Scorpio black for desktop?

Curunen · 11 Jun 2011 at 22:58

In the interest of quietness, and fewer/smaller components, I'm quite keen on using only 2.5" hard drives in my machine (specs in sig).

Looking at the 500GB WD5000BPKT, because the 750GB is a little too expensive, and the 320GB will be a little small for the way I like to partition - that being 60GB for OS, 120GB for steam, and the rest for storage.

At the moment using a 500GB samsung F3, which is a fantastic drive without a doubt. I imagine the WD5000BPKT will be slightly slower, but if it's only marginal then I can live with it.

Any thoughts?

gropingmantis · 12 Jun 2011 at 00:14

I have the 500GB Scorpio black and I am impressed. Its only slightly slower than my 1TB Caviar Black but it is soooo much quieter.

Curunen · 12 Jun 2011 at 00:18

^Ah the Q06 man!

Good to know, looks like I'll just go for it then.

AbsenceJam · 12 Jun 2011 at 11:47

You might actually find a laptop drive to be more annoying as they tend to park the heads often. Some of the other power saving features and and such can mean performance isn't really up to the standard of 3.5" disks even outside of transfer rates which are significantly lower.

I would seriously suggest getting an SSD, it is so worth it. If not then look a the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive as it's the fastest drive in real world use.

If you were to get a 2.5" mechanical only disk then you've got the Velociraptors to look at first, and then if you pass them then the 750GB Seagate Momentus 7200.5, 640GB Samsung MP4, 500GB Hitachi 7K500 and others are faster than the WD Black. The 250GB platter disks are a good bit slower than an F3 the 7200.5 gets closest.

gropingmantis · 12 Jun 2011 at 12:58

Im not sure about parking heads. My Scorpio has my OS, programs and media files on and the Caviar now only has games (but previously had the OS and programs on) and I have noticed no slowdown whatsoever. A run of ATTO showed it was running at 100MBs Read and Write vs the 120MBs of the Caviar so its not that significant.

Curunen · 12 Jun 2011 at 13:36

Hmm, certainly worth considering.

The reason I don't want to get an SSD (apart from the price/capacity) is that I like to have one drive for everything important (partitioned in three), and one drive as a temporary storage space.
Just a personal preference with having minimal number of components in a build.

In any case, I thought the 750GB black (WD7500BPKT) was the fastest 2.5" drive, excluding velociraptors and hybrid drives?