vemartin's Full Review: Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 2.5 Mobile - SATA-30...
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 MicrosoftWindows 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 InternalHard Drive.
The Drive
The WDScorpio Blue 320GB 2.5” SATA InternalHard 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 WDScorpio Blue 320GB 2.5” SATA InternalHard 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 HPdv9000 for at least another 2 years.
Conclusion
With the WDScorpio Blue 320GB 2.5” SATA InternalHard 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
Features& Specifications
Model No.WD3200BEVT Capacity (Native) – 320GB Capacity (Formatted NTFS) – 298GB Compatibility - PC, Mac Interface Type - Hi-Speed SATA 3.0GB/s Connector – Serial ATA Rotational Speed - 5400 RPM Average Seek Time - 12.0 ms Cache - 8MB Manufacturer Warranty - 2 year limited warranty
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