Western Digital WD1600BEKT Review and real life benchmarks

I just replaced the 160GB stock drive in my Samsung NC10 netbook with a WD1600BEKT. The Western Digital WD1600BEKT is family of the WD3200BEKT. These are the Scorpio Black hard drives. The BEKT drives come without free fall sensor. The drives with free fall sensor have BJKT in the name.

The stockdrive was Hitachi 5K320, 5400rpm. The WD1600BEKT is 7200 rpm. Both are 160GB single platter drives with the same density. To measure the performance I have performed a couple of simple benchmarks. Each test was run about three times, averages are displayed. The hard drives were cloned with Acronis True Image, so that the content was exactly identical.



Booting XP
I measured the time it took from pressing the power button untill first seeing the desktop and then until the wireless lan was connected (including all processes).
Hitachi 5K320: 31 sec, 55 sec. (until desktop, until wlan)
WD1600BEKT: 31 sec, 47 sec.
Comment: Some improvement although I hoped to see more improvement.

Hibernating
Running Firefox (10 tabs), Live messenger, Internet explorer, Utorrent, Emule.
Timed by hand from pressing hibernate until power completely off. After that resuming.
Hitachi 5K320: 27 sec, 19 sec. (hibernate, resume)
WD1600BEKT: 15 sec, 17 sec.
Comment: Especially in writing the content of the memory to the drive the WD is a lot faster, almost twice as fast.

Launching Firefox
Including several plugins and 10 tabs with common websites. First measurement at all tab titles displayed, second measurement at content displayed.
Hitachi 5K320: 20 sec, 30 sec.
WD1600BEKT: 12 sec, 21 sec.
Comment: This is a nice improvement. This is where a good 7200rpm drive pays off.

Synthetic benchmarks
HDTune 2.55 and CrystalDiskMark 2.2 were performed. Screenshots are included in the attachments at the bottom of this post.

Power measurement
Power drain measured with RMClock playing movie from hard drive with WMP, lowest brightness, max battery profile.
Hitachi 5K320: 11.5 watt
WD1600BEKT: 11.2 watt
Comment: To my surprise the WD seems more power efficient than the Hitachi in this test. In my normal usage I don't notice any change in battery life.

Virusscan
Scanned 66804 files on the C drive with Avira free version.
Hitachi 5K320: 10 min 11 sec
WD1600BEKT: 7 min 45 sec
Comment: Significant improvement. Almost 25%.

Noise, heat and vibration
After reading a few WD3200BEKT reports of clicking noise and vibration I was a bit worried. The drive turns out to be very quiet, similar to the Hitachi. I did notice a slight increase in vibration. Not much, but noticeable. The highest temperature I have witnessed so far is 39 C, with a room temperature of 20 C. This was after doing a lot of benchmarking. This is pretty cool for a hard disk, especially considering it's a 7200rpm.

Price
The WD cost me 48 euros + 7 shipping. I sold the old drive for 40 euros.

Verdict
Worthwhile upgrade. Fast and quiet. Does not get hot for a 7200rpm drive. Adds some vibration but after inserting some cloth this problem was solved.

Notes:
The performance differences would have been bigger if I had done some heavy multitasking benchmarks, but since I don't use my netbook for that, I have not done that.

Attached screenshots for:
WD1600BEKT HDTune, CrystalMark, Hitachi 5K320 HDtune.

 

Thanks for this quick review.

I'm impressed by the boost to the hibernation speed. WD seem to have optimised their HDDs for write performance - I had noticed this when comparing the WD5000BEVT and the Hitachi 500.B. That said, you need to check that you had the same amount of RAM usage for the comparative hibernation tests.

Your power measurement is also interesting. Tom's Hardware shows the opposite for both idle and maximum power consumption (for 320GB versions of these HDDs). Maybe the 16MB cache on the WD provides some reduction in the read / write activity for moderate usage. Either way, 0.3W is only 3% of 10W so not a big impact on battery life, but how the two HDDs compare during minimum HDD activity?

John

 

Haven't checked that. I assume it's very similar because I opened up exactly the same applications and tabs.

The WD seems to idle at minimum 7.5 watt, while the Hitachi idles around 7.3 watt.

 

Thanks for the review Phil

What entails the power consumption?
Did you simply turn the screen dim, and run on battery with both drives and read the current rightmark stated?

