If you value silence (and your sane mind) do not buy the Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gbps (WD10EALX).

- It doesn't support AAM (WD must be mad)
- It emits an annoying and nerve-wreaking hum (and yes, it's suspended!)


I assumed the WD10EALX was similar to the WD10EALS but I was wrong. Don't fall for the same mistake.

WD should be ashamed for releasing this crap.

I am not surprised by WD's AAM removal action........ Hitachi already jumped on the bandwagon during the later period of 7K2000 manufacturing. There's also no love for 7K3000 now.

Huh, I have two of them, and they are just as quiet as the 500AAKS they replaced. They are just used for storage though.

It depends on the date of manufacture, I described it here:

http://forum.pclab.pl/topic/672826-mikr ... 0EALX-1TB/

(google translate required )

So, older drives had AAM, newer ones don't? That's even worse.

Bloody WD has gone mad.

I can't manage to enable AAM on my new WD1002FAEX either. Have they gone completely mad removing it from all series of drives??

Looks that way. And WD support is useless. They take no responsibility and insist on me returning the drive to the store, even though they wouldn't accept it (working fine) and even if they did they would just replace mine with another one of the same model, thus, same problem.

I'll just sell it to someone I think. Never any WD drives again for me. Samsungs and Seagates still work fine?

Yes. Hitachi too. At least current models.

I just bought a WD10EARS for my htpc & it doesn't support AAM. What is Western Digital thinking?
I hope Samsung doesn't do away with AAM also.

Considering Samsung sold its HDD division to Seagate, I don't think that bodes well for us.

I just bought a WD3200AAKX drive & AAM isn't supported. So WD dropped AAM from all of their drives?
Did they have to pay a licensing fee for AAM, so they decided to cut costs & get rid of AAM?

I bought this drive from a local shop for $47 & Newegg is asking $75 for it now, so I'm not too mad.

Oh well, I guess it's boycott WD from now on.

Good to know, thanks for the info. I'll stay with Seagate which has long been my preference for quietness and stability. Good luck with the return, it can be a real pain.

Well, I have had 3 or 4 Samsung 2TB HD204UI's through my hands now, all have had problems with data corruption and most had something rattling around inside them.

I noticed AAM-related comments on Newegg for WD1002FAEX, indicating AAM does work, but I just realized that they're all at least six months old--which along with what's mentioned early in this thread suddenly makes sense. This is baffling though. For the relatively few people who'd want to use it, it should be there.

I have replaced two quiet WD5000AAKB-00YSA0 with two WD10EALX-009BA0 that have a firmware date of Jan-31-2012 this past weekend, and the two WD10EALX are not louder than the WD5000AAKB that they replaced.

Having read this and other threads in SPCR forums, I had planned to return the WD10EALX if they turned out to vibrate a lot, but they didn't. As far as I can tell, my WD10EALX are not noisier than my WD5000AAKB, so I intend to keep them now. My case is a Lian Li PC-60, and both HDDs are hard mounted vertically in the case's drive cage with one empty slot of separation above, below, and between the two drives.

This is not about being quiet or not. Noise is subjective.

This is about WD dropping AAM support from their newer drives.

I thought Seagate also dropped AAM support as well. Just about the only manufacturer I haven't heard about removing AAM support is Hitachi GST, which was recently sold to WD I think? If all of this is true, it means no AAM for anyone. Time to build that separate data storage server and relocate it to your basement/closet