days?


I don't trust TLC drives. My OCZ TLC drives were buggy from the start. Samsung's are better, but of the two people that I know that bought Samsung Evos, they both had minor issues that required calling me for assistance. Not rock solid stable, though certainly fast! Unfortunately for Samsung, I value reliability over speed, and also price over speed.









The other _big_ problem - Samsung has terrible RMA service in Canada. They run you around in circles between different numbers, telling you your product isn't covered in this country, or that you're talking to the wrong division. Good luck claiming the warranty if you ever need to! Probably fine in the US, but it's horrible/non-existent in Canada.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> If I got an M.2, I'd probably get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147349 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148797
> 
> Note: On the Asus Maximus VII Gene, when the board is in mPCI-E mode, the speeds are 2x for the 4x PCI-E slot, 1x for the M.2 slot and 1x for the mPCIE slot. I've got an mPCI-E WiFi card installed (Intel 7260MHW AC/Bluetooth), so it wouldn't matter if I used a regular M.2 or an M.2 with only the M slot.


It's fast, but it's also Samsung and quite expensive. I won't pay that much for a product with a 30 day warranty. (Newegg/NCIX - the retailer.) Once again, that's just here in Canada where it's impossible to claim their warranty service for SSDs.

When I buy an awesome fast new drive, not causing myself headaches and wasting hours of time is at the top of my list. I'd pay more for that - but instead I get to pay less, since Crucial's drives are cheaper.


----------



## Murlocke

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> I don't trust TLC drives. My OCZ TLC drives were buggy from the start. Samsung's are better, but of the two people that I know that bought Samsung Evos, they both had minor issues that required calling me for assistance. Not rock solid stable, though certainly fast! Unfortunately for Samsung, I value reliability over speed, and also price over speed.


Um, I own 10 (Yes, 10) 1TB Samsung EVOs and they have been flawless since I bought them 6 months ago. I'm calling user error on their part, what exactly was the problem?
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Is it really a good idea to use an SSD as an OS drive these days?


Yes, it's the best idea. Even modern TLC drives are not going to break their maximum write cycles in a normal consumer environment. A massive 1TB/day of writes would still take about 3 years to reach it's rated 1000 cycles on a 1TB drive. Durability tests have shown they typically can handle up to 1500-2000 cycles, and your average consumer won't write more than 50GB a day. In theory, it should last longer than you.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Um, I own 10 (Yes, 10) 1TB Samsung EVOs and they have been flawless since I bought them 6 months ago. I'm calling user error on their part, what exactly was the problem?


First one kept dropping out during Windows install. Finally got it installed in IDE mode (ick) then used the usual procedure to flip to AHCI mode. It was fine after that.

Second one BSOD'd and disappeared. Boot Disk Failure, etc.; bringing it back was easy, since I had plenty of experience from my OCZ SSDs. Told the person over the phone to unplug their computer's power from the wall, press the power button a few times, wait 5 minutes, then hook it back up and power it on. It was back, of course.

Regardless, if I had to explain that to a panicking business, I doubt that'd help my credibility. They're not rock-solid stable in my eyes. More reliable than a HDD? Probably, yes. But not rock-solid. And because of the warranty shenanigans, if one does perish it'd come out of pocket.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> Yes, it's the best idea. Even modern TLC drives are not going to break their maximum write cycles in a normal consumer environment.


It's really not the write cycles that you have to worry about - most NAND is pretty high quality. It's the firmware and controller quality that matter more...

OCZ drives sometimes suffered sudden failures when the controller/firmware got confused and worked itself into a corner. I've got a few old Indilinx units that worked fine for a year or so, then disappeared from the BIOS. Because of the jumper on those things, you could flip them into recovery mode and re-flash them. Got them up and running again for another year or so until they died again. Not at all related to the NAND... it's just that the firmware had some sort of bug in it. The worst Indilinx unit died about every 3 months until I stopped using it.

So far most buggy firmware has been set off by sleep mode, or was from poorly cobbled together to support TLC NAND. (OCZ) If you never sleep your computer, you reduce your odds greatly. If you stay away from TLC, you reduce your odds even more. (of one day waking up and not having anything detected by your BIOS) If you stick with super reliable controllers and firmware, you've done pretty much everything you can do. (Usually Marvell controllers, and whatever companies have a history of making good firmware. There's lots - Crucial, Intel, Plextor, Sandisk, etc.)


