Which Western Digital 500GB drive?

I'm ready to buy an internal non-raid 500 GB SATA drive and I decided on the Western Digital brand. The only problem is that I see at least three model numbers for, what looks like, the same or similar drives. The model numbers are as follows:
WD5000KS
WD5000AAKS
WD5000KSRTL
The prices vary and the WD5000AAKS is the least expensive offered by ZipZoomFly for only $136.50.
Can anyone advise me on the differences (if any) between these models and which would be the preferred model to get for an Intel MacPro? Thanks.

My choice: Caviar SE16 WD5000KS
Found this from Google SilenPCreview forums
WD5000KS vs WD5000AAKS
I don't have any test equipment, but I do have a 5 KS's and 2 AAKS. All are at 128 AAM in rubber grommet mounting.
Subjectively:
The AAKS are only very slightly quieter than the KS's. They do have noticeably less vibration. Seek noise is the same on both. Spin up/ Spin down is quieter on the AAKS.
I usually go by StorageReview forums and reviews, and SilentPCReviews, as well as look to see if AMUG has anything to say. Also, check WDC Store
I buy direct from WDC (so I would get latest model) as well as ZZF and OWC.
Mac Pro 2GHz 4GB 10K Raptor 23" Cinema Mac OS X (10.4.8) WD RE RAID DW 4.0 APC RS1500 Vista

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Macbook with retina display + 500GB western digital hard drive

I have just bought my macbook pro with retina display and I have a Western Digital hard drive that doesnt show up when I plug it in. How can I make this work?

Just an update:
I tried to boot by MacBook into safe mode with the external plugged into the USB port and could never get past the Apple Logo boot screen. I then detached and tried to boot up my MacBook regularly and still nothing.
So today i took my MacBook and WD External Hard Drive into the genius bar (they were super cool), turned out that my MacBook hard drive had dismounted itself so I had to wipe and reinstall (not a big deal, I had everything backed up).
Then they plugged the WD into different machines running 10.6.8, 10.7.1 and 10.7.3 and the External did the same thing with everyone of the machines, proving my intial theory wrong that it was my upgrade to 10.7.3 that caused this problem.
Didn't get a chance to try Paragon's NTFS driver and at this point I'm a little gun shy. The external is still under warranty so I'm going to see if WD will just swap it out for me. Anyways, thanks for the input.

Western Digital 500GB SATA-300 HDD

Can i install a Western Digital 500GB SATA-300 Hard Drive in my imac?
Please help!
My imac is a Intel Based 17¨ 1.83 MHZ.

You can't install anything (including a new drive) inside an Intel iMac with the exception of ram, if you want to preserve the warranty. This is not to say internal drive couldn't be replaced if you are willing to open the case, or get someone to do it for you. Not clear which Intel iMac you have, your descriptive line at the bottom of your post said it was a "g5" and none of the intel iMac's are g5 based. If yours is a core 2 duo it is quite possibly under the original warranty still, but even if it is a core duo machine and you purchased Applecare you would be advised not to pry open the case.
A better approach would be to buy an external drive in an enclosure with a USB or firewire interface and use that for your drive expansion.

Mac Mini conflict with Western Digital External Drive

My Mac Mini used to work fine with my 2 TB Western Digital external drive, but now when I plug it in my desktop goes blank and the drive won't mount. I have tried it both USB and Firewire. The drive DOES work with my Powerbook G4.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Hi-
Please clarify.
What mini are you using? One of the new 2009 models?
As for the drive, is this a Firewire 800 drive or a Firewire 400 connection?
If it is a firewire connection, are you daisy chained to another firewire device? If so, in what order is the hard disk?
If it is a firewire 400 connection, what adaptor/cable are you using?
For a USB 2.0 connection, are you connected to a hub, or directly to the mini? Is the hub powered or not? Have you tried a different USB port? Same results?
Did you plug in both the USB and Firewire cables at the same time?
What is the model of your WD ext drive?
When you say that your desktop goes "blank" what exactly do you mean? The computer is still on, but there is no image on the screen?
You mention that the drive works with your Powerbook G4. By Firewire? USB?

Western Digital Raptor Drives Unmounting

I put two Western Digital Raptor drives (74 gig) in my Mac Pro and they are recognized. I've formatted them and data is stored on them. I've run scans on them to ensure that they are healthy, disk checks indicate that there is no issues. HOWEVER, when I come out of sleep Mac OSX automatically unmounts both drive automatically. I can repro this every time. Apple support has no clue. Help.
Thanks,
Ryan

My 74GB Raptor does the same exact thing on my 8-core Mac Pro. I think it's a firmware issue with the drive and since Western Digital doesn't offer firmware updates on these drives, we are SOL.
It worked fine on my Dual 2.3GHZ G5. I talked to WD today and they said to put a jumper between 5 and 6 to make the drive compatible with SATA 2 logic boards but that did nothing. It still unmounts after waking up from sleep.
We just have to buy a newer Raptor. It's really frustrating to deal with this for "enterprise" products.

