WD 500GB single platter (Updated)

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 1:56 pm

Apparently, WD has a new version of the WD5000AAKS Caviar Blue drive with a single 500GB platter. Unfortunately, they have not changed the model number to reflect the change from the multi-platter version. I was hoping that this drive would be the ideal drive: fast, large, and (of course) quiet.

Has anyone recently purchased this drive? If so, is it indeed single-platter, and as quiet as you would expect a single-platter drive to be?

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 4:27 pm

It was discussed in this thread viewtopic.php?t=54759

You should change the title of your first post to include 22A7B2 in the model number if you want the thread title to be specific to that model.

WD is dropping the ball. They could have sold me several extra drives in 2008 and 2009 if they would have clearly marked new drives with platter count (or density, either way). As is I don't like to buy a pig in a poke.

The last drive I bought was a samsung 500GB single platter. No guessing.

I might buy another WD before they stop making hard drives but I won't give them the same preference I did for the period when the 640GB drives were the top of the performance charts.

SSDs will start eating into the performance sector before too long (and by performance sector I mean with a price/performance advantage not SSDs that cost 5 or 10 times as much as a good hard drive).

I can understand not specifying platter counts in low cost OEM drives but if you want to take retail you need to give me a way to know that I'm buying the better product.

swivelguy2 · Post by **swivelguy2** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:19 pm

dhanson865 wrote:WD is dropping the ball. They could have sold me several extra drives in 2008 and 2009 if they would have clearly marked new drives with platter count (or density, either way). As is I don't like to buy a pig in a poke.

WD didn't really lose out here. The reason they don't change the model number is so that they (and retailers) can still sell the old versions. If they came out with a new model number and people knew it was better, they would only be able to sell the old ones at a discount. I'm sure selling the thousands of 2-platter 500 GB drives that are floating around is a higher priority than the handful they could have sold to you with your loyalty.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 7:23 pm

swivelguy2 wrote:
dhanson865 wrote:WD is dropping the ball. They could have sold me several extra drives in 2008 and 2009 if they would have clearly marked new drives with platter count (or density, either way). As is I don't like to buy a pig in a poke.
WD didn't really lose out here. The reason they don't change the model number is so that they (and retailers) can still sell the old versions. If they came out with a new model number and people knew it was better, they would only be able to sell the old ones at a discount. I'm sure selling the thousands of 2-platter 500 GB drives that are floating around is a higher priority than the handful they could have sold to you with your loyalty.

1. You acknowledge that there would be a price difference but you forget that it is up to the manufacturer whether they mark down old product or raise the price of new product. In tech this is usually a never ending process. Look up the term waterfall pricing. What makes you think hard drives should be immune to pricing forces that are present in the rest of the tech industry?

2. Why should WDC get to confuse customers with misleading product names when Intel, AMD cpu division, Seagate, etcetera have no problem making a new model number for parts with different specs? Yes ATI/NVidia have had a long history of misleading part numbers and Nvidia has done a lot more of it lately but don't give me the someone else did it excuse. I know it gives the seller more power to confuse the customer but I'm saying it shouldn't be done for numerous reasons.

3. You are assuming that people like me (tech enthusiasts) are a minority small enough that the company can ignore us. You are forgetting that I and other tech enthusiasts am/are influential to a larger group of "sheeple" grade consumers.

4. SPCR is google archived very quickly so I'm redacting the first sentence in this paragraph. My "handful" is larger than the handful of the average home user.

It's not a zero sum game but when I purchase a drive it is a +1 vote for the company who made that drive and a -1 vote to their two largest competitors.

When I don't purchase a drive its a -1 now for each of the 2 or 3 largest drive manufacturers. I may buy SSDs at the same pace someday but for now discretionary spending is being avoided. I would have bought more drives to upgrade existing PCs had things been different.

kal001 · Post by **kal001** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 11:59 am

This is your new "500GB-platter" drive:

And this is old 320GB-platter WD6401AALS. I don't see any diffeence:

line · Post by **line** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:52 pm

I can't see how it's going to be any different when WD readies a single platter 640GB drive in early 2010.

I certainly would love to pick one up to go with a Clarkdale build, but waiting another 8 months till the dust settles is out of the question.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 3:30 pm

While I can appreciate the discussion of WD model numbers and their business model, it really doesn't belong in my thread.

Does anyone at SPCR have first-hand experience with this drive that they can share?

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 5:32 pm

UPDATE:

kal001 wrote:This is your new "500GB-platter" drive:
[snip]
And this is old 320GB-platter WD6401AALS. I don't see any diffeence:
[snip]

kal was right. Yersys has updated their original blog posting about the WD5000AAKS-22A7B2 stating:

Major edit: Contrary to previous reports, this is not a 500GB/platter drive. It uses two 320GB platters with reduced capacity; essentially a WD6400AAKS with some space unused. The real single-platter WD5000AAKS can be found here.

The blog goes on to say that WD5000AAKS-00M9A0 is the 500GB single-platter model number.

shoebox9 · Post by **shoebox9** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 8:01 pm

Cool, thanks for posting.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 10:29 am

Dave wrote:While I can appreciate the discussion of WD model numbers and their business model, it really doesn't belong in my thread.

