| Article Index |
|---|
| Western Digital Scorpio 250GB SATA 2.5" Hard Drive Review/Comparison |
| Page 2 - PCMark05 |
| Page 3 - HD Tune |
| Page 4 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Western Digital has recently made available a 250GB 2.5” Serial ATA notebook drive which makes it the biggest on the market. We
take a look and compare its performance to some other popular notebook drives.
The model of drive we’re looking at today from Western Digital is the WD2500BEVS, which is part of their “Scorpio” range of notebook drives, with the following specifications:
- 250GB Storage Capacity
- Serial ATA Interface (1.5Gigabit/s)
- 5,400rpm spin speed
- 12ms access time
- 8MB Cache Buffer
As all notebook drives look the same, are easy to install and operate in basically the same manner, the only real way to review one is to test its performance, so will be comparing the new Western Digital 250GB to its little brother, the 160GB Serial ATA 2.5” Notebook drive (Model#WD1600BEVS) as well as the current king of speed in notebook drives, the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB 2.5” Serial ATA Notebook drive (Model# ST9160823AS), which of course runs at 7200rpm compared to both the Western Digitals, which run at 5400rpm. So while the Seagate should still be the faster drive of the three, it will be interesting to see how the new Western Digital 250GB with its higher bit density fairs against it.
The Test Setup:
2.5” Notebook sized hard drives, such as what we’re testing today, utilise a standard Serial-ATA connection (shown below):
This is the same SATA connection as 3.5” desktop hard drives, therefore all tests will be performed on our usual desktop rig, which consists of:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU
- ASUS P5N32-E SLI, nForce680i Motherboard
- Corsair TWIN2X 2GB PC2-8500 Memory Kit (2 x 1GB)
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II Hard Drive (System Drive)
- Antec Basiq 500W ATX Power Supply
- Windows XP Pro SP2
With this hardware setup we will be testing the drives using PCMark05 which helps test the drives in real world performance situations, such as starting windows and performing a virus scan, we will also be using HD Tune which tests the maximum possible throughput and average seek times of the drives.
Firstly: PC Mark05:
All the tests performed with PCMark05 were run twice in succession and the results displayed below are an average of the two, however it should be noted that the results from both tests for all the drives were less than 2% different at the very worst, so the performance of all the drives is at least very consistent and reliable.
While the above tests show that the Seagate with its 7,200rpm is the fastest drive of the three, the new 250GB Western Digital has shown a healthy performance increase over its 160GB counterpart, and in the ‘XP Startup’ and ‘File Write’ tests comes very close to the Seagate’s performance, despite the Western Digital running at a lower speed of 5,400rpm. So we can see that the increased bit density of the higher capacity drive seems to have helped with its raw data throughput speed.
Next: HD Tune
HD Tune is used to measure and graph the total drive throughput, going from the start (outside) of the platters to the end (inside). So the beginning of the test should be the drive’s maximum speed and the end will be its lowest speed, this is represented by the blue line measuring Megabytes per second. Seek/access times are also measured by HD Tune, again going from the outer to the inner edges of the platters. The access time test measures how long it takes the head to go from its idle position at the outer edge of the disc to find a particular track on the disc/platter. This is represented by the yellow cloud of dots.
From the above results we see the new 250GB Western Digital is well ahead of the old 160GB version, and surprisingly comes very close to the speed of the Seagate in terms of its throughput speed, but lags well behind in regards to its access time. This helps also to explain the PCMark05 results, where the 250GB Western Digital was close to the Seagate in the tests involving large data transfers, such as the file write test, but lagged behind in the tests involving far more random access, such as the virus scan.
Conclusion:
It’s great to see 2.5” notebook size drives making at least some progress in keeping up with their 3.5” desktop cousins in terms of storage capacity and they are certainly capable of very reasonable performance. However with the 250GB model being the ‘latest and greatest’ product on the market you certainly pay a premium for it, the 250GB model we tested here today sells online for around AU$315, while the 160GB version is only $165. The 250GB version is almost double the price for only 56% more capacity, so unfortunately at this point in time the value isn’t all that great.
The Western Digital 250GB drive certainly has excellent performance for a 5,400rpm drive and its big storage size will be a blessing for those of us who use 2.5” drives in external drive cases for mobile storage or who want to upgrade their laptop to the biggest and best, however I will wait until the price comes down a bit to buy one for myself.
Pros:
- Big Storage for a notebook drive
- Very Respectable Performance
- Whisper Quiet
Cons:
- Price
OzHardware Rating 8/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
