| Article Index |
|---|
| Western Digital Scorpio 320GB SATA-II 2.5inch Hard Drive Review |
| 2 - The Test Setup |
| 3 - PCMark05 |
| 4 - HDTune |
| 5 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Western Digital have once again pushed the boundaries of size with their latest notebook drive coming in at a massive (for a notebook) 320GB. Coupled with a Serial ATA-II interface
and 8MB cache, it’s sure to be a good performer. We find out.
The specific model number of the drive we’re looking at today is the WD3200BEVT, part of the ‘Scorpio’ range of drives – well all notebook (2.5”) drives from Western Digital are called Scorpio, so that part’s really irrelevant. The specimen we have here today has the following specifications:
- 320GB Storage Capacity
- Serial ATA-II Interface (3 Gigabit/s)
- 5,400rpm spin speed
- 12ms Access Time
- 8MB Cache Buffer
Unlike some older notebook drives that pushed the capacity of their time and did so by simply adding more platters, and thus increasing the height of the drive, the 320GB Scorpio has the same physical dimensions as every other standard notebook drive, so fitting into any notebook currently or previously on the market shouldn’t be a problem.
To check out this new Scorpio’s performance we’ll be comparing it to two previous Scorpio models, the 250GB (Model#WD2500BEVS) and 160GB (Model#WD1600BEVS), both of which have similar specs of 5400rpm spindle speed, and 8MB cache buffer, however their interface is only 1.5Gbits/s throughput speed, while this new drive is 3GBits/s (Serial ATA-II Standard). We’ll also be comparing it to the Seagate 160GB Momentus 7200.2 Notebook drive, which to date has been the fastest notebook drive we’ve tested. Perhaps the 320GB Scorpio can knock the Seagate out of the top spot thanks to its higher bit density and faster interface speed, despite running at only 5400rpm compared to the Seagate’s 7200rpm, we shall see.
The Test Setup:
Just like the last time we tested notebook drives, we’ll be testing them on the OzHardware Test Bench which is all desktop components, thanks to the fact that Serial-ATA notebook drives use the exact same power and data connections as their desktop counterparts. Our test rig today 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’ll be using two different test suits to put the drives through their paces, firstly we’ll be using PCMark05, which tests the drives in a variety of real-world situations, and we’ll also be using HD Tune which tests and plots the maximum throughput of the drives and their average seek times.
Firstly: PCMark05
As with all our tests in the past, the PCMark05 tests we did with these drives were all run twice to ensure accurate results, with the printed result and average of the two. Only the hard drive specific tests were used.
Despite the Scorpio 320GB’s lower spin speed, it actually managed to outperform the faster spinning Seagate drive in 2 out of 3 tests in the first batch of benchmarks, and running well ahead of its older Scorpio stable mates.
The second batch of PCMark tests showed the Western Digital 320GB Scorpio pulling well ahead of the others, ahead of the older Scorpio’s and even edging out the 7200rpm Seagate Momentus by 8% to 15% on the Virus Scan and File Write tests respectively. This shows that if you’re after a hard drive with the best speed, perhaps bigger is better, and small and fast isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Next: HDTune:
HD Tune is a small program that will graph the performance of the drive from the start of the tracks (outside of the drive/platter) to the end (inside of the drive/platter). The transfer speed can be seen on the graphs below as the Blue line, which is in MegaBytes per Second. This is transfer rate from the media surface (platter) to the host adapter (motherboard), so it represents a true to life raw transfer speed, no cached or buffered reads in this test. Random access times are also graphed, represented by the cloud of yellow dots.
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From the graphs above we can see the 320GB Scorpio well ahead of the other drives, even the 7200rpm Seagate in terms of transfer rate from start to finish, this is mostly thanks to its increased bit density, with the heads able to read more date per revolution compared to the other three drives. All the 5400rpm drives, including the new 320GB Scorpio still lag behind when it comes to Random Access Times though, with the Seagate Momentus leading the way thanks to its 7200rpm spindle speed, so the heads don’t have to wait as long for the right sector to come around.
Conclusion:
The Western Digital 320GB Scorpio sells online for around AU$285, which is not quite as good value in the dollar per Gigabyte stakes as the 250GB version (AU$205) it’s certainly not far off (89c per GB vs. 82c per GB) so there’s very little of that inflated price premium we often we often see with top of the line hardware. At the time of writing this article there is only one other 320GB Serial-ATA 2.5” notebook drive on the market, and that’s from Samsung for around $15 more than the Western Digital.
So the new Scorpio drive has quite a lot going for it, we’ve seen today that’s it’s definitely a solid performer, even when compared to some so-called “High Performance” drives that are available, it’s quite good value and it’s also whisper quiet. When operating on our test bench we could barely hear it at all when it was working, and even after hours of operation it remained quite cool to touch, so heat is no problem even after long periods of use.
Overall it’s a solid performer and quite good value for money, this drive should definitely be on your wishlist if you’re looking to upgrade your notebook drive, or even if you’re looking for some bulk external storage through the use of an external drive case.
OzHardware Rating – 9.5/10 – Excellent!
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
