Reviews for WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

By member: Ironfist69 - Jul 8, 2005

Western Digital is a much better product

Strengths: My drive went in and loaded easily

Weakness: None

I use my hard drives in pairs, this go round was Maxtor and had nothing but grief! If it wouldn't load, Windows didn't like it, and on and on. Then there was Tech Support who assumes everyone is an idiot and their product is perfect.

When ever I use WD, I have nothing but good luck, and have since stopped looking for the cheapest HD drive to use. I am sticking with WD

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: reliability, 3yr warranty, fast delivery of replacement drives

Weakness: no complaints

I bought about 20 of these to run it in Promise 15000 external RAID chassis. In RAID, these drives run without rest, so they tend to have shorter life than normal use. I went with WD, after buying 30 Maxtors 7Y250P0 and having 10 of them being bad from the start. Two were bad from the start and 1 died about 4 month into it. Much better results with WD than Maxtors. If you have any problems with the drives, send it in. As the price of drives are coming down, I've notice that new drives have higher failure rate.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Speed,Reliabilty,Support.

Weakness: None

I would buy this drive again because of it's Speed, Reliability, Support,

Overall nice drive bought 6 of them and none of them failed,would buy again.

WD is greatly known for it's reliability and support and longevity.

IBM Storage AKA HGST(Hitachi Global Storage Techologies),is not so recommended,bought about 3 60GXP hard drives 3 years ago and all of them failed :(.

Thanks.

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Still happy with this hard drive but software didn't...

Strengths: Large capacity, quiet, fast

Weakness: It seems that I have to defrag this drive more often than my past drive to maintain its fast speed. Perhaps that is because I'm editing video? I am not really sure.

I do not have SATA capability in my CPU and I heard that although adaptors will allow you to use SATA drives they will not provide the speed that SATA promises - so I went with this BARGAIN!!!
Drive was $129 after rebate at Circuit City. This was a savings of at least $30 compared to most well priced websites. Sadly saw it for only $89 at the same store on Black Friday...oh,well! One year warranty should not be an issue since for only $15 the warranty can be extended to 3 years from date of manufacture (THE DRIVE IS WARRANTED FROM THE DATE OF MANUFACTURE AND NOT DATE OF PURCHASE so keep your eyes open when buying this item. If buying retail, be sure to buy one with the most recent date of manufacturer. If buying via internet, I'd put in an inquiry with the vendor.)
The retail version of the drive comes with software that will allow you to copy the contents of an existing drive to this one as well as some other utilities. I was unable to clone my disc in this way because I did not have any more plugs available from my internal power supply and needed to get this job done in a hurry. If it works well, this would be a GREAT aid for non-techies who aren't afraid to open their CPU case!) If buying this drive OEM you may be able to download the software from the Western Digital website. Finally, the drive is recognized at only 232GB - why? I DON'T KNOW - I'm not an expert.
Overall this seems to have been a satisfying purchase. It is a fast drive and worked very well for my first big video project. Now let's hope this WD drive lasts alot longer than my Maxtor 80GB drive which died after only one year!! Thank goodness for BACKUP devices!!!

Update May,2006 - CAUTION regarding cloning software. I have had the need to use the WD utility to clone my hard drive on two separate occasions after writing this review in 2004. Both times I found that Microsoft Office would not function on the clone. I was unable to repair Office nor was I able to uninstall/reinstall. This is probably related to anti-piracy protection, but please do BEWARE! Not sure of the "fix" for this, but you might wish to research this issue before cloning. Good luck!

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Western Digital Doesn't Dissapoint

Strengths: large capacity, 7200RPM, 8MB cache, 3 year warranty and price

Weakness: Technically, the drive is only 232GB

I've been using this drive for three years now and have been pleased with the experience I have had with this drive. It's a worthwhile upgrade if you are looking to increase the capacity of your PC and speed it up if you only have a 5400RPM drive without spending a lot of money.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Big capacity, reliable

Weakness: None!

The cost per gigabyte ratio of this drive is excellent. Relatively silent inside my 400SC case. I've managed to bang it a couple times (didn't screw it in my case) and it still performs flawlessly. Built like a rock!

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Capacity, Speed.

Weakness: None Yet.

I've owned WD drives in the past and have found them to be reliable. This drive has performed superb and I am hoping will be reliable as previous WD drives have been. Western Digital support has been responsive in the past when needed and their web site is navigatable and the information and tech support provided is up to date. With the price of storage today, I believe this hard drive is among the leaders in price to value. I like the company and I like this drive.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Fit my bay, once I figured out I needed to get software from the web all went well with installing.

Weakness: No software included-- not really a weakness but at first I assumed drive would self-install which it did partially (XP Knew it was there) but I needed software to make it visible in "My Computer".

Fast delivery, excellent capacity and easy to install. Just be sure to get the installation software off the web! The drive is humming along and I have lots of space to back up all my files.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Fair pricing, 7200rpm, 8mb cache, and a lot of storage.

