Legit Storage Reviews
WD Scorpio Black 500GB Notebook Hard Drive Review
| Manufacturer: | Western Digital |
| Product: | WD Scorpio Black WD5000BEKT 500GB |
| Date: | Mon, Sep 27, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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WD Scorpio Black 500GB Laptop HDD
With the notebook market growing faster than the desktop market, many consumers are finding that they don't have enough available storage space as they have filled up the drive rather quickly. If you fall into that category and are looking for a massive hard drive for your notebook, a 500GB hard drive is the sweet spot in the market right now as you can get something like the WD Scorpio Black 320GB for $69.99 or for five dollars more you can the the WD Scorpio Black 500GB for $74.99. Spending an extra five dollars gets you extra 180GB of storage space, so that one isn't a tough decision. With a 500GB hard drive you can store the following:
- Up to 100,000 10MP digital photos
- Up to 125,000 4min long 128 kbps songs (MP3)
- Up to 12,000 4 min long songs (uncompressed CD quality)
- Up to 38 hours of Digital Video (DV) at 13 GB/hr
- Up to 190 hours of DVD quality video at 2.597 GB/hr
- Up to 60 hours of HD video at 8.3 GB/hr
Today, we'll be looking at a the WD Scorpio Black WD5000BEKT 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA notebook hard drive. With a 7200 RPM drive speed, 16MB cache, and 3 GB/s SATA interface speed, the 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Black hard drive looks impressive on paper. When it comes to pricing, the WD Scorpio Black 500GB Hard Drive retails online for $74.99 shipped, which makes it $0.15 per Gigabyte. You can also get the drive on special at times as right now Newegg is doing $7 off with a promo code (EMCYXNP39) and that brings the drive down to just $67.99 shipped or $0.135 per Gigabyte. For comparison sake the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB notebook hard drive can be purchased online for just $129.99 shipped, which comes out being $0.26 per Gigabyte. The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB notebook hard drive can be purchased online for just $70.98 shipped, which comes out being $0.142 per Gigabyte. That means that while the WD Scorpio Black 500GB is actually better then the competitors when it comes to price per Gigabyte at the time of writing.
The WD Scorpio Black 500GB is sold under the part number WD5000BEKT, and is obviously part of the Black series. WD has color coded their products, which makes is easy to see who they are aimed at. Their mainstream products are called “Blue,” power-efficient drives are named “Green,” and high-performance drives are called “Black.” All of the WD Black drives spin at 7,200 RPM, utilize a SATA/300 interface with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support, and have 16 MB of cache memory. Those not needing performance like this should look at the Scorpio Blue series as they feature 5,400 RPM drive speed, 8 MB of cache memory and a slightly lower price tag of $59.99 plus shipping.
WD Scorpio Black WD5000BEKT Hard Drive Features:
- Form Factor: 2.5" x 1/8H (100mm x 69.85 x 9.5mm)
- Capacity: 500 GB
- Interface Type: Serial ATA-300
- Buffer Size: 16 MB
- Features: Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
- Seek Time: 12.0 ms (average)
- Average Latency: 4.20 ms (nominal)
- Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
- Noise Level: 25dBA at idle and 28dBA at load
- Power Use: 1.80 Watts Read/Write, 0.83 Watts at idle and 0.20 Watts Sleep/Standby
- Manufacturer Warranty: 5 year limited warranty
The WD Scorpio Black 500GB uses two 250GB platters to reach the full capacity rating of the drive, which is impressive. What is also impressive is the 12.0 ms average seek time! The back of this 2.5" notebook hard drive is pictured above and gives a better look at the SATA power connector and the SATA NCQ interface.
We always thought that the WD Scorpio Black series of hard drives would be less power efficient than the WD Scorpio Blue series since the Black series have a 7200 RPM drive speed versus the 5400 RPM found in the Blue series.. We looked at the WD specifications for the Scorpio Black 500GB (WD5000BEKT) and found that it consumes 0.83 Watts and idle and then when under full load doing read/write operations the drive consumes 1.80 Watts. We were shocked to find that WD rated the Scorpio Blue 500GB (WD5000BEVT) as consuming 0.85 Watts at idle and then under full load doing read/write the drive consumes 2.50 Watts. If this isn't a typo it means that that the black series has more cache, a higher rotational speed (lower latency), better performance, a 2 year longer warranty and better energy efficiency! The only downside would be noise levels as the Black series is 2 dBA louder during a seek mode operation. It looks like the WD Scorpio Black 500GB is a good deal and at $67.99 shipped and it looks to be well worth the extra pennies over the $67.27 shipped WD Scorpio Blue 500GB.
Now that we know the basics on the WD Scorpio Black 500GB hard drive, let's move on to the benchmarks!
Next Page - The Test System
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - WD Scorpio Black 500GB Laptop HDD
Page 2 - The Test System Page 3 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0 Page 4 - HD Tune v4.60 Page 5 - HD Tune v4.60 - Random Access Page 6 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Page 7 - CrystalDiskMark v3.0 Page 8 - ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46 Page 9 - PCMark Vantage Page 10 - Free Capacity and Final Thoughts |
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