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

Impressive HDD, one thread was asking about a 650GB+ HDD but a 500 capacity HDD from Western Digital isn't so bad. Nice review on the Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT.

 

The WD3200BEVT is based on two 160GB platters
The WD5000BEVT is based on two 250gb platters.
They have a similar name but they are of different series. The reason your WD3200BEVT is so much slower is because your drive has a lower data density than the WD5000BEVT.

Data density refers to the amount of capacity per unit area on the harddrive.
Say the head on the harddrive covers 1 square millimeter of space for arguments sake.
The size of the head is the same in both drives, but the amount of capacity on each platter is different.
On the WD3200BEVT you may only have 3gb of data under the head, but on the WD5000BEVT, you have say 3.2gb of data under the head.
The higher the data density the more data the drive can read in every given read/write cycle. Because of the higher data density the drive bandwidth as read by hdtune is much faster.

K-TRON

 

Thanks K-TRON for clarifying this, if only I knew about if before making that purchase...

grr... had no idea WD had naming schemes which did not reflect the generation of the drive... >_<

 

Trying to decide between this and the Seagate 500gb, 7200. Any comparisons or reviews between the two?

 

The WD3200BEKT is supposed to be as fast or faster than the 7200.4 in IOPS

As far as 5400rpm drive comparison to the 7200.4, the WD5000BEVT and Hitachi 5K500.B are right behind it

Phil, brought to the table, a link where the 7200.4 in real life was 2 seconds faster than the 5k500.B. It was copying some files. I think it was like 1:29 verses 1:27 seconds.
The link is in the 7200.4 thread
http://www.i4u.com/full-review-529.html

K-TRON

 

I think you mean the Hitachi was 3 seconds faster ?

 

I should note that my WD5000BEVT has clocked up over 2000 hours and has been relegated to an external enclosure as a bootable backup.

It has been replaced by the Hitachi 5K500.B which has very similar performance and uses a bit less power (so a few more minutes battery run time). The Hitachi made a slight ticking noise for the first few days but now seems to be running very quietly.

John

 

John, could you compare the performance of the WD5000BEVT against the 5K500.B in a real world scenario like booting Vista, running a virusscan or copying a 5GB folder?

 

First, some component results from PCMark05:

Windows XP startup (MB/s) WD = 8.34 ; Hitachi = 9.04
File writing performance (MB/s) WD = 5.08 ; Hitachi = 5.37

Then file copy results (actually a folder with 4.68GB)

WD = 3m 28s ; Hitachi = 3m 39s

So it looks like it is a close contest in terms of performance.

John

 

Thanks for doing that. Maybe the real life performance of the WD5000bevt is a bit better. PCMark seems to be fooled easily, as I've seen with the 7200.3 that produced some amazing results in PCMark.

 

Does the 5000BEVT have international warranty?

 

Study the WD warranty policy.

John

 

But Australia and Singapore are both considered "Asia Pacific", right?

 

I would assume that Australia is considered to be part of Asia Pacific on the WD map since there is no specific mention of Austria. There is only one regional service centre.

John

 

Yeap.. That's in Singapore all right. I guess it'll be safe to buy in either place. Thanks for the help, John.

Only thing lacking is a thorough test between the 7200.4, 5K500.B and the 5000BEVT on the net *sigh*

 

I have compared the 5K500.B and the WD5000BEVT. There's no noticeable difference in everyday performance the 5K500.B uses a little less power. Neither makes much noise. I've not considered getting the 7200.4.

John

 

Me neither. From the looks like it, the differences between 5400 and 7200 might not seem too vast to be noticable on a day to day basis

 

I have to disagree on that one. In multitasking situations a 7200 rpm is sometimes more than twice as fast as 5400 rpm when comparing harddrives from the same generation.
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx?page=6

 

I replaced scorpio blue with scorpio black
Windows is responding much much faster installing applications,openning windows..
Noticeable

 

yeah.. well, i couldn't be bothered waiting for a 7200rpm. went ahead and ordered the 5k500.b

 

Hi guys,

It's a known issue now but I thought I'd mention it here in case it comes in handy for someone else.

If you buy a WD portable hard drive with the intention to swap the external drive with your internal drive, be very careful before buying, or at worst case opening the external drive's case.

