WD Blue WD20SPZX 2TB 5400 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5″ Internal Notebook Hard Drive

Pros: 2 TB on a 2.5″ drive only 7mm thick and made by Western Digital!
Drive seems fast for a 5400 RPM drive with read operations – I get read speeds nearly 200 MB/s. Small writes are also very quick, probably because of the MASSIVE cache.

Cons: For some reason the label is on the bottom of the drive and the top is just a blank white label… not sure why WD did this but it really doesn’t effect the use at all, but looks weird.

Overall Review: In all seriousness, I wish WD has made these available for sale like 2 moths earlier when I bought 5x 2TB Seagate FireCudas. The Seagate FireCuda has a slight edge on speed due to it being a SSHD, and has a much longer warranty, HOWEVER… I’ve had the Seagates for 2 months and have already had 2 failures. At the time WD only offered a 15mm thick PMR version (and with less cache). I’m very pleased that this drive is finally available as now I can have the vastly better reliability of WD. I can’t wait until the capacity gets even better. Keep your data safe… buy WD.

Be aware that this drive uses SMR technology (Shingled Magnetic Recording) to achieve such high density in a small package. If you don’t know what that is, think of how shingles on a roof are laid out partially overlapping each other – that is how the data is laid out on the drive platters. While this allows significantly higher capacities, it creates some complexity to writing. If the drive needs to write data in the middle of existing data, it can’t just “place” it there like a HDD using PMR technology because other data also overlaps it. What it has to do is put the data in a temporary location, then re-write all the shingled data afterwards to the end of the track break.

What does this mean for you? No change really in the way you use it. Just be aware that writes to the drive place the data in a temporary position, which is then relocated and shingled later on. The drive is smart enough to do this when you aren’t busy, but this will make the drive sound like it’s doing a lot of work even when the computer is idle. So if you hear the drive churning away while you are seemingly doing nothing – this is completely normal on any drive using SMR. The constant busy sound is not a defect, but rather a side effect – and it stops when the shingling is complete.

If you use this as a main system drive, there are so many random writes with the paging files and temp files that it may never fully shingle the drive, making it sound as if it never stops working. For that reason, these are best used as storage drives that are read to often, but written to rarely. Don’t even think about using an SMR drive in a RAID setup as you’ll get very poor performance.

Pros: Good $/GB. Good tight package at 7mm up to 2TB. Reasonable power profile. Reliable manufacture. Good read speeds. Good for storing regularly read bulk data like videos.

Cons: It is a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drive, but NOT ADVERTISED. SMR likes sequential data but not random access. Operating system logging, web browsers, email, and other examples create many random writes, small file writes, and small file moves. As a primary system drive, things can be slow.

Overall Review: Ideal for the “other drive” in hybrid SSD-HD computers. Either a SSD-HD hybrid laptop or HTPC. You spent $$$ for an NVMe SSD on the MB, so why spend more for the static storage. SMR drives are dense and excellent on the read direction. 128MB cache, which is necessary for the write-replace cycle, can be a huge win for reads. So if you just need a place to keep all your videos, photos, and stock art, then okay. Just don’t do post production processing on the drive. Also okay for static storage NAS such as an HTPC doubling as a samba server to push mobile device backups to.

Pros: I have been building and buying computer components for about 20 years and I have always bought Western Digital hard drives. I have had no issues ever with the HD failing over the years

Cons: I received the product today, 6 June 2019., opened the package and was a little dismayed to see the Mfgr. date was 2 June 2018. Never happened before, never. The sold by and ship by was Newegg,.

Overall Review: I went to WD website and input the Serial # and it showed that the warranty expires 14 months from today. Newegg’s website says 2 year warranty. I saw that others had this same issue, so I called WD. A rep came on the line within 1 minute. The rep told me what to do, a simple step. And after I did this, they would honor the 2 year warranty. #2ThumbsUp!!

Pros: Two drives work well as RAID drive for Steam games and backups
RAID drive writes at 280MB/s from an SSD (copying large files)
Quiet/silent, which is exactly why I ordered these instead of desktop drives (tend to be noisier)

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: RAID Crystal Disk Mark for the curious
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CrystalDiskMark 6.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 124.482 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 85.746 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 2.374 MB/s [ 579.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 1.549 MB/s [ 378.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.068 MB/s [ 504.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.539 MB/s [ 375.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.433 MB/s [ 105.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.453 MB/s [ 354.7 IOPS]

Pros: Everything you come to expect from WD… Low failure rates and good prices.

Cons: none

Pros: Good name, dependable, great price.

Cons: none

Overall Review: Had to replace a dead drive for my parents laptop, upgraded their old seagate 500gb with this 1tb. Couldn’t ask for a better drive for the money.

Pros: Sleek Design–Used this to replace me original Lenovo 320gb drive.
Did not have any problems at all.
The price was good…The drive was packed very well in the original WD box.
I have included some specs I ran below.

Storage
Hard drives
WDC WD5000LPCX-00VHAT0
Manufacturer Western Digital
Heads 16
Cylinders 60,801
Tracks 15,504,255
Sectors 976,768,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS3
Serial Number WD-WX91A17DF6Y8
Firmware Version Number 01.01A01
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 6 times
Power On Time 0.7 days
Speed 5400 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 465 GB
Real size 500,107,862,016 bytes
RAID Type None
S.M.A.R.T
Status Good
Temperature 110 °F
Temperature Range OK (less than 122 °F)
S.M.A.R.T attributes
Attribute name Real value Current Worst Threshold Raw Value Status
01 Read Error Rate 0 200 200 51 0000000000 Good
03 Spin-Up Time 1341 ms 153 153 21 000000053D Good
04 Start/Stop Count 7 100 100 0 0000000007 Good
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 0 200 200 140 0000000000 Good
07 Seek Error Rate 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 16h 100 100 0 0000000010 Good
0A Spin Retry Count 0 100 253 0 0000000000 Good
0B Recalibration Retries 0 100 253 0 0000000000 Good
0C Device Power Cycle Count 6 100 100 0 0000000006 Good
C0 Power-off Retract Count 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 433 200 200 0 00000001B1 Good
C2 Temperature 110 °F 100 92 0 000000002B Good
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 253 0 0000000000 Good
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200 200 0 0000000000 Good
C8 Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate 0 100 253 0 0000000000 Good

Cons: None

Pros: Set up in a family member’s computer as backup storage for the ssd in a m-atx case. Will be just as reliable as a 3.5″ given all the dog hair and dander this thing is going to subjected to.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Just a bare bones hdd.