----------



## Murlocke

I never put my computer to sleep, I just turn it off.. So that makes sense. I had my Crucial M4s drop out, both randomly disappeared and I had to do the recommended 40 minute reset process to get them to appear again. I was freaking out the entire time, longest 40 minutes of my life.


----------



## CravinR1

I have 3 samsung 840 TLC drives, all of them 250gb and one is a EVO

My first 840 250gb I bought 2 years ago and its still working perfectly


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Murlocke*
> 
> I never put my computer to sleep, I just turn it off.. So that makes sense. I had my Crucial M4s drop out, both randomly disappeared and I had to do the recommended 40 minute reset process to get them to appear again. I was freaking out the entire time, longest 40 minutes of my life.


Yeah, no kidding. Was that before or after flashing the newest firmware? I know they corrected a lot of sleep bugs along the way.

I know someone that lost a Sandforce SF-2281 drive on the newest firmware to a sleep bug (dropped from BIOS and was RMA'd - he had a backup, so not the end of the world...) - but I saw his old spinner before he upgraded it, and it had about 17000 power ons for a 4-5 year old laptop. That's almost 12 sleeps per day! Regardless, he was not impressed that it died in under 2 years.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CravinR1*
> 
> I have 3 samsung 840 TLC drives, all of them 250gb and one is a EVO
> 
> My first 840 250gb I bought 2 years ago and its still working perfectly


Good to hear. For the record, the two finicky ones that I dealt with are both still functioning to my knowledge. But like I said... not rock solid.

I've deployed 30-40 M4's and M500's (in 2012 to mid 2014) for businesses, and had exactly 0 issues so far. The sample size is small, but more significant than just one or two drives - so far so good. All are running the latest firmware.


----------



## Techie007

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Well, I first thought of getting a 1TB Samsung 840 series TLC drive (SATA 6Gbps, not M.2) as the OS drive, but that's $500. (This one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147251 ) Is it really a good idea to use an SSD as an OS drive these days?


 Yes, it is a really good idea to use a SSD as the OS drive these days. The cost to obtain a good SSD has fallen drastically in the last few years, and SSDs can be ~30x faster than a HDD during random access situations (which happen a lot when accessing programs and OS components).
In my experience, upgrading the OS disk to a SSD makes a huge difference in responsiveness even on modern computers with a fast HDD like the WD10EZEX. I personally recommend the Samsung 840 EVO series SSDs, since they have excellent performance for the price.


----------



## Blackspots

I moved my drives to the Intel SATA ports from the ASMedia ones on my Maximus VII Gene. They're actually a bit faster, well the WD10EZEX is faster. The Seagate stayed about the same.

ASMedia SATA Ports


Intel SATA Ports


----------



## Blackspots

Evidently a new item from Western Digital? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642
A 2.5" 120GB SSD + 1TB Hard drive. Evidently its a single platter TB drive with a SSD attached to it.

Picture from the NewEgg e-mail promotion:


For the hard disk part of this, you have to install special drivers for Windows to see it (link to drivers is in a USB Key in the box). By default, out of the box, only the SSD is visible to Windows without the drivers.. It can apparently only be partitioned/formatted with the special software.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Evidently a new item from Western Digital? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642
> A 2.5" 120GB SSD + 1TB Hard drive. Evidently its a single platter TB drive with a SSD attached to it.
> 
> Picture from the NewEgg e-mail promotion:
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For the hard disk part of this, you have to install special drivers for Windows to see it (link to drivers is in a USB Key in the box). By default, out of the box, only the SSD is visible to Windows without the drivers.. It can apparently only be partitioned/formatted with the special software.


Not that new. It was released mid last year, iirc. That said, it's only useful in laptops. On a desktop, you're better off geting a 120-128GB SSD ($70) + 1TB HDD ($60) for $70 cheaper. Heck, you could even bump up the SSD to 240-256GB and still spend $30 less than that combo drive.


