Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB - WD5000BEKT

LINK

Looks like its finally here... the long-awaited 500GB, 7200RPM, 2.5" hard drive from Western Digital

Anyone have further info? Any idea how this'll perform compared to the Hitachi 7K500?

There does not appear to be a WD5000BJKT free-fall sensor equipped model on there.

 

And Seagate has a 750GB 7200RPM drive (7200.5)...

 

Good news. Finally... I expect it to be faster than Hitachi 7K500.

As far as I know it's only announced. If it takes as long as with the 7200.4 it will take a while before it's really available. The same may apply to the 500GB Black though.

Update: Seems like some stores believe it the 7200.5 arrive within one month.

 

Let's hope it won't have all the various reliability and performance issues that the 7200.4 has... (had?)

 

No reviews yet for the WD Scorpio Black 500GB?

 

Nope. None that I could find, anyway.

 

I wouldn't trust the Seagate till it's been around a while. But 750 does entice nonetheless.

Have used many, many WD's over the years and been pleased with them all. They took FOREVER to get to the 500/7200 market, so it's about time. Probably have one of them in my hands at some point in the near future.

 

Maybe WD waited so long because they wanted it to be the fastest hard drive. So they had to do a lot of tweaking.

That's what I hope anyway.

 

WD Blacks do run fast, but I'm wondering about their heat.

 

I got one just today.

and here's the initial HDtach screenshot, on a new system ICH8M AHCI brand new installation of Windows 7 Professional.
T7500 CPU

It's pretty good, though slightly slower avg seek time compared with my old (but tiny) Hitachi 7k200. But transfer speed kicks 7k200's .

 

There is a WD 750 at 5400 rpm out already, 9.5mm too.

 

Wow 110 MB/sec in the beginning and 15.1ms. Looks promising. Combined with WD's usually good I/O performance this will probably be the fastest mechanical notebook hard drive sofar.

 

Looks very solid. Just... where did you get yours?

 

Good capacity but poor speed.
Roundup: 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drives with 500 GB, 640 GB and 750 GB Storage Capacities (page 14) - X-bit labs

Scorpio Black will scream past it.

It will be interesting to see what Seagate performs with the new 7200.5 750GB.

 

Wonder how battery life (ie. power consumption/heat) and noise are?

 

I was surprised too! The date on the drive says 23rd of June 2010. And I live in New Zealand, so am feeling rather pleasant now.

I can only compare it with my old travelstar 7k200. This drive doesn't make that random seek noise which hitachi did. so it has been totally quiet. heatwise it's winter here so can't really feel a thing. it's now idling at 31 degrees celcius so.. 88 F. power consumption I really have no idea, supposedly comparable with 5400rpm drive according to WD anyway.

Overall feels quick and though not a significant improvement over 7k200 the extra space is a godsend.

 

alliao can you post HDTune Pro screenshots?

I'd be interested in the normal HDTune graph and the Random Acces benchmark.

 

I think so too but how much slower is 7K500?

Same here.. I understand that unlike the program u used

 

7K500 has a bit higher seek times, but that doesn't have to mean much.

What matters is real world performance, and that's where WD usually does well.

 

+1 on the hdtune request.

Thanks!

 

Hey guys, here it is. No idea what that spike is from, but then my system is all setup and totally real world scenario.

 

Here's an HD Tune of the WD3200BEKT I purchased on the 9th of May:



So umm... same platters?

 

According to StorageReview it's a 2 platter as well!

 

Thanks + rep for you.

Can you also post the random acces page of that same benchmark?

Yes, the old WD3200bekt would not get those read speeds iirc.

 

Taken this just now, tried to play with AAM have no effect what so ever

 

Thanks would be interesting to compare that to the old WD3200bekt.

We have some on the forums but cant find them now.

 

One of the old ones is what I just pulled from my P7805.........

Edit faster than the XT on first run, see below. Intersting though look what the access is on the 2nd and third run of the XT.

 

I just got this 320gb hdd today. It's not vibrating much at all like they have for me in the past, but there's definitely something wrong with it.

Mine is just awful but Creator's access time looks slow for this drive too. I wonder if WD has changed something in the firmware. Thankfully BestBuy has the best price right now even compared to newegg, so I can exchange easily to verify. But looking at the 500gb drive's performance I may be forced into getting it even though it's $30 more and more space than I need.

 

Looking at the above post I'm slightly confused. Is the 320gb drive also using the higher density platters?

 

WD updated the other Scorpio Black models with the new platters, it seems like.

The higher access times come as a side effect from the higher-density platters.



Your drive is a 00A25 and mine is a 22A25, so there probably is a firmware difference between the two.

