Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT
by Western Digital
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT
Customer Review: Not My First Choice, But Willing to Give WD Another Try
Summary: 5 Stars
Bottom-Line: With the "WD Scorpio Blue 320GB 2.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive" my laptop now has a new lease on life.
Can one ever have enough storage space? I say no, one can always find a use for space and with the prices for hard drive the only thing that seems to be dropping these days, it's easy to grab an affordable external hard drive for not a lot of green.
So when my HP Pavilion dv9000 started to run out of space (down to 17GB on a 120GB hard drive) I decided to purchase a new 2.5" SATA internal hard drive. But it wasn't just a space issue, I also wanted to install Microsoft Windows 7 on the laptop and 17GB of space wasn't going to cut it; the OS needs at least 20GB to conduct its business.
My first choice for a new 2.5" SATA hard drive was Seagate, but I wanted at least a 320GB HHD, but the company didn't offer up anything at the price point I wanted to pay. So reluctantly I started looking at Western Digital (WD) drives. (I say reluctantly because my track record with WD drives has not been the best, in fact every one I've ever owned has crashed! But, WD offered up the drive I wanted for a really affordable price, so I went for it and purchased the "Scorpio Blue 320GB 2.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive."
The Drive
The "WD Scorpio Blue 320GB 2.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive" is an Ultra-fast 3 Gb/s SATA interface drive designed for notebook computers. I purchased the drive bare bones from Buy.com for a neat little price of $64.99.
I read a multitude of reviews on-line about the drive before I purchased it and all were positive, so I felt somewhat comfortable purchasing the drive despite my prior bad luck with Western Digital drives.
Installation
I bought the "WD Scorpio Blue 320GB 2.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive" intending to place it in the second drive bay of my HP Pavilion dv9000, but it didn't quite work out that way. The incumbent 120GB Fujitsu drive is 1.5 GB/s while the WD drive is 3.0 GB/s.
The two are not compatible with the Fujitsu as the primary boot drive, so after a few hours trying to get the WD to play with the Fujitsu I decided to switch the drives around using the WD as the primary boot drive and the Fujitsu as the secondary drive. That worked, so I installed Windows 7 and now my HP Pavilion dv9000 has two operational drives! Sweet!
Use
This drive is quiet utilizing WD's exclusive Whisper-Drive technology that combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield what Western Digital claims is one of the "quietest 2.5-inch internal hard drives on the market." And fast, 3.0 GB/s fast. And now I have a brand new hard drive with a brand new OS installed. I was going to purchase a new notebook computer, but now I have extended the life of the HP dv9000 for at least another 2 years.
Conclusion
With the "WD Scorpio Blue 320GB 2.5" SATA Internal Hard Drive" my laptop now has a new lease on life. The drive is quiet, fast, and I hope reliable. And now I have plenty of space to run Windows 7 and applications, as well as store music and video files.
Western Digital also offers the "Scorpio Blue Internal HHD" in the following drive capacities:
o 80GB
o 120GB
o 160GB
o 250GB
o 320GB
o 400GB
o 500GB
o 640GB
o 750GB
o 1.0TB
Customer Review: PS3 upgrade and then some...
Summary: 5 Stars
Hi all... as some of the other reviewers have also done, I bought this SATA drive specifically to upgrade my 80GB PS3. And I have to say that although many people have said it is an "overkill" to go larger than 250 or even 320, after installing it a few weeks ago and putting everything from personal pics to ripped mp3s, I now have the ultimate 1-stop shop for almost all of my multimedia needs.
Having a pretty decent TV and home theater set-up, I transferred my ENTIRE library of music to my PS3 and can now play it through the system, view all of my personal pics and videos, and get just as many downloaded videos or demos from the Playstation store as I want without worrying about running out of space.
For the price (just over $100 at the time of purchase) you can't get a better upgrade deal anywhere. I'm sure the price will go down when technology gets better and bigger drives are released. But for now, this is a steal.
The install/swap was VERY easy... needed only a couple basic tools and some table space. It took about 10 or 15 minutes to do the swap, but the whole back-up and restore took me about 30-45 minutes each. It was all worth the wait though.
After formatting and restoring my other system data, it showed I had around 400 GB to work with. I have since moved over about 100GB of media files and have plenty of room for all of the future add-ons, demos, videos, whatever else I may want to transfer from my computer and an endless number of Guitar Hero and Rock Band track packs and tunes! :)
What did I do with my 80GB drive that used to be in my PS3? I went to an electronics store and bought an aluminum USB casing for the HD (about $14) and now use it as an extra backup! Works like a charm... it's small, compact and I'll take that with me when I travel rather than my 2GB USB flash drive.
People who want to upgrade may want to look around on the web for video tutorials to help with the upgrade process. That's what I did and it helped a lot.
I would like to also add, for those of you who might not be sure or haven't tried it yet, mp3 or wma audio files will work on the PS3 and most avi movies work too. I don't have the complete list handy of compatible files that work but as I mentioned before, this is now my ultimate media player, right in my living room. There's only a couple visualizers on the system by default, but it's great if you have people over and want to play some music. Rather than going through the trouble to hook up an iPod to your system, you can just play the music from the PS3 or create playlists. It's so simple and convenient and a great alternative to using multiple devices in your system.