Newer WD My Passport portable drives come with a WD5000BMVU unit in them rather than a WD5000BEVT. The difference is that the WD5000BEVT is a regular SATA drive, and the WD5000BMVU is a SATA drive with an integrated (permanent) USB PCB board. So it's impossible to either use that drive in your notebook, or to use your old SATA drive in the enclosure!

If you look at the revision number (R/N) on the barcode, you can tell which ones are the old style (good) drives and which are the new style (evil) drive. The evil ones will have a revision number of B8B, whilst the good ones will be either A7B or B7B.

If you already own one and want to know, go to device manager and check whether the drive is listed with BEV (good) or BMV (evil) in it's name.

I made the mistake of buying a B8B unit and opening it up without doing the research. Thankfully I done a very clean job of opening it up and was able to exchange it for a WD Elements drive.

As far as I know, the Portable Elements drives aren't affected (as yet).

Just thought I'd share my almost-horror story that was all done just to save a few bucks (external drives was cheaper than the price of an internal drive + enclosure).

I moved from a WD1600BEVS to this and am very happy so far. Runs faster and cooler, and is 3 times the capacity. The WD1600BEVS is now being used as a portable drive and does a good job in there.

Apologies for the length of the post

 

Thanks for this info. One can check the product code if buying over the counter, but not if buying remotely.

I wonder if any other manufacturers are doing the same. A month ago I was looking at the Hitachi Neso which is in the same price range as a bare HDD. I was a little worried about how easy it would be to open the enclosure. I hadn't thought about the possibility of a non-standard HDD being inside. I opted to pay a little more and buy a separate HDD and enclosure (which also had eSATA).

John

 

I nicked this image from another site, but here is what the BMVU units look like.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/wd5000bmvu/sunsenser/DSC01713.jpg

I believe some of the 320GB My Passport's also contain these drives now.

 

Yeah I checked my WD passport with Crystal Disk Info
and passport essential is nothing else just scorpio blue

 

Hey John, i am thinking of purchasing this as an external USB drive.

Would you recommend it over the hitachi?

 

The performance difference is not noticeable (would you be using eSATA? - if USB then performance is irrelevant). The Hitachi uses a bit less power, but both run with the normal power output of a single USB port.

My WD5000BEVT was transferred to an external enclosure after about 6 months hard work and the 5K500.B is now my main HDD.

So your decision may well be down to price or brand preference. Both are fairly quiet.

John

 

I currently have a Seagate 160gb on my Vantec enclosure which is nearly maxed out.

It will mainly be used to move audio and video from work to home. Im looking for reliability rather than performance or power consumption. Does the WD5000BEVT come with a shock sensor?

I was leaning towards WD because ive had good experiences in the past.

 

I use a 60 gb and a 120 gb WD externals, they're pretty consistently good. One in ten times the drive will sound like it's spinning on once connected through USB but the system won't recognize it, so I have to unplug and plug it back in. The 60 GB loads about twice as fast as the 120 GB.

 

Hi John, could you please comapre the work temperature between WD5000BEVT and Hitachi 5K500.B?
Thanks in advance.

 

It's not so easy to make a scientific comparison. The WD was on duty for the winter and the 5k500.B is on summer duty. The best I can offer is comparison of temperatures after different HDtune runs. On that basis, the Hitachi runs 1°C cooler (38°C at the end of a test I have just run compared to 39°C here).

However, the ambient temperature where I'm sitting is currently 2° to 3°C warmer than I would expect in October, when I tested the WD. Therefore I would expect the 5K500.B to be at least 2°C cooler than the WD5000BEVT in everyday use. All these results are using the Dell E6400 which has a relatively good cooling system.

John

 

John, thanks for your comments.
I think I'd better select a 5K500.B due to my location (Shenzhen is adjacent to HongKong, summer is 6 months long at here).

 

Just adding to this thread. I have a WD5000BEVT in my PS3 and now my laptop and love this hard drive. I just ordered another for use in an external enclosure. Based on your review, John, I'd get whichever is on sale (the hitachi or wd). As it turns out, both are on sale right now. Flip a coin.

 

I'm using the Seagate 500GB 5400.6 in my laptop, previously had a Scorpio Blue 320GB and vista rating went from 5.3 to 5.7... Using in AHCI Mode, ordered the WD5000BEVT for the PS3 as it is cheaper and easier to hold of than the Seagate, so I say the Seagate over the Scorpio and as for the Hitachi, what Hitachi?...