Western digital hard drive worked fine on my pc. I connected it to my macbook and it began time capsule, but now I cannot see any of my files on either my mac or pc?

My Western digital hard drive worked fine on my pc. I connected it to my macbook and it began time capsule, but now I cannot see any of my files on either my mac or pc? Please help

Hi there,
Thanks for the reply.
I plugged my usb hard drive in and what looked like time capsule started automatically on my mac. The same hard drive worked perfectly on my laptop pc before, now it connects but isn't visible in my computer.
My second hard drive works perfectly well on both my pc and mac, so I am not sure what has happened to the one in question.
Regards,
Stephen

Western Digital Hard Drive Firewire Issue

Hi all,
I just bought a Western Digital Hard Drive (My Book Home Edition) 1 TB. Thing is it works for USB 2.0 but my Imac won't recognize the drive when I plug it in a 400fw. I called western digital and tried the disk utility tricks, and still nothing. The 400 input on my computer is fine, so is the cable. In fact the computer worked fine with a 500 gb Lacie a few days ago.
Any thoughts,
Thanks>

First thing is try the steps in this article by Apple:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317
Let us know what happens.
Regards,
Roger

IMac G5 with OSX 10.5.8 does not recognize my Western Digital external drive containing the majority of my music library. Is there any way to access that drive and recover the music stored there?

I have an iMac G5 with OSX 10.5.8 that does not recognize my Western Digital external drive. I had no problems with this until I upgraded to 10.5. Most of my music library is stored on the external drive. Is there any way to access it to recover the music?

How is it connected? Have you tried different port? How about logging in as a different user then trying to mount the drive.

Portege M400: Can I install a Western Digital SATA drive?

Can I install a Western Digital SATA drive in my Portege M400?
I've tried and failed.
I can copy the system resore CD to the new HD but the result is a blue-screen failure when the system boots.
I can't get a clean install of Windows XP to even start -- the HD is not recognised despite using the Toshiba SATA/RAID drivers from a floppy.
I've tried using Norton Ghost to copy an image of the existing (working) HD to the new HD but that also results in a blue-screen failure.
Is there something proprietary about the SATA?
Will the laptop only work with the original HD?
Will a replacement (larger) Toshiba HD work?
-ne

Power down the notebook and start it pressed ESC key.
On the third bios page (pg down) you find the raid configuration.
I assume you actually have already the RAID setting but it is not really written to the HDD.
At first remove the RAID and change to JOBD the password confirmation 1234.
Save settings und reboot. Enter bios again and change it from JOBD to RAID (again 1234).
After this your HDD will work fine!

HP Compaq nx6310 Doesn't Recognise Western Digital Hard Drive

Could someone please help me?
I have an HP Compaq nx6310 laptop with a corrupted 40Gb HDD. I decided it was best just to replace it.
I have purchased a Western Digital WD3200BEVT 320Gb HDD. I have the OEM OS disk which I also had to purchase from HP.
Nothing I do seems to work. The OS (WinXP Home Ed) goes through the install process, but when it tries to run for the first time it always comes up with a disk error.
I have read that HP laptops and WD drives don't get on that well. I understand that there might be some drivers somewhere, but I can't seem to find the right ones (at least the ones I'm using don't resolve the situation).
I'm really at my wits end, and am ready to try anything.
Thanks, Bill

Hi, I have the same problem, change de properties of ide/sata in your bios, the real value should be not to sata, sorrry by my english, if you need more help i tried to write more clearly

Western Digital External Drive

I am planning to go to Best Buy tonight and pick up a Western Digital My Book Premium 320 GB external hd. Does anyone have any experience with this?
I have several video tapes I have been pulling into iMovie and am quickly using space on my iMac drive, plus I'd like to back up all my photos. Since I've never used an external drive, I'd like some feedback.
I've read about backing up and cloning, but I'm not sure I care about that. I'm really just concerned about 'archiving' my data, should anything happen to the computer. My applications and computer are replaceable. That being the case, do I need to partition (I've never done that and don't know how, so would need to be 'taught').
Also, I've read about backup programs, ie. Retrospect, and I believe the drive comes with one from Western Digital. If I understand how they work, they copy designated files to the external and then periodically compare with the internal, and if there are changes, back them up. What happens to the 'original' file. What I'm really wondering is...if I am getting this as an archive, so I can remove certain photos and videos to make space on my main drive, but still want access at some point, will the program see this as a change, and discard the original from my archive?
This is probably pretty basic, but I just want to understand what I'm doing before I start. Thanks!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4)

