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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List Price: Our Price: $97.00 You Save: $22.99 (19%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $61.97 (click here) Category: Personal Computer See more product details |
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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 an easy upgrade for PS3-- definately not plug-n-play
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this drive thinking I could simply swap it with my 80gb original PS3 drive. Not a chance.
There is much additional work if you want to change hard drives for a PS3 and, frankly, I don't think it's worth the trouble. I can buy a brand new PS3 with warranty for $299 and likely get a gift-card when the big box stores are having them on sale/special. If my time in tinkering with this replacement hard drive is worth anything, it's simply not worth the trouble of formatting a backup USB drive, backing up all my data from the original PS3 drive, finding a suitable laptop, formatting this replacement drive, physically installing it, installing the PS3 operating system and all updates, and then transferring all the backup data from the USB drive to the new drive.
I originally thought the PS3 had some sort of basic operating system or BIOS in RAM. It's all apparently on the hard drive. So-- unlike most laptop of desktop computers-- if you just try to install this drive and make a clean start, you can't. The PS3 has no idea what to do with this drive, will not format it, and will not even allow you to play DVDs or Blu-Ray disks with this drive installed.
Customer Review: Fast drive, great price.
Summary: 5 Stars
Pros - Fast. I'm getting sustained 70+ MB/s writes on large file transfers off a 3Ware RAID controller, and 60+ MB/s off the ICH10R chipsets on my MB's with these drives set as SATA/Ehanced IDE. I'm replacing all my 3.5" space heaters with these drives for backups and such. Velociraptors aside, if you put this drive on a good RAID controller or a good MB chipset I don't think you will lose anything but noise and heat for day to day use. I'm guessing 2 of these in RAID 0 off a decent controller could threaten quite a few SSD's out there.
Cons - As backup and file storage drives, I have no complaints. You will of course need to add an adapter or drive tray system if you are going to use it in a desktop. I can't speak to these as boot drives.
Other thoughts - These drives use a couple of watts; even the greenest 3.5" drive is going to use 3 times that, and most 3.5" drives are going to use 4-6 times that much electricity. This drive proves the days of a laptop drive doing 20 MB/s are gone. It would be interesting to see how well this drive did if the RPM's went up to 7200, but there's really no need for that at these price/performance levels.
Customer Review: Dead on Opening
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this Drive on sale at Fry's for 69 odd some dollars. I was going to use it in a enclosure i bought as an external drive. as soon as i set it up which the EASE OF INSTALLATION was simple, the drive would not spin up. I took everything apart and removed the drive from the enclosure and attached it to a USB to SATA/PATA adapter and thats when i heard the dreaded click of death. how the heck could a brand new hard drive that hasnt been out of its static wraper for more than 20 minutes headcrash?
Fry's would not take it back and i could not go back either due to poor weather. They told me to ship it to Western digital. Western Digitals RMA request is conveluded and difficult to manuver around. i choose to pre pay for a UPS label. it took me 5 tries 3 RMA requests and 2 creditcards before i was finnaly able to get the lable. then i found out i screwed up on my address and that added a 6th RMA but this was after i paid for the label attached to another RMA#. I finaly got a replacement but have not gotten around to try it. i ordered a 3.5" to 2.5" for a computer i am building as a replacement for the current 80GB drive i am using.
Customer Review: GREAT except for subtle high pitched noise
Summary: 3 Stars
I installed this on my MacBook Pro IntelCore Duo (first generation macbook pro with the intel chip), 2 GB of RAM, 15.4 inch screen, 2.16 ghz
Pros:
1. Size - although advertised as 500GB, it is really more like 465 out of the box. Regardless, it's a decent amount of memory.
2. Reliability - every WD HD I've owned (this is my third) has been excellent, no problems as of yet
3. Speed - movies, documents, music, pictures, all load quickly
Cons:
1. Noise - This is why there are 3 stars instead of 5. There is a subtle, high pitched whirring noise that is noticable only when there are no other sounds in the room. Although it is faint, it is high pitched enough to be quite annoying and bothersome. It's been enough of a problem that I've considered getting a quieter HD and returning this one, but I still haven't decided. What makes the noise even more bothersome is that it isn't constant - for example, if I scroll up and down on a website, the noise stops, but resumes immediately after I stop scrolling. This on and off high pitched whirring sound puts a damper on an otherwise great harddrive.
Customer Review: Upgraded my netbook.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have an Acer Aspire One D250 netbook that came with a 160Gb hard drive.
When I updated the OS on this little netbook to Ubuntu 10.04, the performance of the netbook literally went from DOG to RocketShip. I decided to permanently install Ubuntu, but unfortunately, I have a couple of Windows applications I still need, so I have to retain Win XP. This meant moving to a dual-boot environment, and to do that, I wanted a larger hard drive so I had enough room for both OS'es.
I partitioned the 500Gb drive into 3 partitions; a FAT partition for Win XP, a FAT partition for a common area for data, and a Linux partition for Ubuntu. During the Ubuntu install, a 4th (boot) and 5th (swap) partition was created to facilitate the dual-boot environment. The hard drive works great in this environment.
Normally, I would not recommend investing any money to upgrade a netbook. Netbooks are intended to be low-cost entry-level systems, primary for surfing the internet and email.
But moving to Ubuntu improved the performance so much, dual-booting justified the larger hard drive.