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    320gb Western Digital Scorpio Blue (5400rpm) to Scorpio Black (7200rpm)

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by duke_stix, May 5, 2009.

  1. duke_stix

    duke_stix Notebook Guru

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    Hi all

    I am currently running a western digital scorpio blue drive in my vostro 1510 and I am thinking about upgrading the hard drive to a western digital scorpio black drive

    the reason for the upgrade is because i require an external hard drive, i already have the external sata enclosure, just require a hard drive and i was thinking about upgrading my main drive to a 7200rpm one and relegate the scorpio blue to the caddy

    I was wondering what experiences people have had with the Scorpio Black drive

    or can someone reccomend a suitable 320gb+ 7200rpm hard drive

    many thanks
     
    duke_stix, May 5, 2009
    #1
  2. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    Phil, May 5, 2009
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  3. triturbo

    triturbo Long live 16:10 and MXM-B

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    triturbo, May 5, 2009
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  4. goofball

    goofball Notebook Deity

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    Close in transfer but not in access time, and that is really where you feel the speed increase, imo.
     
    goofball, May 5, 2009
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  5. aidil

    aidil Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm one of those who have upgraded 320GB WD Blue inside their Dell to WD Black. I moved the WD3200BEVT to the 2nd HDD bay and installed WD3200BJKT (the one with Free-Fall Sensor) as primary HDD.

    The speed jump in terms of benchmark software is noticeable. But for me, lower noise of a 7200RPM drive is what impresses me most. WD3200BJKT is very quiet compared to WD3200BEVT.

    [​IMG]
    WD Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT: 320GB, 5400RPM, 8MB Cache


    [​IMG]
    WD Scorpio Black WD3200BJKT: 320GB, 7200RPM, 16MB Cache, Free-Fall Sensor


    About the noise, don't know why WD Black WD3200BEKT (the one without FFS) seems to be noisier, although it could be resolved through software. Read this for more discussion on this:
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4802214#post4802214
     
    aidil, May 5, 2009
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  6. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Wow! That seems a good amount faster than the 5400RPM version! Also, though you didn't post HDTune, I assume the latency dropped around 2ms too?
     
    sgogeta4, May 5, 2009
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  7. aidil

    aidil Notebook Evangelist

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    I've posted the HD Tune comparison version also on the same thread:
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4776608#post4776608

    Note: I didn't disable any background programs such as antivirus or kill the network while benchmarking. Both drives are identical as the new one (WD3200BJKT) is a clone copy of the old one (WD3200BEVT) using Acronis.
     
    aidil, May 5, 2009
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  8. duke_stix

    duke_stix Notebook Guru

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    Hi there

    Many thanks for your replies good people of NBR!

    I've decided to just pay the extra cash and go for the WD3200BJKT (w/FreeFall sensor)

    so that should be arriving soon and will know for definite then!

    seems promising

    the main reason that im upgrading it to be honest is simply because in my old ibm x22 i upgraded the drive from a 40gb 5400rpm to a 7200rpm drive and the speed increase was noticeable!

    with my current setup i can notice a little lag when im doing heavy transfers across my home network, although this may just be due to the network!

    ah well, will report back once ive got the drive and i've been able to do some tests on it

    cheers all
     
    duke_stix, May 6, 2009
    #8