Also, I've read about backup programs, ie. Retrospect, and I believe the drive comes with one from Western Digital. If I understand how they work, they copy designated files to the external and then periodically compare with the internal, and if there are changes, back them up. What happens to the 'original' file. What I'm really wondering is...if I am getting this as an archive, so I can remove certain photos and videos to make space on my main drive, but still want access at some point, will the program see this as a change, and discard the original from my archive?
If you use SuperDuper, which I wholeheartedly recommend, you can partition your new external drive (use Disk Utility to do this), and use one partition to clone your drive (automatic backups will reflect what's on your main drive, so if you delete media from it, it will be deleted from the backup as well), and the other partition to archive your photos and videos. The second partition will not be affected by any backing up you do with SD. I suggest getting a large firewire drive, so that you will have space to do both.
I have been using a LaCie Porsche drive for a couple of years and have had absolutely no issues with it.
Miriam

Problem using a Western Digital external drive

All,
I am using Oracle 11.2.0.1 32-bit Windows on Windows Vista Ultimate, in conjunction with McAfee Antivirus Plus.
I have issues using an external Western Digital Elements USB drive, which has the Flash Recovery Area. Please note my Windows Backups to these drive also fail with the same error 'Can't find sector'
The error stack in Oracle is following, but this can also happen during archiving
Spooling started in log file: diskerror.log
Recovery Manager11.2.0.1.0
RMAN>
Starting backup at 09-06-2011
using target database control file instead of recovery catalog
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=81 device type=DISK
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting compressed archived log backup set
channel ORA_DISK_1: specifying archived log(s) in backup set
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2532 RECID=2694 STAMP=753243442
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2533 RECID=2695 STAMP=753265574
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2534 RECID=2696 STAMP=753286016
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2535 RECID=2697 STAMP=753314521
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2536 RECID=2698 STAMP=753315118
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2537 RECID=2699 STAMP=753327717
input archived log thread=1 sequence=2538 RECID=2700 STAMP=753331024
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting piece 1 at 09-06-2011
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ORA_DISK_1 channel at 06/09/2011 08:31:51
ORA-19504: failed to create file "H:\ORACLE\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\ORCL\BACKUPSET\2011_06_09\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20110609T083149_%U_.BKP"
ORA-27044: unable to write the header block of file
OSD-04008: WriteFile()-fout. Kan niet naar bestand schrijven.
O/S-Error: (OS 27) Het station kan de aangevraagde sector niet vinden.
I have already disabled Mcafee Antivirus Plus Real life scanning, this didn't work.
I have yet to isolate this doesn't happen on other drives, but I already relocated the FRA, because a different external drive was too slow.
(and archivelog failed because of this)
I tried looking for error 27 on Technet.Microsoft.com but failed.
What should I do, apart from re-formatting the drive using my own laptop (it came pre-formatted)? I downloaded a WD tool to check the drive, and it came up with nothing.
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA

Hi Sybrand,
I just wish to please check below:
1.As Aman suggested to deinstall anti-virus program
2.free space on external hard disk
3.Path and Permission issue (if any)
4.May be filesystem of the external drive issue
5.May be issue of filesystem size limit.
5(i).FAT32 is 4GB and NTFS is 16 exabytes. FAT16 (mainly DOS) was 2GB, but some instances supported 4GB. A windows server class machine is almost 100% going to be using NTFS. Same issue on SQL Server with a local account trying to do things on an NFS. Use a domain account/NTFS.
Source:http://dbaforums.org/oracle/lofiversion/index.php?t20108.html
6.ORA-27044: unable to write the header block of file
OSD-04008: WriteFile()-fout. Kan niet naar bestand schrijven.
O/S-Error: (OS 27) Het station kan de aangevraagde sector niet vinden.
I just understood the message of ORA-27044; rest line's messages may be of your country's languages; but i think its all something related to RMAN is not able to write the file.
If you please resolve the issue by your own way/findings, i wish to request to please post the solution too.
Regards
Girish Sharma

Mid 2009 macbook pro 13" not booting from Western digital hard drive

So i've gone ahead and purchased a Western digital 2.5 inch scorpio black 750gb 7200rpm sata 16mb internal hard drive to replace my critical status 160gb standard drive in my macbook.
I have followed a guide using a usb 2.0 enclosure, with my new hard drive then carbon cloner which does allow me to clone a copy of the existing hard drive, but... when i boot up the macbook holding the option key i get the external hard drive which i can select but then i go into a os x utilities screen and does not boot straight to finder.
I get four options and one of them is disc utilities, so assuming this process in't as straightforward as i'm led to believe?
I have partitioned the new hard drive with guid for intel macs so pleae can anyone help me before i just give up and take it to my local apple store?
Thanks matt.

