WD Scorpio Black 750GB vs WD Scorpio Black 500GB vs Momentus XT 500GB

Hi everyone,

So my brand new Sony Vaio SB is coming in with a 320GB 5400RPM HDD and I'm looking for a relatively affordable replacement so around $100 would be nice. If I had the money I would go SSD but so far these three drives are the best mechanical HDDs you can get.

What I want from the 500GB and 750GB Scorpio Black and Momentus XT 500GB would be best battery life, lowest noise/vibration, and which one has the best performance. From some other threads some people have stated that the Scorpio Black's outperform the Momentus XT?

 

Hybrid drive seems like a gamble sometimes but less-so lately. I have one and it is GREAT. 15-20 second boot time and multitasking is noticeably better than my old 5400rpm 320GB HDD that I got from Sony.

I haven't seen benchmarks for th eother drives so I can't really speak to their performance but I can tell you that I'm really happy with my current Momentus XT.

I was planning on getting 8GB of RAM before I got my hybrid drive and now I'm really not in a rush for it. I feel that the 4GB of nand cache does its job surprisingly well.


edit:

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorpio_black_500gb_review_wd5000bekt

There are some benchmarks of the two. I'd be interested in hearing about real world accounts.

 

I got the Scorpio Black 500GB; at the time, the Momentus XT was having issues with too rapid of a spin-down, that have apparently been fixed now with firmware.

If you have a fairly normal routine, the Momentus XT's hybrid storage will help in boot time and possibly application load. If you're kind of all over the place, it won't do much for you --and if it doesn't the Scorpio Black is faster in some areas that don't involve the use of hybrid drive technology.

Now that I have my new T420, I have an 80GB mSATA drive for boot, and my Scorpio Black holds the data. In this situation, the flash of the Momentus XT would be of questionable use.

Go with the 750 if you need the storage, otherwise, stick with a 500GB drive. The 750 is supposed to be slightly faster, but I doubt it is noticeable in real-world operations.

Western Digital's Scorpio Black 750GB notebook hard drive - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

I agree. The Momentus XT is good if you use the same applications over and over or for long lengths of time at once. That's where it really shines. The HDD itself is pretty fast but if you negate the cache the other drives are faster.

 

Well basically what I would be doing on my computer would be homework (Word), lectures (Firefox), music (itunes), netflix (firefox), and games. So I guess the routine is kind of linear. The 750GB WD I can get for $100 and the Momentus XT for around the same price so it's not a big deal. I heard the WD has a higher idle power usage than the Momentus XT so would that be noticeable in battery life?

 

I got my XT for 102 from newegg with shipping.

If those are the programs you use you'd probably see the benefit from the cache. My usage is similar. Chrome, digsby, jdownloader.

Honestly, most of the files the cache is going to use are probably system files that get accessed by all of those programs.

 

Yea the XT is on amazon for $99.99 and I have Amazon Prime so I can get 2 day shipping for free. WD 750GB is the same too. Kind of leaning towards the Momentus at the moment.

 

Either way you go you'll get a nice performance boost.

You could also get the WD750GB and then upgrade your RAM. It'll cost more but you'll get a similar effect to the Momentus XT since you'll have effectively added a large cache.

 

I'm in the same boat right now with my Macbook Pro. It's gonna come down to a coin toss, I think. The only reason I am leaning towards WD is b/c their RMA Exchange policy is freaking incredible.

 

I had a lot of bad experiences with Seagate, their hard drive durability seemed to drop ever since they acquired Maxtor. 2 Momentuses, 1 Momentus XT and a few Barracudas all screwed up in one way or another in a matter of months. Never getting them again because of their horrible reliability. WD is much better imo. Just my two cents

 

There's no tangible difference between the WD 500GB and 750GB Blacks in real-world usage. Both are excellent drives.

 

Having had all three drives (XT 500GB, SB 500GB, SB 750GB), I can say that there is a difference between them when set up like the following link shows:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


In strict performance ranking I would put them like this (first is fastest):

Scorpio Black 750GB

Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 500GB

Scorpio Black 500GB



With a much larger jump from the SB 500GB to the XT than from the XT to the SB 750 model.

The responsiveness of the XT is even higher than the 750GB model, but for the workflow I put my systems through (high resolution RAW image editing... ~20-100GB at a time), the SB 750GB HDD was the clear productivity winner, overall.

Note: all were dropped for Intel 320 Series 160GB SSD's.

 

Very interesting comparative. I just bought a WD 750G and am wondering if it would be worth getting a Momentus XT on the side?

 

You mean as a storage drive? I wouldn't get the XT for that, you would be better off with a standard 5400RPM or 7200RPM model. Basically the extra performance provided by the XT's SSD cache would not be utilized and it therefore would not be worth extra money.

 

It would be utilized but for jobs that you don't really need it for/ not very well.