 

Compared with 7k500


WD5000bekt is faster in every aspect.

Seems like the WD5000bekt (250GB per platter) is getting lower access times than WD3200bekt with 160GB per platter.

 

What firmware is listed for yours in in hdtune? Mine 01.01A01. Also where did you get your drive from?

 

Higher meaning worse access times, I meant.

02.01A02. I got mine from a small local shop.

Anyone got a Toshiba MK5056GSY we can compare with?

 

The Toshiba seems to perform similarly to the 7K500.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/laptop-notebook-hard-drive,2548-3.html

I still don't get why the 500gb WD has lower access times than the 320gb (with also higher density platters) with second revision firmware. That's opposite of other drives.

 

I don't know if they were run in the same chassis, but it even looks like the WD was one degree cooler, as well.

I get antsy if my harddrive run warm, like my WD3200BEKT.

 

I returned the other hard drive and got another one with a later firmware version. This one has 12.01A12. They've definitely made changes. It's behaving more like the first gen of this model now.

In the previous drive, all the boxes Info were checked except 'Power-up in Standby.' I found this on 'Automatic Acoustic Management'. Allio, were you able to turn it on in yours?

Acoustically Manage Your Hard Drive : AAM--Automatic Acoustic Management Analyzed

 

Don't think it works. As I tried turning it on and applied the two extreme values of 128 and 254, and both made no difference to the performance at all. However, under the info tab, the AAM box IS ticked...

 

Yea, the AAM setting didn't do anything with my Fujitsu has it enabled either.

I was having a problem with the drive constantly spinning up and down which was irritating. But I was able to fix it using Notebook Hardware Control. The AAM adjustment was grayed out in it too with this drive, but setting the Advanced Power Management to max performance keeps it from continuously spinning down and making that annoying sound.

 

Wow.... it's very fast.

Charts, benchmarks 2009 2.5? Mobile Hard Drive Charts, PCMark Vantage

 

Too bad Dell doesn't let you specify HD manufacturer in the ordering process. Installing myself is no big deal, but this is one nice drive. WD did very well.

 

Hello guys. I'm currently using a 320GB Scorpio Blue and planning to upgrade to a 500GB Scorpio Black. But I'm worried about my laptop's battery life with a 7200rpm HDD.

According to Western Digital's official web site, the power dissipation of Scorpio Black for both idle and read/write is lower than Scorpio Blue. Did Western Digital make a mistake there? Or is Scorpio Black really using so little power compared to Scorpio Blue? Links of both models are below by clicking "Specifications".

Besides that, I'm not sure which SATA interface my Dell Studio 1535 uses. Can someone confirm if it's SATA 3 Gb/s? The reason is because Intel Rapid Storage Technology states that the SATA Transfer Mode is "Generation 1".

Thanks a lot!!

WD Scorpio Blue: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=685
WD Scorpio Black: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=854

 

Performance wise, the 500GB SB is better in some cases than the 320GB, but not as much as we had hoped. I still like the XT, though it depends on what you're doing as you can see from the real world tests. The high volume of repeatable operations in the productivity test really benefits the XT.

 

@ PS89, Tomshardware.com has real power measurements in the 2.5" drive charts. You can ignore all power info on WDC.com.

 

Any news on noise/ heat/ vibration? I'm just looking for a reliable 500gb 7200rpm, nothing too flashy.

 

You won't go wrong with the WD5000bekt.

 

i have a wd5000bevt and im thinking of upgrading to this.
i know its faster and ranks the highest in tomshardware 2.5 hdd roundup but can anyone quantify the real world benefits id get for this?
i dont wanna be dissapointed nor underwhelmed by the upgrade.

 

The difference is noticeable but nothing shocking. You might be disappointed... unless you're I/O intensive multi tasking.

 

thats what i feared. i dont do intensive i/o operations. for a 5400 hdd the 5000bevt is quite snappy. i was also thinking of getting the momentus xt but with my usage pattern i dont think ill see anything much except decreased boot times.
ssd's are still too expensive and since i have only one hdd bay, im not sure if i want to go though the hassle of reinstalling my programs to the ssd and moving the my data and games to a 2nd drive in a bdrom caddy and look for an external enclosure for my bdrom drive.
hopefully they make a 5000bekt with 8gig or more of NAND in the near future. that would truly rock.

 

Phil, thanks for telling me the site. I guess the Scorpio Black is just that good, high performance coupled with low power consumption. I'm thinking of either getting this or a 750GB Scorpio Blue, which is slightly slower. The problem now is where to look for them as they are not available here yet.

 

I've been testing a bit more with the Momentus XT. I'm liking it more and more.

Previously I was preferring the Scorpio Black but now I'm not sure anymore.