Western Digital WD5000KSRTL Caviar 500 GB SATA Hard Drive
Normal Price:$119.99
Our Price:$92.40
Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Manufacturer: Western Digital
Model: WD5000KSRTL
Binding: Electronics
Publisher: Western Digital
Label: Western Digital
Features for Western Digital WD5000KSRTL Caviar 500 GB SATA Hard Drive:
- 500 GB SATA 3.5-inch internal hard drive; advanced acoustics and cool operation for high-end computers, multimedia and gaming systems
- 7200 RPM spin rate; 16 MB cache; 300 MB/s transfer rate
- WhisperDrive technology minimizes noise; SoftSeek technology increases operational efficiencies; Data Lifeguard Tools protect data; ShockGuard protects hard drive during operation
- Designed for low-power consumption
- 3-year limited warranty
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Customer Reviews
Drive Dead after 2 months--all data lost 
2008-08-09
Horrible drive. Steer clear, of this product...it is unreliable. The drive is unreadable and all my pictures and video are now lost. I wish I could sue these junk manufacturers for all the time they caused me to flush down the toilet. All the hours would come out to thousands of dollars. Rediculous and very disappointing.
Second buy, second dissapointment 2008-07-27
My experience comes from a few months back, but I guess it's worth mentioning. Throughout the past 10 years, I've only chosen WD drives twice, one back in the 2GB days and one of these a few months back. Sadly, the first one ended with a major multiple sector failure and this one with a critical failure with SMART warning. This drive only lasted me about 3 months, so as of this date, this brand has failed me 100% of the time. I'm back to Seagate drives now.
Caused the computer to crash 2008-07-21
The hard drive killed my Dell. Our IT guy figured out that the problem was from the hard drive. We'll need a new hard drive, and hopefully we will be able to revive the Dell, but it is not looking promising.
HD 
2008-06-30
Installed in about 10 minutes (plus the 15 minutes reading the book to make sure I was doing it right). Installation is breeze, but most of the time was making sure I was doing it right.
500 GB SATA drrive 
2008-06-26
These drives are great.. so far anyways. I got three of them. I use one as a system drive and then I created an array for media storage (1TB).. I do put a hard drive through a lot of stress.. I am a developer so I have had many drives crash out on me. I can't say how these will be long term but so far they are performing nicely. Do not buy those Samsung spinpoint drives.. I had 2 of them crash really fast and the replacements crashed out also ... the first set crashed before a year and the replacements lasted just over one year!!
The Way of the SATA 2008-06-24
WD Caviar Blue16 7200 RPM next-generation SATA hard drives feature 16 MB cache for lightning-fast performance, cool and quiet operation and up to 500 GB of storage for capacity-hungry applications.
Just died 5 months out of warranty 
2008-06-15
Drives fail. I know that. Was using this along with a 500GB Maxtor in a 1TB RAID0 array, with a nice cool fan, I might add. It is amazing to me that we accept such short warranty periods for modern hard drives. Their "Customer Loyalty Program" Will offer to sell me a new drive for $97. You must be joking! I'm going to buy a Seagate with a 5 year warranty and upgrade to a RAID5 array so that next time a drive fails I have redundancy.
Quietest drive I've ever owned 2008-05-29
The main harddrive in my computer (about 3ish years old. A western digital 250gb SATA drive) was getting full, so I decided to add in a second drive. After shopping around, and reading reviews, I decided to buy the WD5000KSRTL. After installation (which was harrowing. Bios saw the drive just fine, but Windows didn't want to start up. Zero fault of the drive, just a Windows XP quirk according to forums I read) I formatted the drive (took maybe half an hour) and then I was up and running.
I play alot of games, most of which have been bought from the Steam store. The old drive, having been heavily fragmented, was slowing the load times of my games by a pretty high degree. After installing the new drive, I migrated all of my Steam games over to it (a process that was lightning fast, considering it was 10gb or so worth of games. Everything from Counterstrike to Half-Life 2 and Heroes of Might and Magic) and I've come to the conclusion that this is easily the fastest, and the most silent drive I've ever owned. Honestly if I couldn't see the files transferring to the new drive (on the screen) I wouldn't have believed that it was actually in operation. This drive would be perfect for a media center computer (though I'm not using it for that purpose).
There is only one oddity, which might not be an oddity at all. When I looked at the model number on the drive, it was WD5000AAKS. If you take away the "RTL" from the WD5000KSRTL (RTL meaning retail) you are left with WD5000KS, not WD5000AAKS. Reading a few forums, I think this might be an upgraded version of the WD5000KS, though I cannot independently confirm this. Looking at WD's website, the WD5000AAKS seems to be the current model number for this generations 500gb Caviar SATA. A few forums mentioned that the WD5000AAKS is a superior drive, and while I can't speak to that, I can honestly say that the performance I've seen from this particular drive has been spectacular.
Oh and someone earlier said that this box doesn't come with the SATA cable needed to connect this drive to your computer. He is infact half correct. There is no SATA to Molex adaptor included in the box. If you don't know what Molex is, it's the name for the connector that connects computer hardware to the computers power supply. Recently, alot of power supplies have been shipping with SATA power connectors built in (which was the case for me, I got lucky) but if you are using the power supply that came with your computer (from Dell, HP, Gateway etc) you may need to check and make sure you have a SATA power connector on it before you attempt to buy this drive. Unlike alot of drives, this drive cannot be powered by a Molex connector. You may have to buy a Molex to SATA adaptor if this is the case with your power supply. There is however an included SATA data cable, so you won't have to purchase an additional one to install this hard drive (which a few people did unfortunately).
If you are looking for a new drive, that is basically silent, at a good price, this is the drive for you.
Excellent Harddrive!!!! 2008-04-28
Can't say enough about this drive!! Very easy to install and setup!! No problems at all!!!
Fine product 2008-04-26
I have had absolutely no problem with this hard drive. Works perfectly and is very quiet. I use it as a second hard drive to store all my Logic Pro song files on my Mac G5. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants a good, dependable, and quiet hard drive.