I hope this review helps. I installed it about 3 weeks ago and have had no issues and all has worked smoothly. I highly recommend this for all PS3 users out there. For those of you that want to upgrade your PS3 hard drive, even if you think 500 is too much, trust me when I say - It's worth every byte! :)
Customer Review: Great on All Levels
Summary: 5 Stars
This HD was used to upgrade my OEM 80 GB PS3 Hard Drive. The installation process was quite simple and the PS3 unit performs much better with this Hard Drive than it did with the OEM 80 GB Seagate.
The PS3 unit now runs much quiter (which also means that it runs much cooler as the only noise you hear while gaming is the cooling fan) and the Hard Disk read/write speed is exponentially quicker. I would highly recommend this Hard Drive to anyone who owns a non-slimline PS3 as it will greatly increase the performance of your unit (which on the old CECHE01-xx units is a VERY important thing.These PS3 Units do tend to malfunction [YLOD] if they run at warmer temperatures for excessive periods of time]. In addition to providing you with more free space than you will even be able to use during the lifespan of your PS3 unit, the fact that they run much cooler as the space of the Hard Disk is increased is something which is of the utmost importance for PS3 owners who wish to get the longest possible lifespan of their PS3 unit.
The Hard Drive arrived very quickly (two full days before the anticipated ship date that I was given) and was secured well in a sealed, anti-static pouch. The pouch was fully secured between two packing sleeves which kept the drive securely elevated so that it would not vibrate or take any blows during the shipping process.
The one final recommendation I would like to make to anyone who uses this to upgrade a PS3 is to make sure that you know EXACTLY how well a phillips-head screwdriver should fit a screwhead. I am somebody who has worked in repair for my entire life, so for me this was not an issue. BUT, if you have limited experience in this department then you may wish to consider having a more mechanical acquaintance perform the disk removal and install for you...because if the screws which secure the OEM Hard Drive are stripped to the point of where they may not be removed, than you will have a large problem on your hands which even require you to send your PS3 Unit directly to Sony for a repair which will be more expensive than it should be.
Customer Review: Good Value in a High Capacity 2.5" Notebook Computer Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
My 3 1/2-year-old Dell notebook computer was running out of space on the 120GB Toshiba hard drive that came installed on it. There were fewer than 5GB remaining. After contacting Dell's technical support team to determine if my computer's BIOS would recognize the capacity of a larger drive, I learned that 500GB was the largest that my notebook computer would accommodate. That narrowed down my choices considerably. Amazon's price for this WD drive was the best I could find. Most of the reviews for this drive were positive, both on Amazon and on other Websites, so I ordered one along with an external USB SATA hard-drive enclosure.
When this WD drive arrived, I mounted it in the enclosure, plugged it into a USB port on my notebook computer and used Acronis True Image Home to clone the data from my existing hard drive to my new drive. Once the cloning job was complete, I removed the old hard drive from my notebook computer and replaced it with this new one. I was delighted that my computer instantly recognized the new drive and booted normally. There were three differences that I immediately noticed:
1. Instead of less than 5GB of free hard-drive space, I now have more than 344GB of free space.
2. My computer now opens and saves files noticably faster.
3. Projected battery life has been extended about 15 minutes from 4:30 to 4:45.
In summary, for a much smaller investment than replacing my notebook computer, I was able to considerably extend its useful life and improve its performance too. After mounting my old Toshiba 120GB hard drive in my external USB enclosure and formatting it, I now have a handy backup drive as well. My new Western Digital 500GB 2.5" hard drive has not only met but exceeded my expectations both with its performance and its price.
Customer Review: Great upgrade for the MacBook Aluminum...
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the new MacBook Aluminum (13" - Late 2008), with the 160GB hard drive, which quickly fell short to my storage demands. While on the market for an upgrade hard drive, I came across the WD 500GB Scorpio Blue and hesitant at first (I could not find anywhere a post which would guarantee that it would work with my MB), I decided to go for it. Upon receiving my hard drive, I ran the Time Machine on my MB, switched the OEM hard drive for this beauty (it took about 15 mins.), installed Leopard from the DVD that came with my MB, and then restored from the most recent TM backup (installing the OS took about 10 mins, and restoring the backup took about 2 hrs - it was a 140GB backup!). So far, I've had no problems whatsoever using the drive. It is very quiet, does not heat up excesively (comparable actually to the original hard drive), and now I have a MB with a 500GB drive!!!
I am extremely satisfied with this drive, and would definitely recomend it to any MB/MBPro owner who wants to upgrade the hard drive.
Update: July 19th, 2010
I've been using this hard drive for over a year and a half now, without any problems whatsoever. Quite drive, no difference in power consumption, performs great! Actually, I am thinking about replacing it with the new 1TB Scorpio, especially because my digital movie collection is growing really fast (I'm ripping my own DVD's so I can view them in my LCD TV, my iPhone, my iPod or my MBP). Great drives, and to be honest, I've never heard of any freezing, beach balls, or any other problems before or after I bought my drive. Great product...still give it 5 stars!