----------



## Blackspots

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Not that new. It was released mid last year, iirc. That said, it's only useful in laptops. On a desktop, you're better off geting a 120-128GB SSD ($70) + 1TB HDD ($60) for $70 cheaper. Heck, you could even bump up the SSD to 240-256GB and still spend $30 less than that combo drive.


Ah, OK. Yeah, I was thinking 128GB SATA III SSD (because an M.2 SSD would perform the same since I have a mPCI-E Intel wireless card in the mPCI-E slot -- on the Maximus VII Gene, in Auto/mPCI-E mode, the 4x PCI-E is in 2x mode and the M.2 and mPCI-E slot are in 1x mode), and a 1TB hard drive for programs (and/or storage), and a 1TB for storage backup.

Since I already have a 1TB EZEX drive, I have that part covered.


----------



## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> I moved my drives to the Intel SATA ports from the ASMedia ones on my Maximus VII Gene. They're actually a bit faster, well the WD10EZEX is faster. The Seagate stayed about the same.


Yeah, the main ports are usually faster - even back when it was Intel SATA2 vs Marvell SATA3.

You shave off .1 to .2ms and get an extra MB/sec or so. Very slight, but it does end up faster.







Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackspots*
> 
> Evidently a new item from Western Digital? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236642
> A 2.5" 120GB SSD + 1TB Hard drive. Evidently its a single platter TB drive with a SSD attached to it.


It's a neat and very compact product, but the Windows drivers kinda kill it. No cross-OS compatibility means... recovery tools won't function if you ever need them, for example.

It's priced very high, the SSD is about on par with one of the slowest Crucial drives, if that... I don't really see reason to snap it up, unless you can get it for $150 or so, and are restricted to a single drive bay and hate using external storage. Keep in mind that for the same $200, you can get a 512GB Crucial MX100 - lower power, fully shock immune, about 3x faster (just a guess), same price.


----------



## Cyrious

Hey, has anyone done any benchmarks of these drives in both raid 0 and raid 1?


----------



## Sean Webster

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Cyrious*
> 
> Hey, has anyone done any benchmarks of these drives in both raid 0 and raid 1?


I did RAID 0 and 10 and 5, not 1 and it was with 4 of them...lol, I may be able to do RAID 1 soon with two.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1403316/benches-4x-wd10ezexs-raid-0-10-and-5-on-z68


----------



## Cyrious

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Sean Webster*
> 
> I did RAID 0 and 10 and 5, not 1 and it was with 4 of them...lol, I may be able to do RAID 1 soon with two.
> 
> http://www.overclock.net/t/1403316/benches-4x-wd10ezexs-raid-0-10-and-5-on-z68


Yes, please do. I intend on taking 2 of them and sticking them in raid 1 so i have a spot to safely store my more important files, as right now i have no redundancy in any of my storage.


----------



## Sean Webster

Alright, I'll backup whats on them and get to testing either tonight or tomorrow. If I dont get back to you on results by monday shoot me a PM. 

I hope its alright that the results will be with a LSI 9261-8I RAID card. If not I'll see about finding them in my server and moving them to my desktop lol.


----------



## Sean Webster

*RAID 1*



*RAID 0*



Here are the settings used:


----------



## b0ne

Hi all, my first post. Planning on getting this drive to use beside my oldtimer WD6400AAKS. My question is: what would be the optimal partition setup?
My WD6400AAKS has just two partitions:
-system C (OS, programs)
-storage D (games, documents, multimedia)

Should I just clone one of these on the new drive, or change something more? Thanks in advance


----------



## vpex

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *b0ne*
> 
> Hi all, my first post. Planning on getting this drive to use beside my oldtimer WD6400AAKS. My question is: what would be the optimal partition setup?
> My WD6400AAKS has just two partitions:
> -system C (OS, programs)
> -storage D (games, documents, multimedia)
> 
> Should I just clone one of these on the new drive, or change something more? Thanks in advance


Do you want to short stroke the drive so the C partition would be faster than the D partition?

You already have a 640GB drive and if you aren't running out of space a SSD like the mx100 would be a more noticiable improvement. You could put your OS and programs on it and then use the older blue for your D drive.


----------



## b0ne

SSD is a no-go for now. Not enough money and need the space since I only have around 70GB free combined. I would consider short stroking if I won't lose too much space. Maybe short stroke the AAKS to half the size if that would help.


