WD Scorpio Black 320gb - Considering Purchase

Bint Box · 2 Jul 2010 at 10:03

Hi,

I am thinking about replacing the hard drive in a laptop with a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320gb drive with 16mb cache and 7200rpm.

Would anyone using this specific drive in a laptop please be able to give me some feedback about system performance, noise, vibration etc?

Rgds
Binty

Philtor · 2 Jul 2010 at 10:43

These are very quiet drives and very fast also. One thing you might need to check if you have an older Laptop is whether you need a BIOS update to support the drive as is the case with some older Laptops. They are great drives however.

Bint Box · 2 Jul 2010 at 12:03

Phil,

Thx for the feedback.

I think I should be OK as my laptop is running the latest BIOS which supports AHCI and the current HDD is SATA. I notice you mentioned that the drive is quiet, however, what about vibration?

Rgds
Binty

jbloggs · 2 Jul 2010 at 13:17

I have the 250GB version in my (Dell) laptop and no vibration either...

AbsenceJam · 2 Jul 2010 at 13:46

Is that all the space you need? There are newer drives with larger platters that are faster such as the 500GB Hitachi 7K500.

Philtor · 2 Jul 2010 at 16:31

Western Digital are much more reliable than Hitachi imo.

AbsenceJam · 2 Jul 2010 at 19:07

philtorrens said:
Western Digital are much more reliable than Hitachi imo.

No difference. It's all luck.

Bint Box · 2 Jul 2010 at 23:39

AbsenceJam said:
Is that all the space you need? There are newer drives with larger platters that are faster such as the 500GB Hitachi 7K500.

Yes

Bint Box · 3 Jul 2010 at 11:44

I am having second thoughts on the purchase of the WD Scorpio Black 320gb but only due to considering the WD Scorpio Blue 500gb drive.

The reason for my indecision is that I read somewhere that due to the aereal density and number of platters in the Scorpio Blue 500gb drive it performs just as well as the Scorpio Black 320gb drive.

I think that the Scorpio Blue has the 500gb over 2 platters whereas the Scorpio Black has the 320gb over 3 platters and even though the spin speeds are fster for the Scorpio Black then aerial density is more eficient in the 500gb Scorpio Blue.

Can anyone please confirm if the above is correct?

Rgds
Binty

AbsenceJam · 3 Jul 2010 at 16:56

A 500GB (or 640GB) disk will have slightly better transfer rates but it will be slower in real world use. Like I said if you want the best of both the 7K500, only quicker drive is the Seagate XT with the SSD bit.