WD7500BPKT - 750GB 7200rpm Western Digital

I am glad that this thread about the WD7500BPKT exists; I'll be posting benchmarks and simple file transfers to roughly gauge its performance in RAID 0; since there are already benchmarks as a single drive.

You should also know that this is an Advanced Format Drive, so if you want to install XP you'll need WDAlign to do so. And if you intend to install Windows 7 on an older machine you need the latest AHCI/RAID controller drivers from Intel to recognize as it an AF 4k sector drive, or the installation will freeze half way through.

The drives were purchased from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004I9J5OG



500mb .psd file transfer peaked 45mb/s
10mb document transfer peaked 30mb/s

Overall the performance feels alot faster than my Momentus, good transfer times and feels snappy.

 

Wow that's fast, though I looked at the big numbers and didn't realize you had put them in RAID 0 lol.

How is the noise level? People complained about the 500 Scorpio Black as being noticeably loud.

 

Well I haven't really tested on thw noise level as yet (still installing all my stuff back in) but let's just say the M1730's 3 fan setup drowned all system noise when overclocked...

Noise is not a biggie for me though, more importantly the performance and capacity is there, and those are pretty much my main priority...

Will probably turn off the fans tonight in a quiet room and observe its noise level.

 

Does this fit inside most notebooks, or is it one of the thicker ones, only for external use?

 

This is the standard 9.5mm thick model which fits all the notebooks using SATA drive. Thicker ones have 12.5mm height.


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I'm thinking of getting this to replace my Hitachi 7k500, however do you guys think I should wait for the Hitachi 7k750, or get the WD 7500BPKT now?

 

If you need it now, get it now. I doubt the performance of the Hitachi 7K750 will be that much different. The only question would be pricing. Truth to tell, the difference between almost all of these high end drives is getting to be largely unnoticeable.

 

Read my previous post in this thread before your final decision:

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Hm...
I was actually contemplating on getting this HDD for myself.
Speed-wise and everything else taken into account it does seem really nice, however here in Croatia, it costs $147 (not surprising when you take into account the 22% local tax increase - a ripoff indeed but not that big of a deal).

On the other hand, perhaps it would be better if I get a 500GB Scorpio Black instead for half the price and get myself a 1TB 2.5" external HDD for extra storage.


Then again, the arrival of Hitachi 7K750 might lower the price tags a bit.

 

I got it today to replace my hitachi, it's actually very quiet! I can't tell a difference sound wise between it and my 7k500. No vibrations, and minimal seek noises (the hitachi you could hear seek). I had a WD Scorpio black 500 and it was loud, this is a welcomed surprise! I highly recommend this drive, very quiet, and very fast!

 

New review:

See:
Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5" Hard Drive Review


Tempting with this special too:

See:
Buy Western Digital [WD7500BPKT] Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5IN 7200RPM 16GB SATA3GB/S Notebook Hard Drive

 

I cannot decide between this and Momentus XT, can someone give me some suggestions? Space is not that important, so ignore 500GB vs 750GB factor.

 

Is it necessary to use a single partition for best speed for the wd7500bpkt?

 

In my real world usage scenario (heavy duty photo-editing), the XT is above every other mechanical drive I have tried (Scorpio Black, Hitachi 7K500 and lesser drives that still boast 7200 RPM spec's but can't compare to these top three). If you follow the link I posted above, you can see that even against the much faster 750GB version of the Scorpio Black over the 500GB model, the XT still leads where it counts.

If another XT is introduced that is either bigger capacity or has a bigger SSD portion; it will easily be the 'king' once again.

No, the best overall speed is to use multiple partitions, intelligently laid out:

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

 

I'm surprised. From what I read in other posts, the XT is only faster for certain things, like booting up, running the system and cache from the SSD.

Why would photo editing be faster on the XT?

I am also trying to decide between these two drives.

 

I for one am going to get one of these. I am happy with the tests, the drive performs amazingly well and it's only 100€ here. Given the fact that it's Europe and only 10% more expensive than what Australia is currently charging my mind is set on this drive. I'll also post my own benchmarks and I'll sell the 500gb 5400rpm drive that I get with my new laptop on ebay. That will shave off 60% of the price, making this drive more than worth the money as 'storage space' isn't an important factor for me.

At the moment I'm probably going to pay an extra 10€ as well for 5 years warranty over 3 years.