----------



## vpex

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *b0ne*
> 
> SSD is a no-go for now. Not enough money and need the space since I only have around 70GB free combined. I would consider short stroking if I won't lose too much space. Maybe short stroke the AAKS to half the size if that would help.


Ok - WD10EZEX for everything important and OS drive. Older blue for everything left over.


----------



## b0ne

So, something like this?
-WD10EZEX for C (OS, programs, games)
-WD6400AAKS for D (documents, multimedia)


----------



## vpex

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *b0ne*
> 
> So, something like this?
> -WD10EZEX for C (OS, programs, games)
> -WD6400AAKS for D (documents, multimedia)


Yeah that.


----------



## b0ne

Thanks for the help!


----------



## Leito360

I just bought the WD10EZEX yesterday... I had some space left on the hard drive, but I bought it mainly to retire my old 150GB Hitachi Deskstar which is nearly 7 y/o by now...
I also have a 6400AAKS as my primary right now and I was thinking about doing the same you will.

EZEX for OS and games and AAKS for Documents and media.

I have a question though....

I will partition my EZEX, probably, in 2x500GB.... If I put the OS in partition C and my games in partition D... will that make the load times for games and OS faster? Why/Why not?


----------



## kalston

If you do that, your games would load faster from C (the first partition). But why make such huge partitions? It is really a better idea to make a small partition for the OS (40-100Gb on a 1Tb drive IMO) because the OS partition is where files will get moved around the most (and where fragmentation will happen the most) and so that is what really needs to be isolated from the rest (games, documents). 500Gb means that some OS files will be scattered on up to 50% of the drive's surface which will produce a lot of head movements (noise + reduced performance), even if you use myDefrag there are some system files that can't be moved and will be stuck somewhere between the 0 and 500Gb mark. Never a good idea to install an OS on a large partition unless it's for a very basic user.

Once the OS is isolated in a small partition at the beginning of the drive, it doesn't matter too much what you do with the rest of the drive because game data is mostly static and primarily reads (and very often it's large files too, something a HDD like the EZEX does very well). You could make 2-3 more partitions to isolate games and organize your data better (ie. first partition for games where performance is the most important, then another for games where it's less important etc).

I heartily recommend using myDefrag Data Disk script now and then and naming your game folders based on how much you care about their performance (the script positions them on the disk in ascending order, so games whose name starts with "a" or "1" will be the ones getting the best performance basically)


----------



## Leito360

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *kalston*
> 
> If you do that, your games would load faster from C (the first partition). But why make such huge partitions? It is really a better idea to make a small partition for the OS (40-100Gb on a 1Tb drive IMO) because the OS partition is where files will get moved around the most (and where fragmentation will happen the most) and so that is what really needs to be isolated from the rest (games, documents). 500Gb means that some OS files will be scattered on up to 50% of the drive's surface which will produce a lot of head movements (noise + reduced performance), even if you use myDefrag there are some system files that can't be moved and will be stuck somewhere between the 0 and 500Gb mark. Never a good idea to install an OS on a large partition unless it's for a very basic user.
> 
> Once the OS is isolated in a small partition at the beginning of the drive, it doesn't matter too much what you do with the rest of the drive because game data is mostly static and primarily reads (and very often it's large files too, something a HDD like the EZEX does very well). You could make 2-3 more partitions to isolate games and organize your data better (ie. first partition for games where performance is the most important, then another for games where it's less important etc).
> 
> I heartily recommend using myDefrag Data Disk script now and then and naming your game folders based on how much you care about their performance (the script positions them on the disk in ascending order, so games whose name starts with "a" or "1" will be the ones getting the best performance basically)


Yeah, you're right on that... I just finished reading the whole thread (It really helps to do this), and I was thinking the following:

1000/1024=~976GB

100 GB for OS+Apps (I'm actually using 100 GB, and 50 are from Steam+random games.)

350 GB for games. (Titanfall, my main game is ~50 GB + Steam+Random games another 50 so it will be 250GB of free space), games now are 25 GB up to 50 in size so I think the 250 free is more or less correct, but i'm thinking about reducing it to 250 GB (150 effective) since I just play those big games once in a while.

And then I will have 526 GB for random stuff...

