I bought a Black to use in my music studio - I bought it for performance to install in a custom built quiet PC (Fractal Design R3 case). My PC was completely silent until I started using the Black.  I researched forums to find out that those who bought their Blacks a year or so ago were fortunate enough to be able to enable AAM and reduce the noise to a satisfactory level without affecting performance too much - but the one I bought was recently manufactured and has been "locked" into performance mode at the factory.

Dear WD, I was a customer that had left you for Seagate years ago and had decided to come back and try out your product. I am VERY dissappointed that you have not yet taken action to release a firmware update that will re-enable AAM. The noise issue is getting lots of negative attention to WD on Newegg. You guys should really fix it.

Personally, if its resolved with a firmware update, I'll be buying again from WD. Otherwise, Im going back to Seagate.

Since we are already talking of hybrids, i think it is more desirable if a hard disk drive can give you an option whether to choose an electronic solid state drive (SSD) or a hard disk drive (HDD) from setting up an operating system to saving your files on a computer. In this way you can have the best of both the stability of a hard disk drive and the speed of a solid state drive on your computer.