Weakness: 1 year warranty instead of 3 years.

The hard drive is really great over all, except for the fact that the warranty is only 1 year. To extend the warranty to 3 years, a fee of $15 is required.

Personally, I wouldn't have bought this hard drive if I was not in immediate need of a cheap solution for 250gb. I would have waited for a deal on the SATA version that come with 3 years warranty and a 150 bus (where this is only 100).

The drive is great overall, it is just the lame warranty that bothers me. Not to sound too harsh on Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate have also lowered the warranty for high capacity hard drives to 1 year as well. I guess the extra $15 to extend the warranty does not hurt since you're paying less than a $1:1gb.

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By member: mudfoot - Dec 22, 2003

WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Awesome. Fast and reliable. so far.

Weakness: Price...but what can you do?

I noticed WD has started with a 1 year warranty instead of a 3 year one. This a BIG TURNOFF. If this unit did not have a 3year warranty, I would SERIOUSLY reconsider the purchase. This is DATA STORAGE we are talking about here. What consumer wants flimsy one year warranty on their storage? WD--> BRING BACK THE 3 YEAR WARRANTY!!

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Quiet, low temperture

Weakness: none

I bought 3 WD 250G , one for myself and the other for my sisters. Compare to the other hard drive I have, it is very quiet. Better than hitachi and maxtor. However, the negative for this drive is it only comes with 1 year warranty. Some Hitachi hard drives now comes with 3 years warranty. For sure you can also add 3 year warranty on WD's website for additional $15.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: none

Weakness: slow, reboots when doing stuff

it has been a problem since i got it. copy and paste a file to it or to the other hd and its like 4 plus minutes to do it. everything on my pc is updated. no updates for this piece of crap. email support is a joke. it never gets forwarded (no click to forward the question) looks like its phone call to replace it.

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Price

Weakness: None

I do not really know how to rate a hdd. It works. It holds a lot of space. I have had no trouble with it.

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Buy something else, doesn't matter what, just not...

Strengths: fast, quiet

Weakness: dead after 5 months

I purchased two of these drives and build a mirroring RAID array out of them. They performed well until one day after 5 months of light use (2 to 3 times a week for a few hours) one drive stopped working and only managed to produce the "click of death". I figured, I get the disk drive test tool from WD and figure out what the problem is so that I can use that for the RMA process. In order to boot my system I removed the clicking drive and booted with the remaining drive of the array. I got the tool and ran the test to get the dubious 0223 error code that claims that there were errors, but that they are now fixed. A few days later I went on to rebuilding the array, which failed because now both drives clicked announcing the soon death. I managed to get one drive up long enough to copy files from it, before it clicked away again.
I checked the warranty and the ones that I have supposedly have 3 years. I contacted WD to ask when they pick up their crappy product and give me new drives as replacements (not the refurbished garbage as usual). I yet have to get their response, but to have two drives fail within days not even 1/4th into warranty time is either a misdesign, horrible quality, or both.
These drives aren't cheap compared to others with same specs so I am quite upset. I recommend giving your money to someone else other than WD. They don't deserve it.

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Not very reliable

Strengths: Large capacity (not so much nowadays)

Weakness: High failure rate

I have had two of these drives, one purchased just under three years ago the other about two years ago. Both of them failed with the same symptoms within three months of one another. The drive would attempt several times to come up to speed then quit. No warning or oppurtunity to retrieve data. The first was replaced by WD under warranty however they refused to honor their warranty on the second drive claiming it had been "tampered with" (it hadn't).

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WD Caviar 250 GB Internal Hard Drive - 1 Pack

Strengths: Fast,quite and good price

Weakness: CRASHED!!!! 1 year warranty, but can be extended thru WD to 3 years which I recommend.

This is the third WD to go out on me. This was used for back up and was used very little. I had a 200 go out about 6 months after installation and now this one. They both started ticking. I notice that this happens both times after I get a power flux at home, even thou I have it connected to a backup battery power protector.
I also have a friend who maintains computers at a military installation and he told me that he had 9 out of 10 computers hard drives go out after a power flux. He said that the 9 were WD and the only one that didn't crash had a Seagate. I'm not sure what this means, but I will be looking for a different hard drive manufacturer for my next purchase.
Oh! I did have a WD 80GB that lasted 3 years and 2 months.

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Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB ATA WD2500JB

Testseek.com has collected 3 expert reviews for Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB ATA WD2500JB and the average expert rating is 80 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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Decision at 250 GB: Maxtor MaXLine Plus II vs. Western Digital WD2500JB

With the WD2500, there is even an extra goodie thrown in: the retail version is bundled with the corresponding Ultra ATA/100 controller from Promise . This allows those who own older systems to use these large drives as well, because the Promise controller has its own BIOS with support for 48-bit addressing, as well as drivers for all versions of Windows.

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