Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive

For those that don't know why you want a low-power drive:It's not just for the environment or your electricity bill--those are just added bonuses. A hard drive can generate a lot of heat inside of your system. This means that (a) your fans will have to blow faster (and thus your computer gets significantly louder), but also that the rest of your computer (CPU, graphics card, etc) are operating at a higher heat. This means that they are running at a lower efficiency rate, as well as with an increased risk of failure. Long story short, your computer will run quieter, faster, and more efficiently, and will also last longer with fewer failures.This particular drive runs faster than a lot of low-power drives, and has been incredibly reliable. It's 7200 rpm and 32mb cache are rather good specs, especially compared to other drives out there--make sure you check those two specs before you buy! The price also cannot be beat.It unfortunately doesn't come with any cables, so I would strongly suggest getting this (as I did): Cables Unlimited Serial ATA Cable Kit. It comes with both the sata connector for your motherboard as well as a power adapter to power your drive from a 4-pin molex cable from your power supply.----Update regarding WD's changed rpm specs----WD has changed the specs on the drive since my last review, from 7200rpm to "IntelliPower," and many other websites speculate as to what that exactly means. Some say it runs closer to 5400rpm, other say it's a variable rate between 5400 and 7200. I don't know what it is, but I did want to weigh in on performance.I also have a 5400rpm drive in the same machine, and a proper 7200rpm drive in another machine. This green drive definitely outperforms the 5400 drive, and I personally do not notice the difference between this and the other 7200rpm drive when running Acronis backup or Photoshop/Gigapixel work. Apparently this has to do with the increased density of the plates used in the drive, although I do not know enough to weigh in scientifically on this. Of course I doubt that performance is comparable to the WD Black drives, but for normal use this drive will not be a "slow-down factor" like other 5400rpm drives tend to be.The rest of my review about power consumption and temperature still stands, and I would also like to add that it's great with fanless external enclosures, which often tend to generate excess heat with higher-power drives.

This is currently the best size for price break-point and is my go-to drive for most storage for the dollar.I've purchased a full dozen of these over the past year. I have not deployed them in a RAID (either software or hardware RAID) environment, so I can not speak to their performance in that respect. Using them both as extra internal and external storage for various systems, they have proven themselves robust and reliable as well as quite and have not increased the heat output above my previously smaller (750gb) drives.At the time of this review, I would advise this drive for someone looking for most storage for the buck. At least, until the 2tb WD Green drives drop in price (currently selling for about 250% the price of this 1tb drive).

WD Has made this drive to meet eyes with select group of 'us' that prefer a low power consumption storage drive that produces less heat for a VERY VERY good external hard drive, this drive is PERFECT for that.WD Has 3 types of drives.Blue: Performance and reliability for everyday computing.Green: Cool, quiet, eco-friendly.Black: Maximum performance for power computing.Now that we have that sorted out those who give low ratings because this is not the 'best' boot drive or the fastest performance drive, PLEASE note that you are giving a device a low rating for doing exactly what IT is advertised to do.Now... Is this drive for you?A) Low power NAS or External HarddriveB) Eco-Green friendlyC) Massive storage for plenty of Movies/Pictures/Games___________What do I use this drive for?I use this drive with an Antec MX-1 External enclosure connected with E-Sata and am VERY happy with the performance it provides while at the same time quiet, low heat generation and reliable, this drive has not failed me and once again WD has not let me down. I play games such as NFS-Shift/World of Warcraft/Aion from this drive also watch .avi video's from it and never once seen a glitch, lack of performance or a hick'up. If this is what you are looking for you will not be disappointed and always nice to say "My computer is designed around low power consumption eco-friendly technology" when someone complains about you leaving your computer on all night ;)Good luck Amazon shoppers.Long live Amazon!!

I bought this to replace a failing Seagate 750gb 7200.11 drive in my Netgear Readynas Duo. I originally only bought the Seagate drive because it was a match for the drive that originally came installed with the ReadyNas. What a mistake, the Seagate is noisy, hot, and after 6 months is reporting 10 new bad sectors a day. After reading some forums and seeing the price of this new(er) Green model from WD I decided to give it a try. Now this drive is not on Netgear's compatible list but it does work fine. It's SO much quieter than the Seagate and it runs 10 degrees cooler and uses half the power according to reviews I've seen online. This is a big deal for a NAS. Performance is a wash since the network is really the bottleneck for any NAS box. As luck would have it, immediately after replacing the failing Seagate drive with this WD Green, the other Seagate drive in my ReadyNas started reporting failures. I removed it and ran SeaTools on it and it too failed. I now have two Seagate drives in route to their RMA dept. Never again will I purchase a Seagate drive after my experience with the 7200.11's. If you have a NAS drive, a DVR, or even a mid-range PC than this drive is perfect. It's no speed demon, but even in many benchmarks is a faster than many other 7200 rpm drives on the market.