Plus my WD6400AAKS for personal documents, setups and multimedia.

Thanks for the tip on myDrfrag.... regarding the script... were you referring to Jaspion System Disk Optimization?


----------



## nleksan

While i would personally partition differently, i would recommend the following...

Create a 15 to 20gb partition at the very beginning of the WD6400AAKS, which you will use for the pagefile, and also redirect all of your TEMP/TMP and cache (ie Chrome/Mozilla caches) to this partition.
The difference is immediately apparent in terms of rewponsiveness, and you should find that yoir computer doesn't stutter/hitch/hangup nearly as often, and when it does, it is far briefer than before.

I have a 3200AAKS partitioned exactly as i outlined above, so i am speaking from experience.
HDTune benchmark results of my 19GB partition:
Sequential Read - 152MBs
Sequential Write - 158MBs
Random 4K Read - 2.32MBs
Random 4K Write - 2.8MBs
and the big one...
Access Time - 1.86sec R/W


----------



## Leito360

Yeah, but why would you want a pagefile when you have over 8GB of RAM?
The temp/cache idea is very clever, though.


----------



## kalston

It's better to have one, but with lots of ram you can make it small though (like 512mb, 1gb or so) and just leave it in the OS partition and forget about it rather than risk running into problems.


----------



## b0ne

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *nleksan*
> 
> While i would personally partition differently, i would recommend the following...


Can you please say how would you do the partitions?


----------



## Leito360

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *b0ne*
> 
> Can you please say how would you do the partitions?


I´m interested, as well.


----------



## b0ne

Here's the untouched disk test:


I had some problems cloning MBR to GPT but AOMEI Partition Assistant saved the day.


----------



## Turson

At Local Stores in my town don't offer "Western Digital" since more 1 year ago.
I could wait a bit, WD might not arriving. WD10EZEX is my top choice.
However, Stores have the other Brands: Toshiba DT01ACA100 (many), Seagate ST1000DM003 (few), between 500GB to 2TB available in these Brands.

How is the Reliability in Toshiba HDD drives respect to WD10EZEX?
This Toshiba has less cache buffer (32MB) compared to others (64MB) for 1TB capacity. This is my constraint to purchase decision.

Destined to: OS (GNU/Linux in principle), and documents and multimedia.


----------



## Sean Webster

those toshibas have been good to me so far just as my WD10EZEXs. I don't think you can go wrong with either, they are both fast drives. IDK on the Seagates, I haven't had any yet.


----------



## vpex

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Turson*
> 
> At Local Stores in my town don't offer "Western Digital" since more 1 year.
> I could wait a bit, WD might not arriving. WD10EZEX is my top choice.
> However, Stores have the other Brands: Toshiba DT01ACA100 (many), Seagate ST1000DM003 (few), and 500GB and 2TB available in these Brands.
> 
> How is the Reliability in Toshiba HDD drives respect to WD10EZEX?
> This Toshiba has less cache buffer (32MB) compared to others (64MB) for 1TB capacity. This is my constraint to purchase decision.
> 
> Destined to: OS (GNU/Linux in principle), and documents and multimedia.


Out of the drives listed I have used both the Toshiba and Seagate but not the WD. My experience with the former drives are in larger capacities. 2TB for the Seagate and 3TB for the Toshiba.

I have three 3TB Toshiba's in my storage server. No complaints, the drives have 775 days of combined uptime (~6200 hours per drive) only one drive reports an error and thats an udma crc error - transferring data to the drive from the storage controller - can really be caused by anything, electrical interference, dodgy cables and even cosmic rays.

The Seagate I have had for the past year and half. The ST2000DM001 - again no complaints, haven't checked the smart status on it (I don't currently have it powered on).

Anecdotal experience aside, all three are very capable drives, as reliable as each other (from what I can tell). 3TB drives are the highest value at the moment. If this is just for storage and linux, the 32mb cache isn't going to be a night and day difference. I would recommend buying the cheapest. Which is usually the Toshiba.


----------



## CravinR1

32 vs 64 cache was tested and shows no benefit


----------



## Techie007

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *CravinR1*
> 
> 32 vs 64 cache was tested and shows no benefit


 Surprising...I'd love to see a citation or study for this.


