Replacement for WD Black

[seogoat]

I bought a wd5001aals 00l3b2 black 500gb about 3 years ago and am planning to get a new one but have heard rumours that the new wd blacks are not as good.

Looking at some stats online they are saying that the drive above has: Data Transfer Rate
300 MBps and the newest wd black I am looking at has 130mbps.

Also it says the old drive has Start / Stop Cycles 300,000 and the new wd black has Start / Stop Cycles 50,000.

old drive specs
http://www.cnet.com/products/wd-caviar-black-500gb-sata-300/specs/

new drive specs
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/sata500gbto750gb/wd5003azex.html


black as slow as blue
https://community.wd.com/t/wd1003fzex-caviar-black-poor-access-time-explained/16841

 

[dextermat]

Western digital black are still 5 year warranty, better than any other brand. On this you can't go wrong

The only alternative would be a SSD if you want better speeds.

 

[Eximo]

300MBps is the bus speed, not the drive speed.

130MBps is also a little unrealistic, that would be the read speed for sequential data. Random would be much worse.

Not heard anything bad about Caviar Blacks, basically they come with a good warranty for a consumer drive. Not that much different from the Blue drives, or 7200 rpm drives from other vendors.

Do you have the model for the drive you are looking at?

 

[Eximo]

Still seeing 300,000 cycles and now up to 164MBps on the latest models. Can't seem to track down the spec sheets for older ones. Looks like the one you are looking at is new old stock, at least slightly.

 

[seogoat]

Appreciate your help. Yes I just updated some links in the post above regarding the models and their specs. I'm just looking at the new version of the wd black and comparing it to one I bought a while ago.

The original model is a wd black 500gb wd5001aals 00l3b2. The new one is in the novatech link above.

The old drive spec should be the cnet link. Maybe the cnet spec is not quite full.

 

[seogoat]

Oh you say that the WD5003AZEX is new old stock. What's the newest? Are there any newer wd black 500gb drive models?

 

[siviprime]

Look more carefully at the specs. Your old drive has an 'Internal Data Transfer Rate' of 113MBps, whereas it's interface (SATA II/SATA 3.0GBps) has a maximum possible transfer rate of roughly 300MBps.

The new drive has a data transfer speed of 126MBps and the interface it uses is SATA III/SATA 6.0GBps. Therefore the theoretical maximum transfer rate through this interface is just under 600MBps.

Also to clear up your last question, I'll refer to pcguide.com:

"Each time the drive starts and stops, a small amount of wear occurs to the read/write head and also to other components such as the motor. For this reason, hard drives are given a specification for the minimum number of start/stop cycles they are designed to handle during their service life".

The value for a desktop drive nowadays is normally between 30,000 and 50,000 cycles, however due to different manufacturing techniques, older drives or notebook drives have a significantly higher value.

EDIT: Actually, like Eximo said, the 500GB model you mentioned is not the newest version they have manufactured (that's why there is a higher minimum)

 

[Eximo]

I wouldn't trust any source but WD on the drive specs. Marketing materials and just plain laziness often make errors on re-sellers sites.

WD5001AALS
WD5003AZEX : http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771434.pdf

My mistake, that is the latest. I don't know where WD keeps their old spec sheets, they used to have an FTP you could go to. Might try to track that down later.

I wouldn't limit yourself to 500GB either. Not a huge cost difference to go to the more standard 1TB and they have the same specs (Though the 1TB is slightly heavier)

 

[siviprime]

Same here, I couldn't find the spec sheet for the older drive you had. I'm guessing it would be similar to the one I still have in my PC (paired with an SSD obviously ).

EDIT: I found the original WD manual with the specs on. You can visit it on the link below:
https://www.manualowl.com/m/Western%20Digital/WD5001AALS/Manual/52416

 

[seogoat]

Ah then, it looks like that from the legitimate sources, the start stop or load unload cycles are the same on both drives new and old (300k), except the new drive is a touch quicker. I'll probably go for a 1tb drive in that case as long as it's possible to clone from a 500gb to a 1tb then stretch the partitions afterwards or add new ones.

I'll try to remember manualowl and look at wdc.

Many thanks guys!

 

[Eximo]

I don't like those secondary manual hosting sites, never know when you are going to run into infected files. Happens a lot with Integrated Circuit and other electronic parts spec sheets.