I love my XT =p

 

Owning all 3, I'd recommend the Scorpio Black series drives (500 GB or 750 GB). Owning 2 MomentusXT drives, I felt no real benefit from the 4 GB SSD. Boot up time is still slow, nowhere near SSD performance. Call me crazy but I doubt I got 2 dud drives in a row. Also for pure benchmarking purposes, the XT are slower than Scorpio Blacks in terms of read/write, there is also a huge price premium for that 4 GB SSD. The Scorpio Black drives are quiet, barely run hotter than the 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue drives, and are competitively priced.

 

Aha! I knew it was you. I got my Hitachis over a year ago based on your recommendation. It's usually rocket fast (HD fast, of course) but sometimes it can take my programs a minute to load. I updated Windows and the problem has not occurred since.

As well I purchased the Scorpio Black based on the high praise from this site, but its only a 320 GB. I use it as an external HD on the eSATA port. However, it also has no issues.

 

My Hitachi 7K750 (750GB 7200RPM) arrives tomorrow. Will post a link to the various bench's that people have asked for.

 

Interesting I'd love to see a comparative between WD Black and Hitachi 750 (maybe Toshiba too)

 

It appears that the WD Black has slightly better performance, while the Hitachi is amazingly silent.

 

While the WD Black's have consistently higher benchmark scores, I have always preferred the way Hitachi drives of the same capacity and year/generation for the way they perform (overall).

Very speedy, nearly silent and run much cooler in my experience.

 

A few months back when I bought the WD750 Black, I originally was looking for the Hitachi, but it seemed that they were not readily available in the market.

This was also a little bit after/ around the time that Hitachi was in talks wit WD about offloading their Storage Division.

PS: By mistake posted these quoted posts to wrong thread.

No I meant as a Boot drive.. since I dont think an SSD would work for me at this point. I need storage and have room for only one HDD.

I'd ideally love a good SSD+HDD combo like the XT but it seems it not so SPECTACULAR at this point.

Tsunade - I know it wouldnt be near SSD. How much of a boot & post boot performance difference was there between them? Which two Mom XT drives did you have? Can you give some kind of a comparative?

 

SSD shootout: Real World Performance


AnandTech - Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD

(Scorpio Black performs in the Velociraptor range)

 

So which Hitachi drive is comparable to the WD Scorpio Black? I've decided to not get that single platter 1TB Samsung drive as much as I'm intrigued by it. I'd rather get a 7200 RPM drive with considerable space (as in 750GB) which is why I'm currently set on buying this....

Amazon.com: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive: Electronics

So what Hitachi drive is exactly the same in specs and comparable in performance? Especially if they run more cooler and quieter than the WD counterparts....

 

Hitachi 7K750.

See:
Newegg.com - HITACHI Travelstar 7K750 H2IK7501672SP (0S03339) 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

 

Thanks for the link man. And you'd definitely recommend this over the WD? Its going to be used in the 2nd bay of my notebook for storing my videos, etc and I just want to make sure that it has a lot of space, playback performance is quick and reliable, and doesn't run too hot or loud....

 

Yeah, Hitachi has been very good to me!

Hope it performs as good for you.

 

I really appreciate the feedback. I'm gonna take a little bit of time to read some reviews on Amazon for both of them and then some professional reviews as well but I'm def leaning more in the Hitachi way.

Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that I replaced drives in my old HDX 18t but I can't remember if it was with Seagate drives or WD ones....either way they weren't that great and were very loud as I recall....

Anyways thanks.

EDIT: Just checked my Newegg account and there were Seagate drives....at least I know now to avoid them...

 

Very happy with my XT. The latest firmware has practically doubled random reads.

 

I agree that the 'new' firmware SD28 XT is superior - but the 750GB drives have 50% more capacity than the 500GB models - too hard to ignore, especially if used as a data drive.

The rumoured 750GB XT's would be worth waiting for or upgrading to, imo.

 

Yes, I just meant in terms of performance.

 

Hitachi 7K750 and WD Black perform virtually the same, you won't notice the difference.

In noise and power consumption, Hitachi slightly beats WD. You might notice the difference.

 

Any links regarding this upcoming line from Seagate? Also does WD have any upcoming internal notebook hard drives coming out?

 

Seagate Ships 1 Million Solid State Hybrid Drives | Seagate

I guess we'll be seeing 1TB Scorpio Black within 6 months. Maybe Seagate/Samsung or one of the others will be faster to market.

 

I am also considering these drives. Has anybody actually tried both drives to compare them?(750GB WD and XT) I am having a hard time deciding because the opinions on these drives are so mixed.

 

i have heard negative issues with the XT, but never with the Western Digital

 

I haven't heard of issues with the XT in a long time and most were with macs.

 

Ok disregarding any issues, which one performs better overall?(Unless you have personally experienced said issues and then I would love to hear about them) But yes I am aware that the WD has had no issues, which is why I am tempted by it. I am just trying to gauge the difference between the two to see if the XT is worth the risk.

 

The XT is faster with launching programs and booting. For the rest they perform about the same. As I posted here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...500gb-vs-momentus-xt-500gb-3.html#post7948489

I've never experienced any issues with the XT. I experienced vibration with the Scorpio Black though.

