WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 VS. WD1002FAEX

[plug-in]

I bought some 1TB Caviar Black drives back in April of 2011 on Amazon. The UPC label on them has WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0. I went to reorder more, but the price has more than doubled, which makes me wonder if these are the same drives even though amazon says they are per a email from support. Amazon's pictures show a UPC label with "WD1002FAEX" and not "WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0" - and the title on Amazon now includes "SATA III".

1. What is the difference between these numbers?

2. Have these drives been updated since April of last year to now work with SATA III? When I bought them I frankly do not recall them as being rated for SATA III, just SATA I & II.

3. Assuming these drives have been updated to SATA III will they work with my firmtek hd card and my Startech hd dock that were not designed with SATA III in mind? I am not expecting them to work at SATA III speeds - I just want to make sure they work.

4. Even if they do work, I will have to now pay extra for the SATA III update, even though I have no need for it, so where can I buy SATA II Caviar Black 1TB 64MB Cache HDs so as not to pay for an unusefull feature (SATA III)?

[DavidSucesso]

im a normal user like you, just helping the moderators in this forum... im not tring to hide anything

you unfortunately aren't paying  for sata III drives, you are paying because of the floods that submerged some parts of the WD facilities at Thailand and stop completely the factory  at least for several weeks...

http://www.wdc.com/en/company/thailandupdates/

This sata 3 drive should work without any kinds of problems in the sata 2 mode... i dont have one to test  but sata 3 was made retro-compatible

best regards

david