Western Digital Scorpio Black WD1600BEKT 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5″ Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Replaced a 5400 RPM laptop drive and it is amazing how fast the Scorpio drives are. I wish I had done this sooner.

Cons: Nothing at this time.

Pros: – Faster than 5400RPM Drive
– Quiet
– Easy to install

Cons: – None

Overall Review: I got this drive to replace my burgeoning 40GB drive in my PS3. It took me about 2 hours (including backup and restore) to complete the swap. It works great. Much faster.

Pros: Fast (on Performance Test 6.1 in eSATA setup, I get 76MB/s on both read AND write tests).

Cons: Noisy (reason for 4 eggs). Depending on notebook bios, you may not see speed benefits compared to cheaper/slower drives (speed limited to 53MB/s internally). See below.

Overall Review: On my Dell XPS m1530, no matter which hard drive mode is selected (bypass, quiet, performance), the hard drive speed gets limited to about 53MB/s on both read and write. Using eSATA via expresscard on the same laptop, I get 76MB/s on both read and write. The neutered speed is the same as my stock hard drive (which gets about 60MB/s on eSATA). So, test out your laptop and compare internal vs esata speeds before buying new hard drives. In this case, I ended up with a drive with the same internal speed as the stock hard drive that’s much noisier. I’m going to swap back out this hard drive with the stock hard drive and use it as eSATA. Again, not a fault of the drive itself.

Pros: Runs quiet, cool, and fast. Not a single bad sector upon doing multiple diagnostic tests. Good cache for a laptop drive. I am pleased once again with a WD hard drive.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Bought this to replace a 6 year old hard drive on my Linux laptop. At the first sign of the drive beginning to fail, I immediately powered off the machine and ordered a new drive (this one) from NewEgg.

Upon receiving the package, I ran all supported SMART tests (smartctl) and badblocks from a Linux live CD, as well as another utility. Not a single bad sector or error was found. Afterwards, with the same live CD, I dd’ed the entire old drive to the new drive, and now I’m back in business, right where I left off! Magic!

Man, I love Linux. And NewEgg too! And Western Digital, of course!

Pros: This drive runs circles around any drive included with a new laptop (excluding SSD of course). This upgraded my Compaq CQ50 from a Seagate 5400RPM 8MB Cache to this. Huge performance boost which is needed with vista. Rated a 4.8 on the experience index.

Cons: Not really a con considering the support, but the drive died after 3 1/2 years of non stop use.

This drive does use a lot of power, With the seagate drive i had around 2.5 hours on high performance, with this i get around an hour and 45 minutes. It’s a sacrifice to pay for a fast hard drive though.

Overall Review: This drive died as stated above, and it has a 5 yr warranty on it. I was pretty skeptical on sending it in to WD cause most manufacturers get your item and take weeks to months to send it back out to you. I RMA’d the drive in minutes on their website, printed the information and taped on the box. Within 2 days i got a bran new hard drive in the mail! TWO DAYS! I was shocked. To top it off they didnt send me a 160GB they sent me a 320GB!

Note: DO NOT ship your dead drive to WD incorrectly packaged, they warn you right on the RMA form if it is not in a Anti-Static bag and is securely packaged to prevent any damage from shipping they will send it back and void your warranty. A small box with memory foam is what i used, stuffed with packing peanuts or paper can work too.

Pros: I upgraded my PS3 HDD. My PS3 came with 40gb seagate 5400rpm.. Ihad no problems installing this HDD and noiticed 4-7 seconds PS3 bootup and game loadup..

Cons: none

Pros: very fast , loaded vista in less than 10 min

Cons: none

Pros: Nice improvement in speed.

5 year warranty

WD Quality is hard to beat.

Near silent operation even when seeking. Actually, I have never heard it but my room is not totally silent so it could be making a little noise but I know it’s much quieter than the Hitachi it replaced.

No vibration at all.

Does not run hot

Exactly what I was expecting, maybe a little more.

Cons: None. I hope it holds up like my other WD drives.

Overall Review: My Dell E1705 had a Hitachi 80g 7200RPM drive with an 8meg cache. It did fairly well but I wanted a bit more space and hoped I would see a performance boost as well with the upgrade.

Vista32 scored the 7200 RPM Hitachi at 4.8 and the WD 7200 with 16 meg cache at 5.7 with a cloned OS – same files as I had on the Hitachi. Nothing tweaked or changed.

I used Acronis True Image 11 to clone the Hitachi to the WD and it booted perfectly. All partitions including the OS, recovery, and a hidden partition were cloned with no problem.

Some claim the drive runs hot. Mine averages 36C according to Speedfan which is not hot at all. However, if used in a warm climate or outdoors in the summer I’m sure it will hit 40C but that still isn’t a deal breaker.

It does make an occasional clicking noise but that’s the head parking after being idle. At least that’s what mine does. I’ve heard the “click of death” and this isn’t it.

The best news of all is that Vista boots noticeably faster