Western Digital Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pattern of failure was first a ton of blue screens with seemingly no inter-related error messages. This particular model also ran through a SATA II PCI controller card (Promise TX4 SATA 300). No other drives have had any issues. Granted, it’s an older system, but the 2 drives that failed were connected through the SATA II controller card, and their jumpers were each set to only allow a max data rate of 3Gbps (SATA II). So, the issue could be with the hard-drive’s controller card circuit, or with the circuitry related to the jumper on pins 5/6. The drives still power up, but the BIOS can’t see them and, as a result, neither can the operating system (XP).

From my experience with this particular model, I won’t be purchasing it again. Both drives are still under 5-year warranty fortunately and will be RMA’d quite soon. However, I’ve lost any trust in this particular model from the Caviar Black line. $200 for the these 2 drives is the last I will spend for this model. I’ll buy the older SATA II drives where I can find them, but not this one. It has proven itself to be unreliable, unstable, and inconsistent. Like any other customer, my data (even as an Applications Programmer) is quite important to me.