Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 2.5? HDD ? Review and Benchmarks

i just installed mine. windows perfomance number went from 4.8 to 5.7.
i've had no problem capturing 3 hours worth of footage so far. The original 5400 would drop frames randomly.

I find it very quiet, EXCEPT for random seeking/clicking sounds louder then normal quiet clicks. They happen every couple minutes or so. Is this normal?

 

SkyG can you please run HDTune and post a screenshot of the result?

about the clicking: You can try HDTune Pro trial version and try changing the AAM value and see if that has any effects.

If you run HDTune for the benchmark set it to maximum performance and try terminating as many processes as possible.

For more clicking solutions red the messages by Prema here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=303857&page=2

 

Windows Update may have interrupted the first test.
Took a second one.

 

Thanks for that. Very similar result to John's.

 

What causes those few random high access times?

 

Background processes.

 

So it has more or less the performances of a 7k200... Good, I know what my next hard drive will be

 

What are your Windows start up times with this drive? I know there's more factors involved with comparing this but I'm still curious.

 

I'm in the fence deciding a new HDD for my Thinkpad. I want the quietest drive available. I'm aware of the Hitachi 5K320 but since my Thinkpad came stock with a WD800BEVS that is very quiet I'm leaning to keep the same silent behaviour.

Could anyone compare the audible noise among the 5K320/WD3200BEVT/WD5000BEVT

I rather upgrade to a WD because I can clone the drive using the software on WD site, but I've been a Hitachi user since so many years ago. Think the WD5000BEVT would decrease in price before 2009?

Need opinion

 

My WD5000BEVT "ticks" rather than "clicks". It is audible in a quiet room, but perhaps because the Dell E6400's fan is quieter than most.

I haven't used a recent Hitachi HDD, but the ones I used in the past were noisier than this WD.

The price will work its way down once other 2 platter 500GB HDDs become available.

John

 

If battery life is no issue for you go with the WD3200BEVT. Noise measurements are on Techreport.com and Storagereview.com

The WD5000BEVT comes at a premium because it's new and the only 250GB per platter drive on the marktet sofar.

 

I think I'll wait until 500GB 2.5 HDD prices drop. Maybe in 2009 Q1?

 

It is very likely that hard drive prices will continue to drop.

 

What do people think of the Samsung 500gb 2.5 " drive compared to this WD Scorpio? Thinking about getting the Samsung since it is only $109 at newegg this weekend.

 

High power consumption, hotter and slower. You can find details on Tomshardware.com

 

Get the WD5000BEVT instead when it goes on SALE/

 

Def waiting till the price drops some. I need the space, but need the money right now more.

 

Yep, I'm in the same situation as you're. I'm unemployed and about to graduate, but I just needed to upgrade from 80GB to 320GB, the Hitachi 5K320 was my choice, I expect it to have it soon, maybe next weekend. The WD5000BEVT sounded tempting but I just couldn't wait, maybe later when prices drop I will sold all my bulky 3.5" 7200RPM drives and get one of those babies running it on a enclosure.

 

Nice results. Acces times are surprisingly fast for a 500GB drive. i think this will be the fastest 500GB/5400rpm in real life.

 

Phil, please note that those benchies are not the 500gb 5400rpm drive. That is a 320gb 7200rpm WD benchmark.
I dont know why he posted that in this thread.

Phil- you may want to move it into the hdtune thread, to avoid confusion.

K-TRON

 

Right, that makes sense.
Moved.

 

I hope you guys don't mind a bump of a thread from 10 days ago...

Do you guys know if there will be a significant difference in physical durability of this drive? I am a bit worried by the idea of platters with such dense amounts of information and the day to day impacts and movements associated with mobile computing.

Currently at newegg for 119 + free shipping, very tempting to upgrade my 160gb drive where this would have a significantly larger amount of space and based on HDtune comparisons a pretty decent bump in performance.

 

The size of the actual read head is like 1/100th of the thickness of a piece of human hair. The head never comes in contact with the drive under normal operation. The only downfall to mechanical drives is that they can be damaged if you drop your laptop. If you are careful with your system, and you do not drop it, the mechnaical drive will last you a few years. Typically 5-7 years is the service life for most mechanical drives.
For $120 a mechanical drive cant be beat.

K-TRON

 

Technology progresses and the progressive miniaturisation tends to improve the longevity. As the data gets denser, so the heads also tend to get smaller and lighter (and need less power to move then) and smaller lighter heads are less likely to do damage to a platter. The heads get parked to the side unless the drive is reading / writing which reduces the risk of damage. However, if you are really worried about shock damage then get a drive with a free-fall sensor.

The first external HDD I used had a capacity of 5MB (yes, 5 megabytes), was the size of a shoe box and needed to be handled as if it was a box of eggs.

John

 

I bought it yesterday in Passport- series, had extract it and swapped with my old WD blue 320GB and the result is quite impressive.. ):

 

Can i install this drive of 500GB on my HP laptop with windows vista home premium 32 bit.

Currently I have
2gb of ram
160gb of hard disk

its a HP DV6500T series.

How do I know if my system supports this huge hard drive. Is there a way to check this?

Thanks
Limits

 

yes you can use it

 

Someone said there'd be a 500 GB 7200 RPM WD drive out or is already out, but I can't find stock anywhere and no mention of it on the WD website. This 5400 RPM one seems to more than a sufficient upgrade from the 320 GB 7200 RPM Scoprio series. Does anyone know about this?

