WD1003FZEX CAVIAR BLACK poor access time explained!

Apples and oranges.  How does your different drive pertain to this thread?

New cables, motherboards, sata ports etc. have all been tried (just read the thread).  

Just looking for WD to chime in on this and let us know what the specs are for these “performance drives” versus the blue.

Well, this is a disturbing thread. I’ve just started installing a WD1003FZEX and I’m hoping it’ll work really well, as have previous WD drives.

Once I get the drive set as my C: drive I hope I don’t find I’ve got something other than what I’ve paid for.

I’ll be watching this thread.

Signed up just for this thread.

Thank god I found this, was going crazy with my new disk not being as fast as similar WD black disks.

I have the same exact issues as the OP.

Will run HD tune and and check what the disk looks like once I get home later. Will post the results here.

If there is something odd with this disk I will be sure to return it where I bought it, no way I am accepting less performance than what should be expected.

Registered just for this thread as well. I just got a WD Caviar black (1 TB) from NewEgg and it arrived today -  the access times look like they could be better, as well as the drive not really being able to substain what I’d expect it to, any opinions on a course of action here?

HD Tune results:  http://i.imgur.com/CnRpevR.png

Registered just for this thread as well. Tiger has the  WD1003FZEX on sale until 7/13. They list the weight as 24.3 oz which is 0 .69 kg. This is the weight listed earlier in the thread as the reliable drive. Was thinking about getting this deal but after reading this thread I’m unsure. The lighter Black (blue) may show up at my door.

get it out on twitter and fb.   and return, return, return.   if sellers refuse to sell them, maybe this sneakiness will end.

I have passed this along to support.

Regards,

Just about to buy a drive today until I came across this.

I can’t believe WD are selling Blue drives as Black.

Just came back from the local computer store. The 1TB Blacks has the Blue covers with Black labeling, whereas the 2TB and 3TB has the cover with the black round stickers.

Sigh. :frowning: Can’t wait for the response from this thread. Went with another company.

i dont think that WD is doing this …  this must be some scheme 

could you please take a photo about a black that is a blue drive?

hipe you can make me understand

I don’t think WD is doing this intentionaly either.  It could be an error, or intentional design.

I didn’t take the picture because the drive was in the anti-static bag.  But it looked exactly like the pictures posted by Toinebdr.  The 1TB drive that I saw did not have the round black stickers.  BTW, drive I saw is in Bangkok, Thailand.

I would have thought that WD would physically design their line of drives to look the same across the product line.  This kind of discrepency just make their customers very confused.

I hope someone from WD pops in here and explains the physical discrepency for their 1TB Black drives.

I own several WD products, Greens, Blues, Blacks and Reds… so i’m not here to bash WD.

Yesterday I bought Black 1TB instead of Blue for the Low Access time. And what i get? Access time - 16MS.
Why I didn’t read this topic before buying:(

Nothing is installed on the drive

Well, of course it is not ok to by a black-edition hdd and end up with a blue-edition hdd in black clothes.

But does someone recognized this, also:

you still get the advantage of a  ! 5 - years guarantee ! , for an almost blue hdd.

Which a real blue hdd hasn’t !

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp?custtype=end&lang=en
shows all wd hdds gurantee times: Europe:

BLUE: xxxEZEX – 2 years gurantee // at amazon today: 1TB- WD10EZEX = €56,53

BLACK:  xxxFZEX – 5 years gurantee // at amazon today:   1TB- WD1003FZEX = €65,50

So, if 16ms of the blue performance will be good enough for you - and for the majority of the users it will I think - you’ll get a huge advantage of 3 years more gurantee for only  around 10,00€ more.

Think about it.

By the way:  the real black model: 5 years gurantee and at amazon today:

1TB- WD1002FAEX   = €84,00

Wonder why ?

Two side of the story…:wink:

I hope you are being sarcastic, otherwise WD would be misleading their customers.

The price difference isn’t just about the warranty.