 

Phil & Tsunade:
Its amazing to see opposite views from both Moderators
Can we actually do a really life comparison with bunch of Services & Apps?

Phil - Was that comparison you are pointing to done on a barebones new Windows or did it have bunch of stuff on it.. hence delaying it?

PS: I am also wondering if delayed start of services could help improve the user experience but booting whats needed sooner and other stuff in the background?

Tsunade - I know it wouldnt be near SSD.
How much of a boot & post boot performance difference was there between them? Which two Mom XT drives did you have? Can you give some kind of a comparative?

 

I've done two reviews with Seagate XT containing many real world benchmarks both published on NBR.

Hardwarecanucks, Cnet, Anandtech and Tomshardware have all done reviews that lead to the the same conclusions.

There are a few people that will not benefit from a XT over the Scorpio Black. For the majority of users the XT will clearly be faster.

 

If you're not going to use the XT however as the OS drive and its going to be more for storage and playback of video would you still recommend it over the WD or Hitachi?

Lastly I've finally settled on the WD Scorpio Black in 750GB size because Amazon says the Hitachi Travelstar ususally ships in "1 to 2 months". Which is way too long.

I'm willing to consider the XT but I'm not sure I fully understand the whole "hybrid ssd" thing. Can someone explain the pros/cons and the actual hardware? Is it just an HDD with a very small SSD inside?

 

You would see no benefit from the XT and the WD drive would be faster for pure storage. The SSD cache isn't going to help much with raw data transfers. It will help mainly with common random reads such as boot up and loading a program. So if you are just using it for storage it would be no contest. The WD would be the best choice.

 

It depends on what you're exactly planning to do with a storage drive.

If it's for playing back video I would probably get a 1TB 5400rpm drive like the Samsung M8. Performance is good and it's more quiet and uses less power than 7200rpm drives.

If you do want a 7200rpm data drive Hitachi 7K750 would be my first pick.

The Seagate XT looks like a normal hard drive. Inside is 4GB SSD cache where a copy of some often read files (blocks) are placed. When these files are read again they will be read of the SSD, hence they will be read much faster.

Sometimes WD is faster sometimes XT is faster. For example: the XT beats the WD in file copy benchmarks that are not cached. And this was before XT had a firmware update that improved random performance by 50%.

I can think of some situations where an XT would make sense as a data drive, for example if one uses the same files often.

However, a 1TB HDD with 2x 500 GB platters makes more sense in most situations.

 

Damn....so much to consider....and reconsider again. Alright thanks.

The XT isn't out yet though in a 750GB capacity but I'm looking at a time frame of 2 weeks or so....I pretty much discarded the M8 but less power usage and quieter sounds so good to me. But I know how my brain operates. The moment I boot up that computer and start using it I'll be wondering and second guessing myself. Eventually I'll convince myself that the performance is very slow compared to what I could theoretically be getting from a 7200 RPM drive....

As for the Hitachi Amazon says it will ship 1-2 months and I can't afford to wait that long....so unless you know of a place that has in stock right now that's probably not the best option to consider right now....

 

Performance? I thought you wanted to use it as a secondary drive to play video of. I doubt you'll notice any difference between a fast 5400rpm drive and a 7200rpm for that scenario.

Look at the large file performance here: Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5" Hard Drive Review - Page 9

For small files and runnig applications a 7200rpm is definitely faster.

Hitachi 7K750 is $85 at Buy.com: Buy.com - Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 HTS727575A9E364 750 GB 2.5" Internal Hard Drive - SATA/300 - 7200 rpm - 16 MB Buffer

 

When I say performance I mean playing the videos that I'll be storing on the drive. Will they load up an play in WMP11 the same way or will there be more stuttering or errors or whatever with one drive versus another. Sorry for not clarify.

 

The 7200rpm drive will be a bit quicker to start the video.

More importantly, if you're downloading torrents at the same time to a 5400rpm drive it can sometimes slowdown.

So if you want to play it safe get a 7200rpm drive. If you have a large laptop the sound of the WD7500BPKT shouldn't be any problem.

PS. what is your primary drive?

 

It will be an SSD. To be specific the Samsung 830 consumer model thats about to be released...

And yes I will be downloading torrents on the main drive and probably moving them over to the HDD. Unless there's a way to set up my downloads folder to be on the HDD....

EDIT: The Hitachi seems to have 2 different versions. The "bare drive" model which is model number 0J12283 and the "retail" model which is model number 0S03339 . Both are available on Newegg and the retail version is the only one available on Amazon at the same comparable price but it says it may take a month or 2 to fulfill. Hopefully not....

My main question is what comes in the retail version that's not in the bare drive model? Anything that I may need? Or is just fluff....

 

Fluff.

Moving (manually) is a far second place finisher to just putting them there directly, in the first place.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7958928-post74.html

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rades/608752-hdd-partitioning-help-500gb.html


See my contributions starting from post 3 in the link above (in the following pages I have included two files to move Windows 7 Ultimate (x64 and x86) Users folder to the drive letter of your choice).

Hope this helps.