Purchase Guide – Western Digital WD5000AZLX Desktop Hard Drive – Specifications and Reviews

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Western Digital – Introduction

After making its debut in 1970, Western Digital secured its place among the leading hardware manufacturers in the world. Western Digital is known for creating solutions that allow you to create and secure your digital identity across a multitude of storage mediums from internal or external HDDs to SSDs as per your feasibility. Western Digital gives you immense control and efficiency to store what’s crucial for you most in a single trusted storage unit.

SSD or HDD – Differences

Solid-State Drives abbreviated as SSDs are known for their faster speeds and durability. Due to the absence of any mechanical phenomenon, they outperform the Hard Disk Drives – HDDs in many aspects. SSDs possess NAND flash memory as primary storage but this non-mechanical structure offers some perks as well as limitations. Firstly, you can’t store overwhelming amounts of data in SSDs like HDDs. Secondly, SSDs are not budget-friendly like HDDs. On the contrary, HDDs can sustain high volumes of data due to enormous storage capacity compared to their SSD counterparts. For example, as of February 2021, the largest HDD available for consumers offer 18 TB of storage space.

If you are not concerned about rich storage capacity, you can opt for SSDs for better transfer rates and durability. But when it comes to storing high volumes of data, HDDs can be your cup of tea.

Western Digital Desktop Hard Disk Drives

The Western Digital desktop hard drive features an extensive storage capacity ranging from 2TB to 18TB. Western Digital is famous for manufacturing hard drives that are extremely durable and are compatible with a range of devices like desktops PCs, and laptops.

Western Digital expects its state-of-the-art 18TB hard drives to be used to store video recordings filmed by 4K surveillance cameras, which can produce around 28TB of data over a period of 6 months.

Western Digital’s latest hard drive offers 10,000 RPM rotational speed with decent storage density and it well suits the workloads that demand frequent read and write operations.

The technology introduced by Western Digital is reliable and affordable compared to its competitors. Nowadays, Hard drives are linked to a motherboard via the latest SATA (Serial ATA) interface without needing a special software utility to work properly.

Difference between IDE and SATA HHDs

Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is a connectivity standard that was 1st made available in the mid-1980s. IDE was historically known for coupling storages devices like Hard Disk Drives (HDD), Solid State Drives (SSD) and CD/DVD ROMs with the PC’s motherboard.

But the downside is, IDE connectivity can only sustain transfer speeds of up to 130MB/s, possesses a parallel connector and does not support hot-plugging.

The aforementioned limitations, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment abbreviated as SATA is a connectivity standard that was 1st shown up in the early 2000s. Just like an IDE, it’s an interface used to couple hard disk drives – HDDs, Solid State Drives – SSDs, and CD/DVD ROMs to the motherboard.

SATA has remarkably faster data transfer rates that range from 150 MB/s (for SATA I) to 300MB/s for (SATA II). Being a serial interface, it sustains quick transfer speeds and features support for hot plugging. SATA interfaces are the latest connectivity interfaces that are preferred over their conventional IDE counterparts for their significantly high transfer rates.

Difference between Desktop and Laptop Hard drives

Historically, the hard disk drive – HDDs in desktop computers used to be 5.25 inches in size. But with the passage of time and skyrocketing venture of technology, HDDs are downsized to 3.5 inches. Nowadays, a desktop hard drive (3.5 inches in size) has multiple platters (the number depends upon size and storage density). The presence of different mechanical parts and platters make HDDs very heavy and immobile.

Its laptop counterparts are 2.5 inches in size and consume less energy. Keeping a thin and smaller laptop casing in mind, the hard disk drives specifically to be used in laptops are designed very lean in size.

The bigger desktop HDDs have some perks. The bulky size of 3.5 inches in the desktop HDD incorporates more platters leading to more storage space. Modern desktop hard drives feature improved storage density that allows them to contain 1TB to 18TB of data in comparatively less area or volume.

Whereas, laptop hard drives with 2.5-inch dimensions have a limited number of platters, which in turn compromise the storage space. Due to the laptop’s compact dimensions, the storage capacity of the laptop hard drives cannot exceed the storage capacity of the desktop hard drives.

Does Rotational Speed matter?

In Desktop hard drives, read/write operations mainly rely on a disc’s rotational speed, which is measured in rotations per minute (RPM). In today’s time, the most readily available and widely used desktop HDDs feature rotational speeds of 5400 to 7200 RPM, although there are some high-performing and faster hard drives that can attain the speed up to 10000 RPM. Keep in mind, high rotation speeds come amidst a little bit of noise.

For a desktop computer, if you want to acquire a device with quiet as well as fast read/write operations, 7200RPM is a category to opt for. In the case of laptops, the rotational speed is usually restricted to 5400 RPM because of its smaller size of 2.5-inches.

How does a Desktop Hard Drive work?

As we have discussed, Hard disk drives possess mechanical components consisting of rotating disks and a hovering read/write head. whenever the operating system tends to read any file, the hard disk searches the designated disk and tracks (where a required file or information is stored) and moves the read/write head above it.

Data write operations are fueled by sending electric pulses with the help of a device present in the magnetic head. Upon completion of 1st write operation, the head hovers to another location and the cycle continues.

Decent Capacity and Value to Money Western Digital HDD modules

To scale up your desktop hard drive with a faster and decent capacity HDD, Western Digital offers a range of products that support the SATA interface such as WD5000AZLX-00ZR6A0. The said product features 500GB of storage space can be a game-changer when it comes to high performance.  WD5000AZLX-00ZR6A0 features a 3.5-inch size, SATA connectivity, and rotational speed of 7200 RPM. All these features make this product one of the best hard drives available in the market.

End Words

Western Digital is one of the top tech companies that produce storage devices, both flash and disk. With one of its best-selling products WD5000AZLX-00ZR6A0 SATA HDD, you can experience a noteworthy boost in your storage performance and secure massive amounts of data without any second thought.