First, this is a state of the art, newly introduced drive from WDC. In my opinion it is the best general-use drive you can get at this price point.

Prior to my purchase, I read several negative reviews from prior customers who voiced dissatisfaction with Amazon's packaging of OEM drives. Any chance of damage in shipping would indeed be reason to shop elsewhere for such a sensitive item, but on one such page of ranting and frustration I saw a note from Amazon that they had recently addressed these concerns, so I proceeded to order the drive.

Here's the latest and I hope final word on this issue: Problem solved. The drive arrives sealed in an anti-static bag, secured by two end-mounted shock absorbing plastic caddies, then double-boxed with the usual sealed air padding. The redundant packing system appears to be well-designed and the drive has been working like a champ.

So buy with confidence and kudos to Amazon for responding to customer reviews and ensuring appropriate, safe packaging for this product.

Purchased one of these to put in my new build which was built around a Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 m/b and AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black edition CPU. After reading more than several reviews that stated this drive was loud, and even more stating it was quiet, I frankly did not know what to expect in that regard, so I went ahead with my purchase having trust through my own experience with Western Digital HDD's I've owned and am still using in my back up PC. Well it's been four days since I first fired up my new build and trust me, initially I turned a close ear to give particular attention to the sounds coming from the HDD. It's not silent, other than SSD's not any HDD is silent, but it certainly runs no louder than any other HDD's I've owned. When installing the OS, a time when the HDD is continously reading/writing, my optical drive won the shouting contest by far. So I'm here sitting on the bench where all the others are proclaiming this drive is quiet. I'm not going to accuse anyone who is claiming this drive as being loud of doing something wrong, they all got defective drives? Well something is wrong here. I did not set mine up in a RAID configuration, but even if I had it shouldn't make no difference audibly. It's a Western Digital, it's fast, quiet and relating to my own experience with WD HDD's I expect longterm dependability as well. I only bought one because I wanted to check it out first before I went off to buy another, well I'm definately going to add another one of these to my build. The verdict is in...5 stars all the way.

I purchased this drive to go along with a new system that I was building. My new motherboard has SATA Rev 3 ports on it so I chose this drive to go along with it. The SATA Rev 3 - SATA 6 Gb/s controller on the motherboard is a Marvell 91xx series. I have been using this drive for a little over two months now and have been happy with its performance. I run a SSD as my main OS drive and this drive as my storage drive for games and media. Games load quickly and media plays smoothly. Copying large files from my SSD to the HD range from 213MB/s to 100MB/s depending on what it is and what I am doing. I have been happy with this drive and would recommend it to anyone for use as a system or storage drive in a PC.

Came shipped inside of two boxes as usual. Drive worked great right out of the box inside of a static guard bag as always also. I have bought many western digital black drives on amazon and have never had a problem yet. I will continue buying them for my security system dvr's that I install. I put a lot of trust behind these drives and so should you because the company and the drive stand up for its name and quality and should last a very long time. I have not seen a difference between the old style 1tb black WD drive yet but maybe when the customer searches for footage it will show up faster! Buy these drives and the other western digital black drives! They are great!