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WD Caviar Green-is this a piece of junk?

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Florin

Registered
Joined
Jan 10, 2012
Hi there. I'm awfully deceived with my brand new HHD Western Digital Caviar Green, model WD15EARS-00Z5B1, 1,5 Tb, (supposed to be) SATA III, 6Gb/s, 64 Mb cache. This stuff is a real turtle, it only transfer or copy the files at 25 - 30 Mb/s. I'm really sleeping whenever I must move some 50 - 100 Gb folders from one partition to other. Takes 30-40 minutes to move the files. It's set like IDE into my mobo's updated bios, an ASUS M5A99x EVO (AM3+ series).
I was looking in the net and see no good hope, for instance here: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WDC-WD15EARS-00Z5B1-awful-performance/m-p/5242
The driver (Windows 7 x64 dixit) is 2006!!! and there is no available firmware. What a mess, WD. How can you offer this drive as a new SATA III-6Mb/s if it's worst than the old oness?
My system is fine and brand new, mounted it last week:
1. Mothreboard: ASUS M5A99X EVO with updated bios
2. AMD Phenom x4 975 OCed 3943 MHz with a Zalman CNPS9700 LED cooler.
3. 16 Gb DDR3 1666 Corsair Vengeance low profile, working at 1460MHz
4. Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950OC, 1 Gb DDR5 graphic card
5. WD Caviar 1,5 Tb, 6GB/s, 64 Mb cache hard drive
6. LG Bluray/DVD/CD burner
7. Thermaltake Thoughpower XT 775W PSU
8. Samsung Syncmaster LCD 23", 1920 x 1080 LCD monitor.

Here you have a capture of HD Tune Pro tests.
I'm waiting for your comments and thank you.
I'm very disappointed about this WD.
Best regards,
Florin
 

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I've had 2 WD Green drives that had raw read error rates through the roof, due to failing heads it was having trouble reading the disk left and right. I simply RMA'd both drives and got proper working ones back. Try popping the drive in another rig and doing hd tune again.
 
The numbers in HDTune look about right. The performance that you are reporting is not. I would try ziggo's suggestion of trying it in another computer, or at very least a different port and data cable. Failing that, RMA the drive. Faulty equipment gets made and you just got unlucky. It happens with all manufacturers. They aren't "deceiving" you.
 
Hi there. Thank you for answering.
Well, I'll try to test the SATA cables in different ports. I'm using the Asus' original 6Mb/s cables from the mobo's box. Seems to be high quality, very nice done. This mobo has x6 SATA 6Gb/s ports + x2 3Gb/s. I've upgraded the bios the same day of the system mounting. Of course I´ve placed so far the connection into the #1.
The bad news about the RMA is I'm living in Venezuela, bought this online from Amazon.com, Miami, so I'm fried with this option. Lucky me:bang head.
This "masterpiece" HHD cost was US$81°° on September, now is some $160°°.
Here is another HD Tune test I did this morning.
Regards
 

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Even quality components can be made with faults. Try another cable and SATA port.
 
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