 

you wont regret the purchase, this drive has been great. It's currently the fastest mechanical drive.

 

With Win7 x64 and an SSD I get 7.7 - so not sure the hard drive scores are limited to 5.9 anymore

 

Hence why Judicator qualified his statement.

Emphasis mine.

 

sorry, I ruled out this drive ... as it gets painfully slow write access times. Even the higher max speed would not effectively compensate for that in everyday usage.

on the other hand I also ruled out the XT due to its double idle power consumption compared to other 500GB 7200 rpm drives. I mean 2W idle is ridiculous. Also there are still issues with it, as many report not once.

.. thus I just ordered three 500GB Scorpio Blacks at ~61/piece. Yey. One is going to replace my current 500GB Seagate 7200.4 that has been running awesome for the past 2 years

 

Hey guys,

I'm deciding between this and Seagate Momentus 750GB. What are your thoughts on reliability of these drives? I'm not too worried about the speed since the main purpose will be storage. It's getting kind of tight on my 250GB drive.

Also, lots of Newegg reviewers mentioned the clicking noise on WD Blue/Green drives. Is it really a big deal? Basically I am looking for max capacity that I can squeeze into a 9.5mm slot.

 

And just for clarification of saturnotau's point, a SSD is a flash-based drive, not a platter based drive. A platter based hard drive is one based off of spinning discs, which are called platters.

 

I've had better luck with Western Digital drives myself. Their warranty/RMA support is also better, IMO. If your drive fails, you can give WD a credit card number, and they will ship a replacement drive to you first. Then you use the included pre-paid label to send the defective drive back to them. As long as you send it back within 14 days of receiving the replacement, you won't be charged. The few times I've had to do this (maybe 3 in the last 10 years), the process has been quick and pain free.

 

Idle consumption is 0.55 watt
Seagate Momentus XT Review | StorageReview.com
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20255/9

Firmware SD24 resolves the issues as far I know.
Seagate Momentus XT SD24 Firmware Update | StorageReview.com

 

That sounds really nice. I would certainly appreciate not being left out for 2-3 weeks without a disk drive. I think I will go with WD.

 

my bad for the 2 Watts idle, here it says it's at 1.3Watts ..
Charts, benchmarks 2009 2.5? Mobile Hard Drive Charts, Power Requirement Idle

the 2 Watts I got mistaken were from here:
Charts, benchmarks 2009 2.5? Mobile Hard Drive Charts, Power Requirement Video

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what we could probably agree on is what says on the label of each disk:
WD 500GB Black - 0.55A
WD 750GB Black - 0.55A
Momentus XT - 0.7A

I'm still not quite sure how that info fits into the power charts.

 

you wont be disappointed, the WD75000BPKT is an awesome drive.

 

Indeed. I'm going to buy another one

 

Good advice here, but I thought about it and where/how exactly I'd use it - and basically it will be used as a shared drive on my home server (which is on 24/7) for media and backups. I know 2.5" drive can work there too, but 3.5" has much greater capacity for the same price. I went with Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB (5.4K RPM) based on other reviews.

If I'll still want extra space on my laptop once I switch the stuff I have there to this new drive, I'll consider WD. I heard there's some clicking thing on WD blue/greens due to drive parking but I don't care that much about it since I use HDs basically just for storage.

 

Momentus XT's are junk. The hybrid SSD thing sounds good and all, but those suckers are unreliable. I had one, thought it was quick, then I heard it clunking the next day. Sent it back and went back to my Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB. Later, a friend asked what he should get, I told him to stay away from the Momentus XT, he bought 2 of them for both his laptops. 3 days later, I got a call 'My computer won't boot.' Never again will I buy a Seagate.

I ordered one of these Caviar Black 750s....should be nice.

 

I think you got unlucky. As far as I know Seagate Momentus XT has no specific reliability issues. Newegg user reports and user reports in the XT thread seem normal.

WD Black 750GB is a good performing hard drive but it can't touch the speed at which the XT boots or launches programs from cache.

 

Here is one HD Tune's shot of mine:

 

Currently stuck between this drive and the Samsung Spinpoint HM640JJ. Speed is a tiny bit slower on the Samsung Spinpoint and it's 110GB less in size but it's over $50 USD cheaper than the WD Scorpio Black 750GB.

There's just so many factors involved...

EDIT:

Dude your HD Tune is ancient.. upgrade to 4.0 and show us the rest of the benchmarks.