I have just solved this problem, with a fresh head this morning i realised that the external drive was empty and the cloning process didn't complete for some reason?
Anyhow i ran the clone again and booted externally which worked so then replaced my old hard drive with the new scorpio black and wow what a difference! I had beachballing before as my old drive was critical but now with the with the new speed 7200rpm drive its flying, very happy:-)

Unable to mount Western Digital Hard Drive after upgrade to 10.6.4

I have tried to search for a solution to my problem, but have not found anything that seems to help. So hopefully someone here can provide some guideance.
I have a Western Digital 1TB My Book that I have been using primarily for backing up photos. The drive is formatted as FAT-32 so I can work with it from my Windows XP laptop too if I need to (although my Windows laptop mostly collects dust since getting the Macbook). I have been using the feature in Adobe Lightroom to automatically backup each photo to the My Book when it is being loaded into Lightroom. I also backup the Lightroom catalogs to the My Book.
Occassionaly I would get the "beach ball of death", but not always related to being in Lightroom at the time. I recently had a beach ball incident. After a restart and using Disk Utility on the Macbook's HD, I decided to check for any updates. At this time I ended up upgrading from 10.6.3 to 10.6.4. After doing the upgrade, I can see the drive in Disk Utility, but the "My Book" volume is greyed out. Running "Repair Disk" has no effect. The "Repair Disk Permissions" buttons are greyed out. I cannot get the My Book volume to mount to be able to use the drive. If I plug the drive into my Windows XP laptop, Windows can work with it just fine. I ran the windows check disk program, which took 24 hours on 1TB, and it did not find anything. Plug back into my Macbook, and it still cannot mount the My Book volume.
I also tried to plug in a Western Digital My Passport portable 400GB drive which is powered by the USB and does not require a separate power supply cord. It has the same issue where the "My Passport" volume cannot be mounted.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to get the Macbook to mount the drive again? NOTE: I'll probably not be able to try any suggestions or respond until Monday, but if there are multiple suggestions queued up over the weekend it will give me a good starting point when I can get back to this on Monday.
Thanks,
Jim

tempest68 wrote:
The Combo Update worked. But I need to know why.
Although I have no proof or authoritative source that confirms this, using the Combo seems to account for anything missed by or changed since earlier updates.
This originally started after check for updates, and the 10.6.4 update is when the problem started. What is different about the Combo Update, ...
Pragmatically, the difference is that it just works for me. Mathematically:
Combo http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 is File Size: 887.37 MB
Incremental http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1049 is File Size: 607.21 MB
887.37 - 607.21 = 280.16 MB more in the Combo.
... and how would I have known about it had someone else not directed me to it.
If you have skipped some updates, your Mac's Software Update... (SU) will suggest Combo.
Someone else (Thanks, Defcom! ) told me about Combos years ago while I was still running 10.3.x.
BTW, many users never use or seem to need the Combo.
You seem to be an experienced user. If you have been using Macs trouble-free for a long time without updating via the Combos, you may decide not to bother with the Combo except in specific cases where you have a problem that isn't corrected by other fixes.
Is there somewhere on the website I need to check regularly in addition to the normal updates?
You can search Support Downloads for the latest Combo Updates any time.
http://support.apple.com/downloads/
You can decide when to search any way you choose, but here is my process:
• I set my Macs' SU Preferences to Check for updates: "Daily."
• I do NOT enable "Download updates automatically."
• When SU notifies me that a Mac OS update is available, I quit SU without installing anything.
• Then I repair permissions, download and install the Combo, and repair permissions again.
• I then run SU again to install any other updates that are available on the same date.
Message was edited by: EZ Jim
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4) MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11) iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9) External iSight

Yosemite: Western Digital External Drives fully supported?

I use a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 2TB via FireWire as my TimeMachine backup drive. I still run Mavericks on my iMac 27" 2012 model (Core i5, 2.9 Ghz, 8GB Ram, 1TB Fusion drive).
It had no problems with Mavericks since I updated to wd drive manager 3.1.0.14, which had been released after reports of data loss with WD Drives. There is still no update from WD for Yosemite. I hesitate to update to Yosemite since I found this post: http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/WD-4T-MyBook-studio-II-extrem ely-slow/td-p/815385. Did anyone try it?

There is a similar query here. http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/WD-My-Passport-for-Mac-1TB-an d-OS-X-Yosemite/td-p/811837
Initial reports do not look good
This had got to be one of the most debilitating bugs ever, particularly for users like me with an Air who rely on external HDDs for the majority of storage.

Which Western Digital 500GB drive?

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