Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT
by Western Digital
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD5000BEVT
Customer Review: Not great in my 2008 MacBook Pro 15" - Hitachi is better
Summary: 2 Stars
The internal Seagate 160GB 7200rpm HDD in my late 2007 / early 2008 MacBook Pro 15" bit the dust in February 2011. It was acting flakey the prior week so I became much more diligent at doing my SuperDuper backups daily to my external Firewire disk. Google SuperDuper if you need more info.
I initially replaced the failed Seagate disk in my MacBook Pro with this 5400rpm 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue drive. Although it worked OK, the WD drive seemed slow to respond at times when clicking on a program icon or even an email within my Thunderbird email client.
I would often get the Mac spinning color wheel before a program would launch. I doubt that this was due to the rpm speed differences between the drives. I can only speculate that there may be an aggressive power saving feature embedded and enabled in the WD drive's firmware causing it to spin down and stop frequently. I cannot verify this but I can say with certainty that the Hitachi Travelstar 2.5 Inch 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA II 16 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0S02858 does not do this in my MacBook Pro. YMMV.
The Hitachi disk responds immediately upon clicking a program icon or opening a document, reading an email, etc. No more waiting on that spinning color wheel before the disk responds. The Hitachi is also faster than the WD at opening and loading applications (excel spread sheets, word processing docs, PDF files, etc.) as it should be at 7200rpm vs 5400rpm. But again the biggest improvement is in it's initial responsiveness.
Again, I tried both the WD and Hitachi disks in my late 2007 / early 2008 era MacBook Pro 15" and the Hitachi is hands down the better performer by a wide margin. YMMV in your particular setup but what I described above is what I experienced first hand in my setup.
Customer Review: WARNING: Known Issues with Macbook Pro
Summary: 1 Stars
This review is primarily directed towards Macbook Pro owners.
Pro: cheap, large capacity
Cons: constant beach ball slow downs, high load cycles, KNOWN WD/Mac compatibility issues
Details:
The WD drive has a KNOWN compatibility issue with Apple's Macbook Pro line. The drive constantly attempts to park the needle and the Macbook will IMMEDIATELY start the drive back up. This is irrespective of the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" setting. This constant back and forth causes the drive to cycle up and down in a way that will impact performance in the immediate term, and shorten the life of the drive in the long term. Unfortunately many people don't take a noticeable performance hit, so they don't notice the constant cycling of the drive until it starts to click after a few months.
Even after a CLEAN install of Snow Leopard, I immediately took a performance hit with the drive hitting the spinning beach ball every couple of minutes and then hanging on it for about 3 to 5 seconds. A little bit of research and the problem seems like it's fairly common. This affected not only heavy load programs like Final Cut Pro, but also affected simple web browsing and word processing tasks. My experience is not unique.
After 3 days of issues with the WD Scorpio, I RMA'd it and purchased this Hitachi 500GB Travelstar SATA 7200 RPM Laptop Internal Hard Drive instead (on a users recommendation on another support forum):
http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Travelstar-Internal-HD20500IDK-7K/dp/B002FYJQB8/
So far I have not had any issues with the drive and everything is running smoothly.
Before you buy this drive, google "Western Digital Scoripio Blue Beach Ball Macbook Pro". There are plenty of forum discussions on this issue, including ones on Western Digital's own support forum. Seagate apparently has some of the same issues.
Customer Review: Good Value in a High Capacity 2.5" Notebook Computer Hard Drive
Summary: 5 Stars
My 3 1/2-year-old Dell notebook computer was running out of space on the 120GB Toshiba hard drive that came installed on it. There were fewer than 5GB remaining. After contacting Dell's technical support team to determine if my computer's BIOS would recognize the capacity of a larger drive, I learned that 500GB was the largest that my notebook computer would accommodate. That narrowed down my choices considerably. Amazon's price for this WD drive was the best I could find. Most of the reviews for this drive were positive, both on Amazon and on other Websites, so I ordered one along with an external USB SATA hard-drive enclosure.