 

Ok I decided to get a Scorpio Black. I got it from Ebay for 37€ less than the cheapest store is charging around here. (Inc. postage). So I don't feel guilty at all.

Next step is to sell my Scorpio Blue for the Black after I, install windows and transfer files etc.

I'll happily post some benches just after installing Windows. Though I need to find out where that awesome thread on proper paritioning is.

 

NO no, 2 platter for 750GB @ 7200RPM.

 

*698.5 GiB
750 GB
2-platters

 

Partitions does not equal platters.

 

Can someone with a WD 750GB Black run AS-SSD, the normal benchmark and the filecopy benchmark?

that way we can compare to Hitachi 7K750:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pgrades/604870-benchmarked-hitachi-7k750.html

 

can someone explain why my pair of WD 750gb scorpio drives appear to be extremely slow?

in the older hdtune version it got ok results but in the latest hdtune Pro version, the trial version, it is getting extremely poor results. same with the crystaldisk benchmark compared to others.

is this because these disks are running under the intel software raid 1 array or maybe because they are so full of data?

so much for the WD experiment. i switched to a pair of hitachi 7k750 and raid performance is superb. i guess the WD does not like to work with one another in raid 1.

 

i took out one drive. the drive left in the laptop was made into non-raid disk. the benchmarks have almost doubled. so wth, incompatability with intel raid or what? this is on an alienware m18x laptop. maybe this is the reason why they are not offering the laptop with raid 1 setup on their configurator....

 

Is that what I did in Post #25 in this thread?

Edit: + I can still run a couple of tests before I get sick of my old laptop cluttering my house up. I may have infact ran the AS-SSD benchmark wrong half a year ago - the "ISO ... Program ... Game results are quite different .

I can say that going by the benchmarks, the Hitachi looks like the top dog now and I'll be replacing it with the 7k750 when I have time from the looks of it. My new laptop is less snappy at opening applications with its slow harddrive.

 

Why does hdtune pro 4.61 trial edition perform so bad on these had drives in raid1, giving 53mb/s while crystaldisk benchmark gives double the numbers? This is the 2nd pair of WD drives i am trying out. i dont know what to belive anymore.

 

It turns out that intel rapid storage technology is causing absolute mayhem with this alienware m18x machine and raid 1. On a fresh instal right after the intel RST is installed bemchmarks get all screwey.

Pair of these wd drives; hdtune pro benches 72 mb/s before RST and 52 mb/s afterwards. Crystaldisk bench remains good at 100 / 100 mb/s.

Pair of seagate momentus 750gb 7200rpm drives; hdtune at 79 mb/s before RST and 14 mb/s afterwards. Crystaldisk also at 14 / 14 mb/s.

HitAchi 7k750 are the only drives that are unaffected by RST keeping the benches solid at 86 for hdtune and 92/90 in crystaldisk.

What a complete nightmare. I am going to try the newest RST drivers on a fresh seagatw instal now and see what happens. I do not understand how alienware is selling raid 1 configurations. I am not evem sure if i should take theze benchmarks seriusly anymore....

 

Synthetic benchmarks should never be taken seriously.

Even with the wild swings in 'scores' do you see significant productivity differences with the different RAID configurations?

That would be the only 'benchmark' I would be interested in when testing the RAID1 configs vs. stock (non-RAID) setups.

 

Hi,

I've just bought this hard drive WD7500BPKT.
I can say it's blazing fast and quiet, but what I noticed.
During the night, when it's very silent in my room, I can hear in idle at an interval of 3-4 seconds, a humming noise or so ... humrr, 3-4 seconds, humrr, 3-4 seconds .. you need to stay close, but it's there ...
Why ? Is it normal ? Why is accessed all the time ?
If I cover it with some anti sound absorbant material from akasa is ok ?

 

it's normal. the humming noise will always be there. that is how these WD drives are. if there is a positive side for these drives, there is no click and chatter noises during hdd activity. other drives make less humming noise but audiable clicks. you just cant have best of both worlds right now.

 

Thanks for the answer.

Can I put outside the hdd some sound absorbant material from akasa ?
Will be getting hot or it's not recommended ?

 

not sure how much good that will do since laptops don't have enough room for modifications, plus increase in heat. i personally dont think it's worth the hassle because you will eventually get used to the hum and not notice it.

 

Thanks again.