John measured power from an external enclosure. Would you be able to do that?

How is operating temperature between the two drives?

K-TRON

 

Right, running on battery reading what RMClock stated, took the average for a longer period. Brightness at lowest position.

No, I do not have any voltage or wattage meters.

I haven't really payed attention to the temperature, but I will check it.

 

Hi Phil
So that your new WD is not klicking ? hmm you are lucky then ..
One more question :
If I am running that unclicker software, has this software any influence on HDD performance ?
Thnx

 

Hi Evoss, right it's not clicking.

I don't know if the unclicker software influences performance. You could test that using HDTune.

 

how come there isnt a hdtune result screen shot?

 

I think it's because u bought 160GB version ..

 

Great job Phil! This is very informative to me, because as you might already know, I'm in the hunt for a new drive. Keep up the great contribution!

 

I'm curious why you didn't upgrade the capacity. WD makes a decent 7200 RPM 320GB.

Also, where and how did you place the cloth and what kind of cloth did you use? I did upgrade mine to the WD 320GB 7200. I like it alot, but it does vibrate a little more than with the stock drive.

 

I considered it but I did not do it because of:
-price. I did not really want to invest more than I did.
-I did not really need more capacity. 160GB is enough for me with XP.
-the 320GB is two platter and theoretically it uses a bit more power and can cause more vibration.

I also have some vibration, but equally to the 5K320.

The cloth was elastic bandaid, like some people might use to bandage their knee. I cut out little corners, let's say 1x1cm (or maybe a little bit smaller). I put 1 of them on each corner on the blackrubber pieces that are already in the NC10. Then I put in the drive. Then I took 4 more pieces and glued them on the 4 remaining black rubber pieces that are in the lid of the NC10.

In the end I knew the harddrive was not touching the black rubber pieces any more, because there was bandaid at every touching point. I tried to not make the pieces of cloth too big as it may limit ventilation and could increase temperature.

Screenshot included.

Could be, but it could also be that you were unlucky. Not every WD3200BEKT clicks.

 

Definitely a great information to be equipped with. This is definitely worth the money then!

 

Hi
This is mine WD
is it ok?
and I wanted start write test but I couldn't ..
it says like I have partitions but i don't have ..

 

Your HDTune results look fine Evoss.

You can only perform the write test if you delete all partitions and data. You probably have one partition on it.

 

The highest temperature I have witnessed sofar is 39 C, with a room temperature of 20 C. This was after doing a lot of benchmarking.

The Hitachi got to 40 here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27502&d=1228167049

PS. I've updated the startpost with CrystalDiskMark results. I have no idea if they are good or not.

 

Phil aside from benchmarks, was there a noticable performance difference between the two drives? ie could you actually feel your nc10 performing quicker? if yes then by how much? and would oyu recommend the 7200.4 160gb or the wd1600bekt they both cost the same amount?
cheers,
jisaac

 

I did notice it. Hibernating and launching firefox went a lot quicker. But that's about it.

For what notebook are you looking? I would not recommend 7200rpm for the NC10 because the vibration is quite noticeable.

It would be nice if you could find a 5400rpm 250GB single platter drive, preferably not Seagate.

 

i have a 1005ha netbook so i guess there would be a lot of vibration.

 

Well it's not a lot but it's noticeable. Some people care, some people don't...

 

"Unclicker software". Does anyone know where to get it? I've got a brand-new WD1600BEKT which makes occassional clicking sounds - even though there doesn't seem to be anything defective with the drive.

 

http://sites.google.com/site/quiethdd/

 

Thanks for your quick reply. I'll try it when I get back home this evening.

By the way, I did find "Drive Power Manager" from HDTune. Seems like it offers some similar functionality. My drive had power management set to "low power". I adjusted it to "high power" and, at least for a few minutes, I didn't hear anything. Of course, it'll require a few hours to make sure no noise is heard anymore. Further more, to err on the safe side, even though it's a brand-new drive I'll run diagnostics on it. It never hurts to err on the safe side

I wonder, though, QuietHDD needs to be running as a background task whereas Drive Power Manager does not seem to do so. That would make the latter the preferred tool for me.

(FYI: this all is on a simple Windows Server 2008 R2 system, with power management set to "high performance")

-- Edit: QuietHDD won't work, unfortunately enough.



Seems like Drive Power Manager, for now, is the way to go for me.