The Seagate is whisper quiet to, the motor noise is like a cool relaxing breeze... The Seeking is barely audible and not annoying at all, just fades away behind the laptop fan noise which is also relaxing, thank god i'm not using the Vaio TZ anymore the fan noise from it gets on your nerves

 

The seagate that was in my laptop was whisper quiet. The 500GB WD in there now ticks every now and then but is otherwise quiet also.

 

Tom's Hardware have a new review of 7 500GB 2.5" HDDs.

Very interesting.

John

 

The Tech Report does too. I tend to trust them a little more than THG.

StorageReview does a decent job too, although they don't have anything as recent.

 

I read the tech report review as well as tom's hardware review. Based on either I'm happy with my decision to make the WD scorpio blue my 500GB HD of choice.

 

Hi!
Someone could explain the diff between the drives?

i got dell xps m1730 and 3 of the WD Scorpio Blue drives (WDC5000BEVT) 2 of them is 00ZAT0 and 1 is 22ZAT0 config is 1 00 is in the Multi-Bay with hdd frame and a 00+22 combo inside the normal hdd bay on sata but i got no issues
i assume the the ones beginning 00 some of the early models so question is can we et the firmware update ?????

 

I bought a 5K500.B yesterday and replaced the old WD 60GB HDD with it.
I'm saticified with it's performance and it is also very quiet, but the working temperature is much more higher than the old WD HDD (WD 40 degree, Hitachi 48 degree, ambient temperature 28 degree). I don't know why. Maybe it's the price of high density 2.5'' HDD.

 

I'm not sure how to go about upgrading the firmware, but I have two of those drive, one with a date of 21st april 09 the other with 4th february 09. The april drive has the 22ZATO code while the february drive has the 00ZATO code. Not sure of the difference. I notice that I can hear the head parking on the february drive every now and then. That one is in my laptop. I'm not sure about the other one since it's in my PS3. I'll check it out next time I'm playing. I've included a couple of pics showing the difference. I also noticed that on the february drive the label has 2 less bar codes on it.

 

I am trying to make a decision. I have the option to purchase either the WD5000BEVT scorpio blue or the WD3200BEKT scorpio black and I am having a little trouble deciding which one to choose.

The scropio blue will use less power but the black is faster, storage space isn't really a big concern for me right now. So would it be better to go for the scorpio blue or should I purchase the black?

Which one would you guys recommend?

 

100% Black series

 

It depends on your usage.

During normal usage there won't be any difference noticeable in performance. During heavy multi tasking the Black will be faster.

I never use my laptop for heavy multi tasking so I would prefer the extra space and lower power usage of the WD5000BEVT.

 

I choose WD5000BEVT. Similar performance, 180GB more, almost the same price, and most important - runs cooler.

 

Good point Phil I never do any heavy multitasking on my notebook either.

Another thing that is kinda leaning me towards the blue is the cost per GB; the blue is actually cheaper when I work out the cost per GB. I don't really have a use for 500GB right now but you never know...

I have till the end of the week to make up my mind so I will continue to think about this.

 

Based on what you said regarding multitasking, the scorpio blue all the way.

Hard drive storage is like woodworking clamps; you can never have too much!

 

Just following up on this post. I sent back the February drive with the 00ZATO code and the replacement was dated April 20th 09. It's been in my laptop a couple of days and no clicking at all. Also, the one in my PS3 doesn't click either. Either the February drive was defective or maybe had an older firmware with aggressive head parking settings. I have one more on the way I'm putting in an external enclosure. We'll see how that goes.

As it stands now, I still love this drive and will recommend it to anyone who needs a new hard drive for their laptop or PS3.

 

I've had my drive for a week or two now (WD5000BEVT) and have a question from fellow owners. What does your drive sound like during regular operation?

I'm curious because mine has a very soft, subtle scraping sound, like an early CD-ROM (new ones are too noisy) accessing a disc. I'm not alarmed; it's just different from what I'm accustomed to hearing from an HDD, so I figured I'd ask. Performance of the drive itself is good, and I'm very happy to have the capacity.

 

i have a few of the 00 firmare ones and i hate the noise i would love to get them swapped what did you tell them to get them swapped out??

 

I told them the drive was showing signs of failure.

FWIW, the replacement as well as another I bought from newegg both have the 00 code but are completely silent. The manufacturing dates are april and may for those, maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe the drive really was defective.

Either way, the replacement process went very easy with newegg.