[conspire] Reliable 1.5TB SATA drives?

[Mark S Bilk]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 06:17:11AM -0400, Luke S Crawford wrote:
>The interesting thing I found, though, was that western digital /also/
>has 5 year warranties, at least on it's 'black' product  (I think all the
>wd drives I've used have either been re3 or 'black')
>http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=733
>
>Now, I've lost a /whole lot/ of those 1.5tb seagate baracudas with 5 year
>warranties.  the quality difference between those and the western digital
>raid edition drives is huge.  (of course, at the price difference, you'd
>expect that.)  

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=733

Luke, that is the WD Caviar Black 2TB drive WD2001FASS.  Are those 
what you're referring to as "raid edition drives" (with the huge 
improvement of quality over the Seagate baracudas) ?

Do you consider this the most reliable 1.5TB+ drive I can get?

Do they come safely padded in retail boxes or only bare in plastic
bags?

Is there any place around here I could buy them with a reasonable 
assurance that they haven't been mishandled?

Apparently a good price for them is $170.  Frys has them for $190
(at least on their website).

  Mark