----------



## CravinR1

It was a few years ago, but 1 TB 32 vs 64 cache made no difference. Maybe in larger capacity drives it does.


----------



## Rebellion88

I have always had good luck with Western Digital, and would consider givign Toshiba a try as well. However I think with Seagate I would need some convincing just due to past drive failures. Admittely one was an old IDE drive and the other a SATA II 500gb drive,


----------



## DigDeep

Here are results of my brand new WD10EZEX, wich came from factory on April 2014.

*Standard AHCI controller*









*AMD SATA controller*









Big difference between Microsoft and AMD driver

That was tested on windows 8.1 x64

And this is test on windows 7 x64 with AMD Sata drivers Its not as good as on windows 8.1.










Is this because of windows or is newer windows 8 driver that much better.

Is it safe to to use driver from windows 8 on windows 7 to just copy it to system32/drivers ?


----------



## DigDeep

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DigDeep*
> 
> Here are results of my brand new WD10EZEX, wich came from factory on April 2014.
> 
> *Standard AHCI controller*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *AMD SATA controller*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Big difference between Microsoft and AMD driver
> 
> That was tested on windows 8.1 x64
> 
> And this is test on windows 7 x64 with AMD Sata drivers Its not as good as on windows 8.1.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is this because of windows or is newer windows 8 driver that much better.
> 
> Is it safe to to use driver from windows 8 on windows 7 to just copy it to system32/drivers ?


I tried to use windows 8 drivers, but i get BSOD


----------



## DigDeep

It seems that now i get the same speed on windows 7 as I did on windows 8. So there is no issues with windows 7


----------



## JR88

I would say that too if I was only still running one HDD lol


----------



## 161029

Anybody remember where the ST1000DM003 vs WD10EZEX benchmarks were? I remember seeing them somewhere either in this thread or some other thread but I can't find them anywhere. I'm pretty sure they were HD Tune benchmarks.


----------



## Dyaems

At the same price, and both brand new, is it worth buying the WD1002FAEX over WD10EZEX?

I am in the market for a 1TB HDD and using it somewhat as a storage like a few movies, few hundred GBs of music although I still have a 500GB Black for that, some important files, and most likely a partition for games.

No, do not suggest for me to buy WD Greens for storage as I had really bad luck with those drives, I had 4 WD Greens (2x 2TB, 1x 4TB, 1x 1TB) die on me, and my last 640GB is also dying as well. All 5 WD Greens are solely being used for storage even! I find it funny though because the 640GB I am using today, is also the first WD Green that I have bought.

I only have a small budget for HDD so I was thinking of buying between WD1002FAEX which is reliable and also has long warranty, and WD10EZEX which is faster but I'm not sure if I'm going to put that advantage since I'm using an SSD.

Thanks in advance!


----------



## BulletSponge

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Dyaems*
> 
> At the same price, and both brand new, is it worth buying the WD1002FAEX over WD10EZEX?
> 
> I am in the market for a 1TB HDD and using it somewhat as a storage like a few movies, few hundred GBs of music although I still have a 500GB Black for that, some important files, and most likely a partition for games.
> 
> No, do not suggest for me to buy WD Greens for storage as I had really bad luck with those drives, I had 4 WD Greens (2x 2TB, 1x 4TB, 1x 1TB) die on me, and my last 640GB is also dying as well. All 5 WD Greens are solely being used for storage even! I find it funny though because the 640GB I am using today, is also the first WD Green that I have bought.
> 
> I only have a small budget for HDD so I was thinking of buying between WD1002FAEX which is reliable and also has long warranty, and WD10EZEX which is faster but I'm not sure if I'm going to put that advantage since I'm using an SSD.
> 
> Thanks in advance!


I haven't had a WD Black die on me yet, blues and greens though..........................
WD customer service is top notch. If you have a dead/dying WD drive they WILL take care of you. I've RMA'ed a blue, a green and a My Passport external and gotten replacements in less than a week.


----------



## Dyaems

I already RMAd my dead WD Greens, and sold the replacement afterwards. This last 640GB Green is waaay already past its warranty period, and this is why I am looking for another HDD to replace it before it completely becomes a paperweight









EDIT: I didn't know that I can RMA a dying WD HDD... That is *very* nice.