Their product desctiption “Maximum performance for power computing.”  URL:  http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/

To most, 16ms isn’t good for how this drive is being marketed.

It seems that WD has stopped posting access times for their drives.  I can’t seem to find it in their spec sheets either.

Weird, since their competitor are listing it.

:cry:

If I wanted 5y warranty on blue I would have buy extended warranty from the shop (they add to this warranty in case of robbery etc) i bought this disk for less(10,04 EUR) than the difference between blue and black.

In my country:

xxxEZEX 1TB - 45 euro

xxxFZEX 1TB - 67 euro

Access time for stroke 40GB is very low, but for random not so much(same as my picture in previous post, 15 - 20ms, which is worst than my 7 year old hitachi, and same/maybe little higher than my WD greens):

http://s23.postimg.org/of4shy60r/black_stroke.png

And also In my online shop the picture of WD was the first one(in the first page) and I received the second one. Gotta write to them.

Toinebdr wrote:

Hello World,

 

My new WD1003FZEX has very poor access time (between 16 and 17 ms), despite a good transfer rate (170max, 95 min). This is a “green-like” performance, not really corresponding to a black model.

 

The other models of the serie (WD2003FZEX,WD3003FZEX,WD4003FZEX) are around 11-12ms.

 

The result of theses poor access time is slow windows loading/reactivity.

 

Has another person noticed same issue on this model?

 

Others users found the same bad performances. May be a firmware issue ?

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1446170/how-good-is-this-drive

 

 

Best regard.

 

Antoine.

 

For that build of drive, the average seek time is between 16 and 17ms.  However, it is incorrect to say that that is an indication of bad performance. 

Toinebdr wrote:

Hello,

 

I found the reason why this hard drive is slow.

 

This HDD, sold as a CAVIAR BLACK, has the “CAVIAR BLUE” specifications (Weight, aspect) instead of CAVIAR BLACK

 

 

 

The case of a REAL CAVIAR BLACK:

 

The WD Black drive is not a relabeled WD Blue. The drive can have similar manufacturing, which is why they look alike. The drives are also both 1TB/platter, Single platter with two heads so the weight will be pretty close to the same. However, the WD Black has additional features for performance and a 5-year warranty.

I don’t have complete confidence in WD’s spec sheets. ISTM that at least some of the information is just cut-and-pasted from other spec sheets without regard to its accuracy.

For example, I once found a WD spec sheet that had a “photo” of the label of a particular model, yet it was obvious that this was not a real photo. Instead it appeared to be image that had been PhotoShopped. What gave it away was that the model number had been misspelt.

One other problem is that WD’s model numbering takes no account of the suffix, at least not in the datasheets. The suffix indicates the drive’s “family”, among other things. In fact two drives with the same base model number may belong to different families, and these families may differ in the numbers of platters and heads.

Another variable is the firmware. It could very well be that WD has chosen to fix the seek performance at a conservative level and then disabled AAM in the 1TB firmware. If someone has 1TB and 2TB+ versions of this drive, then there is a way to compare their firmware modules using SeDiv for WD. In particular I would be looking for differences in MOD 02.

http://sediv2008.narod.ru/Easy3.9Password01234567890.rar

We are complaining about the performance. Do we need to have doctorate degree in hard drive technologies before purchasing from WD?

That aside, change the marketing tactics for your black 1TB drives so consumers don’t feel cheated. Or put a big disclaimer explaining about the lack of performance with your 1TB drives.

Signed up just for this thread too.

I bought one although the company I bought it from couldn’t reassure me either way which drive I was ordering. I took the risk and unfortunately got the ‘blue’ one.

Even with the knowledge of this info it’s tricky to buy this drive online as sellers either don’t have physical access to their stock (like amazon ones) or  just simply wouldn’t/can’t check the product.

The next best thing I found is to enquire about or look for the actual shipping weight (and NOT the weight in the product description).

To help future buyers I suggest we share our experience here of which sellers sell which versions.