I have a SSD for my main drive but needed more space and bought a WD black for more storage and backup. I'm actually really surprised at how fast it is. Transfers were hitting 250MB/s or so. It's really responsive too. It's loud though which is annoying. You really notice it a lot after having an SSD for a while.
2 TB for $150 is still a great buy. The thing is it's fine for what I'm doing. I stuck steam on it and some back up stuff. I don't even really care for a SSD for that. Sure it would be nice but I don't feel I need to have one and really don't need to lose a ton of money for it.
See that's really interesting! As I shared in my original post, after I bought this drive I am writing from, I went to Newegg where there are like 350 reviews, mostly very good, but some saying it's so noisy I wanted to blow my brains out. Also, on Amazon.
So, I got a little nervous, esp cause this private vendor don accept returns. But, when it arrived and I hooked it up, it was, and remains, quiet like a mouse! And, at first, of course, the box was open.
Maybe I just got lucky. But I can now say from first hand experience, they are not ALL noisy, and I am sorry yours is one of the ones that is.
And, so far I have only bought two NEW HDDS for myself, that is. Others I get not new, after choosing carefully and also emailing a vendor...on ebay. And, one of the two new ones, a decent but not black WD I got on Newegg.....arrived with so many bad sectors its own diagnostics could not count them!
I RMAed, it, also spoke with WD who told me they can only test randomly, and would send me a fully tested replacement. And they did.
I think the time when we could cont on the health of a new drive, esp given "Globalization" (read: the sky's the limit re exploiting cheap labor and and so making it cheaper domestically)....is long gone.