# Western Digital IntelliPower hard drives



## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

Anyone using these drives? I just ordered one

Western Digital WD Green WD10EZRX 1TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"

Just curious what users think or if anyone has had issues. 

"IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance."

"Advanced Format (AF) - Technology being adopted by WD and other drive manufacturers as one of multiple ways to continue growing hard drive capacities. AF is a more efficient media format that enables increased areal densities."


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## natr0n (Jan 3, 2013)

The intellipower drives spin at around 5000 rpm to save power.

I have a few.


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## serratedauto (Jan 3, 2013)

I almost exclusively use western digital drives. I have 3x 2TB (WD20EARX and WD20EARS) and 3x 3TB (WD30EZRX and a seagate barracuda XT). I haven't had a single problem with the western digitals, whereas I've been having a lot of issues with data corruption on the seagate barracuda XT 3TB. 

My only issue with the "green" drives from western digital is that for the older WD20EARS drives I had to run the wdidle3 utility to set the spin down time to 500 seconds instead of the default 30 seconds. Other than that I love my WD drives!


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## Frag_Maniac (Jan 3, 2013)

I'm considering going with WD's opposite end of the spectrum, the 1TB Velociraptor. Sure they cost about $220, but are blazing fast and built like tanks.

I was considering a 2TB Hitachi 7K3000 at one point, which can peak at 158Mb/s sequential write speed, but then the prices went up due to the flood, and now the only affordable ones are lower grade with lesser warranty.

The way I look at it, a super fast 1TB would pay for itself in the long run. With it's faster speed it wouldn't really be a problem to keep only so many games on it and uninstall the older ones when newer ones come out.

I currently have a Seagate 1TB Barracuda, and it's speed goes down quite a bit as it fills up, which is annoying.


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## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

I'm only concern with the IntelliPower drives. Im aware of WDs history. The Red drive are  IntelliPower also. I have an opportunity to get quite a few at a good price. So I ordered one and Im going to put it threw its paces. They claim speed and power saving


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## newtekie1 (Jan 3, 2013)

They're slower than true 7200RPM drives, but they're ok for data storage.


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## xkm1948 (Jan 3, 2013)

I wish you good luck. My experience with WD so far has been a total disaster. But of course I am only talking about WD's recent quality control problems.


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## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

xkm1948 said:


> WD's recent quality control problems.



I haven't heard anything. What are you referring to?


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## xkm1948 (Jan 3, 2013)

Jetster said:


> I haven't heard anything. What are you referring to?



Check the newegg review for WD's black series drives. WD's reliability is horrible. I am experiencing it first hand right now.

One dead in just one year 3 months. They sent me a refurbished one for RMA which is getting unusual high Raw Read Error and Pending Sectors.


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## Frick (Jan 3, 2013)

xkm1948 said:


> Check the newegg review for WD's black series drives. WD's reliability is horrible. I am experiencing it first hand right now.
> 
> One dead in just one year 3 months. They sent me a refurbished one for RMA which is getting unusual high Raw Read Error and Pending Sectors.



Oh yes a couple of dozen bad reviews = bad controls. And you had one die on you? The evidence is mounting; WD officially have QC problems.


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## Jstn7477 (Jan 3, 2013)

I had 3 Seagates die last year and a Toshiba die today. All HDDs pretty much suck.


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## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

There are no black IntelliPower drives so please only IntelliPower drives


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## Widjaja (Jan 3, 2013)

I understand your concern if you are remembering the issue with the WD Greens and the head park issue which appeared to give grief for some.

I have a WD Green 2TB which has intelli power technology.
In readouts on HDTune the head park count could pose an alarm to some but this is the way the power saving series is designed.

Having whats considered a high head park count is far better than seeing a CRC error count.

All intelli-power seems to do besides 'save power' is keep the hard drive cool.
Bare in mind this is my internal storage drive which is primarily used for applications, drivers and media but does get used on a daily basis due to media.
Had this drive for over a couple of years now I think.


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## RejZoR (Jan 3, 2013)

I have less than stellar experience with Seagate and Samsung HDD's. Can't say anything bad about WD really. I have my 2TB Caviar Black for ages. Sister had a 160GB Caviar Blue in notebook which was like 5 or 6 years old. Have placed it in an enclosure as external drive which she still uses. Replaced it with another Caviar Blue, this time 500GB version. I think it's 2 years old now.

Samsung 750GB started with hiccups after just 2 years and Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB is also going funky in CrystalDiskInfo. It works ok but CDI is reporting issues with transfers, apparently electronics are going all wonky.


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## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

First test results
Western Digital WD Green WD10EZRX 1TB IntelliPower 64 MB SATA 6.0






Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0





What I was able to find out is that the IntelliPower drives are variable speed from 5200 to 7200

The IntelliPower drive was quieter also but not by much


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## Jetster (Jan 3, 2013)

Western Digital WD Green WD10EZRX 1TB IntelliPower 64 MB SATA 6.0






Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0


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## xkm1948 (Jan 3, 2013)

That is one solid drive. My WD Black 2TB only gets average 108MB/s in HDTune read tests. Seems I should have bought the green instead of the Black.


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