When this WD drive arrived, I mounted it in the enclosure, plugged it into a USB port on my notebook computer and used Acronis True Image Home to clone the data from my existing hard drive to my new drive. Once the cloning job was complete, I removed the old hard drive from my notebook computer and replaced it with this new one. I was delighted that my computer instantly recognized the new drive and booted normally. There were three differences that I immediately noticed:
1. Instead of less than 5GB of free hard-drive space, I now have more than 344GB of free space.
2. My computer now opens and saves files noticably faster.
3. Projected battery life has been extended about 15 minutes from 4:30 to 4:45.
In summary, for a much smaller investment than replacing my notebook computer, I was able to considerably extend its useful life and improve its performance too. After mounting my old Toshiba 120GB hard drive in my external USB enclosure and formatting it, I now have a handy backup drive as well. My new Western Digital 500GB 2.5" hard drive has not only met but exceeded my expectations both with its performance and its price.
Customer Review: Great upgrade for the MacBook Aluminum...
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the new MacBook Aluminum (13" - Late 2008), with the 160GB hard drive, which quickly fell short to my storage demands. While on the market for an upgrade hard drive, I came across the WD 500GB Scorpio Blue and hesitant at first (I could not find anywhere a post which would guarantee that it would work with my MB), I decided to go for it. Upon receiving my hard drive, I ran the Time Machine on my MB, switched the OEM hard drive for this beauty (it took about 15 mins.), installed Leopard from the DVD that came with my MB, and then restored from the most recent TM backup (installing the OS took about 10 mins, and restoring the backup took about 2 hrs - it was a 140GB backup!). So far, I've had no problems whatsoever using the drive. It is very quiet, does not heat up excesively (comparable actually to the original hard drive), and now I have a MB with a 500GB drive!!!
I am extremely satisfied with this drive, and would definitely recomend it to any MB/MBPro owner who wants to upgrade the hard drive.
Update: July 19th, 2010
I've been using this hard drive for over a year and a half now, without any problems whatsoever. Quite drive, no difference in power consumption, performs great! Actually, I am thinking about replacing it with the new 1TB Scorpio, especially because my digital movie collection is growing really fast (I'm ripping my own DVD's so I can view them in my LCD TV, my iPhone, my iPod or my MBP). Great drives, and to be honest, I've never heard of any freezing, beach balls, or any other problems before or after I bought my drive. Great product...still give it 5 stars!
Customer Review: works great so far!
Summary: 5 Stars
I received my WD Caviar Blue 500GB hard drive today to replace a failing Toshiba HD of equivalent specs.
I used the free trial edition of Terabyte Image for Windows, combined with Sabrent's SATA to USB with Power Supply cable, to seamlessly clone my old drive to the new drive. (Other reviewers mention using the trial edition of Acronis True Image to achieve this, but as of the 2011 edition, the trial no longer supports disk cloning.)
I've never handled an internal hard drive before, but using a No. 1 Philips screwdriver, I easily dismantled my Touchsmart tx2 laptop, located my HD, and removed it. Replacing the HD did require some experimentation (i.e., realizing I had to remove and transfer the case and adapter from the old HD) but happened in quickly, easily, and without disaster.
Thus far, the drive has passed all of the tests I've subjected it to and has failed to produce blue screens as my old Toshiba drive loved to do. Windows Performance Information gives the new drive an excellent disk transfer rating of 7.2 out of 7.9 (the same rating my old HD received).
I've given the product 4-stars pending a long-term test. I'll return in a few months to report how the drive is functioning. In the meantime, it seems reasonably quiet and cool. Here's to hoping my days of the frequent blue screen have passed!
UPDATE: It is now April 2011 and the drive is running flawlessly; it's already out-lasted the drive my laptop came with. I've updated the rating to 5 stars.