----------



## DigDeep

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Dyaems*
> 
> At the same price, and both brand new, is it worth buying the WD1002FAEX over WD10EZEX?
> 
> I am in the market for a 1TB HDD and using it somewhat as a storage like a few movies, few hundred GBs of music although I still have a 500GB Black for that, some important files, and most likely a partition for games.
> 
> No, do not suggest for me to buy WD Greens for storage as I had really bad luck with those drives, I had 4 WD Greens (2x 2TB, 1x 4TB, 1x 1TB) die on me, and my last 640GB is also dying as well. All 5 WD Greens are solely being used for storage even! I find it funny though because the 640GB I am using today, is also the first WD Green that I have bought.
> 
> I only have a small budget for HDD so I was thinking of buying between WD1002FAEX which is reliable and also has long warranty, and WD10EZEX which is faster but I'm not sure if I'm going to put that advantage since I'm using an SSD.
> 
> Thanks in advance!


WD10EZEX is faster, newer. WD1002FAEX have longer warranty, but its slower, technology is older. I think this is no brainer, so go for WD10EZEX


----------



## Xanatos

WD1002FAEX has faster access times; WD10EZEX has faster sequential read/write speeds. I would buy the WD1002FAEX just for the warranty.


----------



## Dhsidh46434




----------



## M3TAl

My case sits on a big wooden chest thingey haha. My two drives dont cause any vibration or hum. They're still working great. They're in a software raid 0 instead of hardware now though.


----------



## dwamk

I have problem with my HDD - WD 10EZEX

This is before I enable ANHCI



This is after



There is an improvement on the graph but the performance are same I can't notice improvements.

OS - Windows 7 x64 installed on that HDD
ram - 8gb
cpu - Phenom X4
mobo - GB 970a - ds3p

Bought the hdd 3 weeks ago and it was perfect for me, I notice this problem 4 days ago.


----------



## GeneO

I have two of these in raid0 for some time now (Intel RST). Seem to work pretty well in this configuration.


----------



## dwamk

Opening new apps it's slower ... I'm very dissapointed, any idea what to do ?


----------



## Sean Webster

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *dwamk*
> 
> Opening new apps it's slower ... I'm very dissapointed, any idea what to do ?


Are you using it as an OS drive? Just defragment it. HDDs are slow for OS use.


----------



## CravinR1

AMD chipsets are slower than Intel. And 130mb/s is pretty dang good for a mechanical


----------



## dwamk

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Sean Webster*
> 
> Are you using it as an OS drive? Just defragment it. HDDs are slow for OS use.


same


----------



## Techie007

    What were you using before that was faster?


----------



## HiCZoK

Sooo time to bump this.
my wd10ezex is getting too small.
I have 128gb plextor m5s ssd for system drive and jsut want to replace my wd 1tb with something bigger but not to expensive.

I got my wd10ezex just by pure luck and just took it from shelf in store without knowing it's one of best drives back then. What hdd or hybrid is best bang for the buck nowadays? some 3tb ?


----------



## GeneO

I have 2 in raid 0, but they are acting as a 2 TB backup drive.

Otherwise what about a 2-3 TB black?


----------



## CravinR1

I love my 2 3tb Toshiba's.


----------



## Speedster159

Just bought a new EZEX and it's slower than my old one?! Why?




Oh! The old one is formatted with MBR and the new one is with GPT but without a partition yet.


----------



## M3TAl

Guess I forgot to mention one of my two drives went whack a few months ago and is no longer usable. Happened right after the warranty expired too.


----------



## reeven

My Blue 1tb bought in Romania on nov 2015. On it it says 18 august 2015.
My firmware is 00BN5A0, but i saw previous posts ago another one: 60m2.
dont know who is newer.

http://postimg.org/image/fxnkhbmlj/

EDIT: my PC- amd fx8350, 990fxaud5 Gigibyte , amd latest drivers on chipset.

Its fast. I stayed with WD from 2007, and decided to buy a new Seagate, HD Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003, interface error 164, and 8 bads in first day. Return this crap.
WD blue is ok for now.
Seagate crappy low quality hdd are faster with about 10%. But even if they are 100% faster i will not buy another one. They need to control their quality.


----------



## khanmein

what's the latest firmware for WD10EZEX-00BN5A0 ? thanks.