Does anyone at SPCR have first-hand experience with this drive that they can share?

Good question but I don't think anyone here has that drive. Furthermore, considering WD is not going to change the model number, how can you buy that item without knowing if it is a single-platter drive? The only way to know if it is a single-platter drive is by the "00M9A0" string in the model number--and how are you going to know what numbers are in the string?

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:27 pm

Hi,

The image of the [Western Digital] 500GB performance is not showing up for me.

[Corrected my reading error.]

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 2:35 pm

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hi,

The image of the Samsung 500GB F3 performance is not showing up for me.

Where are you looking? The only 500GB drive in this thread is WD.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:01 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hi,

The image of the [Western Digital] 500GB performance is not showing up for me.

[Corrected my reading error.]

Ya, that image doesn't work as inserted anymore. The host server changed that setting a couple of weeks ago. No worry though it wasn't the single platter drive anyhow. If you want to see the missing image click on this

If you want to see the actual 500GB single platter drive click on this instead.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pJZ6uImDqY8/S ... 00M9A0.png

line · Post by **line** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 7:15 pm

I have one of these, and I'd like to share my impressions. I compared it directly with my 3-platter WD10EACS (Caviar GP).

Idle noise: it is louder than the GP, and slightly higher pitched, but unobtrusive enough to merge with general fan noise.
Seek noise: it is on par with the GP, perhaps a bit sharper. Please bear in mind this is a subjective assessment, but I do not consider the seeks to be quiet! It'll take some effort with dampening to muffle them, and you'll still be able to discern them. AAM can greatly reduce seek noise on the GP, but it is unfortunately not supported on this drive. It can be enabled, but has no effect on either noise or access time.
Power consumption: at idle, it's on par with the GP (I recorded 5W AC), but the GP can unload its heads and save ~1.5W.
Heat: about the same -- not much.
Vibration: about the same -- nearly none.

Performance is good, and noticeably better than the GP, but if you have enough RAM I don't think you'll see much difference in office/browsing type of work. Booting is faster. Games will likely see a healthy boost in level loading times thanks to the drive's much improved sequential reads, but I couldn't verify that.

Resuming from S3 sleep is faster with this drive (as it would be with any other 7200rpm drive), because it takes less time to spin up (3.5s vs. 7s with the GP).

Unfortunately, I can confirm the lousy average access time (15.2ms+) we've seen in the HD Tune benchmark above.

Finally, I would like to add one note to Linux users. For some reason, I was unable to put this drive to standby using hdparm -y. I booted Ubuntu Live off a USB drive while both drives were attached to the system, but the command only worked on the GP. The Caviar Blue would try to spin down, but resumed immediately. I don't know why it behaved like that, because no volume was mounted at the time.

All in all, this is not a bad drive, but I think perhaps Samsung would be a better choice right now.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 7:32 pm

Where do you see that 15.2 access time? Both HD Tune graphs above show access times of 12.5 and 11.9--both better access times than the Samsung F3.

Oh, I found the one you were talking about in a link above.

line · Post by **line** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 7:44 pm

You can find more here:

http://forum.purepc.pl/Dyski-twarde-cdr ... try3352918
http://club.coneco.net/user/8445/review/23122/
http://www.playwares.com/xe/?document_srl=6558733

It really seems to be locked above 15ms.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:44 pm

Well, there is one thing more important than specs, the preservation of data. Even if Disk "A" outperforms disk "B", it does not mean a thing if disk "A" is not a reliable disk to hold data.

WD has a reputation that goes back quite a long time for reliability, but what about Samsung? Well, this is getting away from the subject here so I will stop now.

nstarz · Post by **nstarz** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 3:09 pm

I just got back from Fry's. It is the WD5000AAKS-00V1A0.

It is the (1) 500 GB platter. 110MB/s+

instead (2) 250 GB platter. 98MB/s.

This will replace my old 500 GB Green. 60 MB/s.

Woo! This reads faster than a Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive!!! (Average 100 MB/s)

I don't know the noise yet. I had to test it where there were servers fans blowing at max speed x.x

So chalk up 00V1A0 as a 1 platter.

It is $44 at Fry's right now if anyone is interested.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread ... st24386678

jazzcat7 · Post by **jazzcat7** » Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:46 pm

[quote="nstarz"]It is the (1) 500 GB platter. 110MB/s+

instead (2) 250 GB platter. 98MB/s.[/quote]

Your statement does not make sense at all!! Is it one platter or two? First you say it is the single platter, then you say it is two platters--huh?. Why not proofread before you post?

nstarz · Post by **nstarz** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 11:32 pm

jazzcat7 wrote:
nstarz wrote:It is the (1) 500 GB platter. 110MB/s+

instead (2) 250 GB platter. 98MB/s.

Your statement does not make sense at all!! Is it one platter or two? First you say it is the single platter, then you say it is two platters--huh?. Why not proofread before you post?

wow, old post. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I guess the word not is better than instead?

"It is the 1 platter, not the 2 platter"

Those noise seems to be loud, so I will be going back to green.