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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Free Capacity and Final Thoughts
Capacity
When it comes to storage capacity, the WD Scorpio Black 500GB Notebook hard drive has a free capacity of 465GB as shown above.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
With a 7200 RPM drive speed, 16 MB cache, and 3 GB/s SATA interface, the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB hard drive looks
impressive on paper and had solid performance numbers in the benchmarks. Seeing 120MB read and 101MB/s write in the CrystalDiskMark sequential read/write tests was very impressive for a notebook hard drive of this price range.
The performance benchmarks also showed that the Scorpio Black 500GB
(WD3200BEKT) was faster than the Seagate Momentus 7200.4, which
is no slouch. The WD Scorpio Black 500GB notebook hard drive was slightly behind the Seagate Momentus XT in a number of the benchmarks, but when you factor in price you start to wonder if the extra performance is worth it.
The WD Scorpio Black 500GB can be purchased this very second for $67.99 shipped (w/ promo code EMCYXNP38, ends 9/29), which 48% less than the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB at $129.99 shipped.The Scorpio Black 500GB is also less than the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB hard drive, which is $76.28 shipped. When it comes to price versus performance the WD Scorpio Black 500GB drive is clearly the winner.
When it comes to traditional hard drives noise is also an issue, and the WD Scorpio Black is fairly quiet with an average acoustics rating of 25dBA at idle and 28dBA during a seek operation. This isn't much louder than the 24dBA idle and 26dBA during seek mode on the WD Scorpio Blue.
The entire Western Digital Scorpio Black notebook hard drive series comes with a 5-year warranty compared to just a 3-year warranty on the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 series. Having a five year warranty is a very nice touch on a high-performance notebook drive like this. Seagate does offer a five year warranty on their new Momentus XT hybrid drive, but at double the price and with 4GB of MLC NAND on it we would hope they match their competitors.
At the end of the day the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 2.5" laptop hard drive impressed us when it came to both pricing and performance. For under $70 shipped and with overall performance being better than the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 the Scorpio Black 500GB hard drive is hard not to recommend.
Legit Bottom Line: If you want a traditional 7200RPM Notebook hard drive the WD Scorpio Black 500GB drive offers a large storage space and the performance that users today demand at a great price point!
Questions or Comments? View this thread in our forums!
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| Review Index |
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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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