----------



## jjpjimmy

So after just nearly 4 years of use two of these drives, purchased at the same time, are showing errors now.


----------



## Leito360

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jjpjimmy*
> 
> So after just nearly 4 years of use two of these drives, purchased at the same time, are showing errors now.


At least they are constant.... 4 years is a good lifespan for an HDD, I usually replace mines every 2 years, so, time to buy a new one and back up your data quickly!!


----------



## Brko

Brko said:


> I bought one more EZEX today. Results are nearly the same as I posted earlier. And I'm using one of them for OS drive (50 GB partition), and rest of HDD is 2nd partition where is software (and games). It is working fine. No difference between WD10EZEX and WD6401AALS /SATA2 640GB Black), except EZEX is less noisy and colder.
> So, afterall, WD10EZEX is okay for OS drive





Leito360 said:


> Quote:Originally Posted by *jjpjimmy*
> 
> So after just nearly 4 years of use two of these drives, purchased at the same time, are showing errors now.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> At least they are constant.... 4 years is a good lifespan for an HDD, I usually replace mines every 2 years, so, time to buy a new one and back up your data quickly!!


Looking some old conversations and l find this thread. I was not so lucky with those HDDs. 1st died 3 months prior warranty expiration so got the exact same model which l sold immediately to a friend. Than that HDD also died out of warranty. And my 2nd also died out of warranty. So l have 100% 3/3 failures on WD10EZEX.

I replaced them with 2x WD20EFRX (Red 2TB) and they are working flawlessly for 4+ yrs now in my main rig. 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


----------



## SteelBox

What the overall opinion on 10EZEX? Not reliable?

Also what does this reading mean in WD lifeguard in column warranty? HDD ok?

https://imgur.com/5uinIv0


----------



## Brko

Your HDD is OK. 
My experience with WD hard drives is somewhat mixed. I have Black drivers with 60k+ working hours without any problems, bought in 2010. I also have Red drives for a 4-5 years now and many in my company, none of them died.

But Blue and Purple is quite another story. Even these new Blue with 5400 rpm. I do not know what is going on, l think l have bad luck with them. Stopped to buy Green in 2010 when l bought 5 pcs and all of them died  

Now with lowest ever prices for SSD, Black HDD 1TB is quite expensive for a boot drive, so for home storage l highly recommend Red (not Red Pro). If you are tight on budget and need 7200 rpm hdd for gaming (so nothing important of data) Seagate 2TB ST2000DM006 (or 008) is best buy IMHO. It is cheaper that 1TB Black drive and is equaly fast since new 1TB Blacks are fast as 1TB Blue EZEX, only have 5y vs 2y warranty.

And of course, for any important data - backup is a MUST whatever the disk is.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


----------



## SteelBox

In the last 10+ I had couple of Seagate than I completely switch to WD. I never had a dead HDD. I ussualy sell them (need bigger space) after some time or use them as backup. In last 2 years I recommended 4 WD 10EZEX to my friends, not a single problem. But I am always sceptical because I read somewhere that these are not reliable HDD, I mean EZEX should be cheap mainstream HDD for boot drive  When is the best time to retire HDD, after how many working hours is recommended?


----------



## Brko

I think it is the matter of luck and region where is sold  since l am in south-eastern Europe, we sure do not have quality products/bundles like for example France or Germany, but prices are higher.
Regarding working hours, it is irrelevant since HDD is working. Of course you will put any important data on HDD with 60000 hours, but for gaming or some temporary storage (e.g. torrents) will be OK until it dies 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


----------



## RICHCANDOO

*WD10EZEX*

I have the WD HD in my PC as my second drive, but system doesn't find it. It worked fine in the Gateway it came from. I noticed it had a jumper on far right pins. HD was the primary drive on the old Gateway. Do I need to move the jumper to make it second drive?


----------



## khanmein

RICHCANDOO said:


> I have the WD HD in my PC as my second drive, but system doesn't find it. It worked fine in the Gateway it came from. I noticed it had a jumper on far right pins. HD was the primary drive on the old Gateway. Do I need to move the jumper to make it second drive?


Apparently, I bought two new WD10EZEX & one used also don't have the jumper pins. How come you got it? This is weird.


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