I installed the WD10EADS on December 12, 2009. The installation was done at the same time I upgraded the computer to Windows 7. Everything performed as expected and the system worked fine until February 3, 2010. At this time I experienced delays in programs, waits of 20 seconds up to 3 minutes. In some cases Windows would display Not Responding in the title bar. In all cases the drive activity light would stay a steady red, I was never able to launch another application to test processor and memory usage, there were no events in the logs. The delays would occur in all applications including but not limited to Word 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, Quicken 2010, Turbo Tax 2009, Internet Explorer 8 and others.
I spent about 5 weeks testing different solutions, the Not Responding error will give you lots of hits on Google. Nothing would stop the pauses and delays. After much frustration I used my original hard drive that still had Windows Vista Business, it was quick to get up and running again and files copied. It ran flawlessly. At this time I used Acronis Home to copy the Vista Business to the WD10EADS. The problem started immediately, pauses and delays at frequent intervals.
At this time I had already turned off all energy saving options but did use the Hibernate button in shut down on one occasion. It was impossible to get the OS to come up. The processor fan would rev indicating it received the signal but nothing would ever come on the screen. It was necessary to reboot the computer for the startup to occur.
My theory is that the green feature of this drive, parking and power reduction is not waking up once implemented. Since the delays and Not Responding messages are random, perhaps 3-4 per hour and Hibernate is not working I believe in my machine or more likely in my drive something has stopped that wake up signal for spinning up the drive. There could a degradation of the drive also occurring as it seems slower and loads programs with more of a delay.
I have since replaced the original drive (too small) with a drive from another manufacturer and am having no problems. I plan to submit an RMA for this drive.