 

That's slightly faster than mine. There may be some ongoing refinement - my HDD is -11ZAT and yours is -22ZAT.

John

 

Hi, could anyone please tell me what temperature (in for example HD Tune) the WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT usually operates within, at idle and normal workning and maybe even hard work?

Br Alexander

 

no more than 40c after hard work

 

i just this last week recieved 4 drives, 3 are 00zat0 but have a manufacture date of nov 14th the other is 22zat0 but has a date of nov 6th so im not sure how 22zat0 could really be newer than 00zat0 if they on the label are actually newer dated drives...the odd thing is the 00zat0 drives have different labels than the 22zat0 one does.. all ordered from the same place also.

im on the phone now asking about the 00zat0 vs the 22zat0 and 11zat0

the drive numbers differ according to wd based on which plant and date they came from. they all had the same firmware and specs and i am told they should perform the same aside from any manufactured variences.. this is what their tech dept told me

 

Anyone knows where can I find a mp3 sound file with the drive operating to see the noise levels. I'm looking for a replacement of my dead-silent WD800BEVS.

 

I don't know of such a file, but it would be of limited use unless it is for your computer. The amount of HDD noise that reaches the user depends on the HDD mounting and the materials between the HDD and the user's ears. for example, the HDD is rigidly mounted in the metal chassis of some of new Dell Latitude E series and this tends to magnify the HDD noise. In spite of this mounting arrangement, I need a quiet room to be able to hear the slight ticking noise emitted by my WD5000BEVT.

John

 

I'm mostly concerned with idle spinning noise.
I bought a 5K320 which supposedly was a quiet HDD. After receiving it and popping it on my T61 with the HDD mounted on rubber protectors I could hear a whoosh (kinda fan spinning) very similar to my previous E7K100 ATA drive, definitely not silent as I thought it would be. HDTune would not detect the drive's temp and AAM Hitachi DFT was of no help to reduce the idle noise.
My WD 80GB is dead silent, I'm really wondering if newer massive 500GB HDD have the same quiet behaviour.

On silentpcreview I recall seeing a review with older Hitachi drives recordings made with a professional microphone, and indeed those sounds sounded exactly the same as my previous noisy Hitachis.
And those recordings were made with the HDD outside any enclosure, and indeed my WD 80GB powered on outside my T61 is equally quiet, so I'm leaning towards getting a new WD if those prove to be dead silent as my current drive.

 

New WD harddrives are silent, according to reviews I've read.

 

Some of them are quiet, some are noisy. Luck of the draw I think. Probably has something to do with the factory they are manufactured in etc.

 

I find my model is little bit different from yours.

model: WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT, yours is -11ZAT

what the difference between them?

BTW, mine is also very quiet, I very satisfy with this upgrade



here is my hdtune result in xp

 

Anybody have any info or an HD Tune bench of the WD 4000BEVT? (WD Scorpio Blue 400GB)

 

Hi.

Mine was silent for a week or so, and now i get a clunking sound as if the heads are parking, when the computer is idle.

Regards

John.

 

I got my drive from Newegg, in mid-October. It continues to work well, but I am down to only about 8GB of free space. It has started to make jingling sounds for just a second, like jingling keys, or like something switching, for a second. Sometimes, there is a "beep" sound, also. Could this be due to low space on the drive? I have run the Vista tests on the drive, and it only says that the drive is ok, but less than 15% of free space. I checked the disc for errors, but found nothing. Are these switching and beeping sounds simply warnings that drive is low on space? Also, the noises don't start until after a couple of hours of use. How much free space should I have on the drive? Vista keeps warning me about 15%.

Thanks

 

I no longer have the drive because I sold it along with my N10J, however I was experiencing the EXACT some symptoms that you describe. My drive was also very close to being full. Never really thought much of it, still worked just fine.

 

Hrm hum, well I went ahead and ordered it anyway.

Should be here on the 30th, so I'll post an HD Tune bench then. I'm hoping it's not too much slower than the 5000BEVT.

 

We saw that the 5400 RPM 500 GB was faster than the 7200 RPM 320 GB in some reads (I don't remember the write speeds) so I don't think the difference will really hurt you. Post some screenies like ya' said

 

If anything, it's more likely to be faster as it will only use the fastest part of the second platter.

 

Would this drive be faster than this ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336, Seagate 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s drive in terms of read/write speeds (which would have a higher Windows Experience Index). Thanks

 

In synthetic benchmarks (such as WEI and HDTune) the Seagate 7200.3 will be slightly faster than WD5000BEVT. In real life use it will be hard to notice any difference.

According to real life benchmarks (not synthetic) the WD3200BEKT is the fastest hard drive available. That will be so untill the Seagate 7200.4 500GB becomes available.

 

the difference is so small its pretty much impossible as phil said in real world use to tell

 

Mostly yes.

Although there was one member who had to copy/move a lot files and he said that it was something like 20 minutes with the WD3200BEKT while 30 minutes with the Seagate 7200.3. (not sure about the exact numbers)

It does make sense because the I/O on the WD is a lot better than the Seagate. The Seagate will give better battery life though.

 

the 500gb wd will have even better battery life it showed really low consumption over at toms..