Western Digital Blue 750Gb (WD7500BPVT)

[Dwalls90]

I read that many users were skeptical of this drive as it was just released a matter of weeks ago (if that long ago). Just installed one of these in my Apple notebook. For a non-SSD with such a large capacity, it's very quick in sequential read/write speeds. I attached the Xbench scores for my Macbook 2,1.

Oddly enough, I upgraded from the same drive (but the 500Gb derivative), and the sequential speeds are ~5-10mb/s faster on this 750Gb version. It's only ~$115 shipped from Newegg, and I would highly recommend it! This is certainly a future-proof purchase given that we won't see 1Tb 9.5mm drives with this speed in the near future (even still, 750Gb is a lot of space), and we all know that SSD's won't come down in price to that scale for a few years.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136546&Tpk=750gb western digital

 

[Gabriel GR]

I was actually the one that posted the thread about this drive. It's barely 10 days old. It's not the same drive as the scorpio blue 500gb. That has 2x250GB platters while the 750GB model has too much denser 375GB platters (that should justify the increased performance).

How loud and vibrant is the new drive compared to the stock one and the one it replaced?

Thank's for being an early adopter. I am waiting for them to come to Greece to get my own.

 

[Relznuk]

I'm actually hoping to get one of these. Thanks for the useful review.

 

[Libertine Lush]

Is my memory correct that the very common ticking sound problem with many MacBooks has been attributed to the energy efficiency of WD Scorpio Blue drives, in that they park the drive heads too often? I recall reading, either from a forum post or an article (one certainly carries more authority than the other), that it's attributed to the firmware being optimized for Windows.

And hasn't the ShockGuard feature been a problem before too with MacBooks? Thanks.

 

[Dwalls90]

I haven't encountered the issue of the drive head clicking or parking itself over-frequently ... I would say that this is faster, and quiter.

 

[Absent]

I got one of these the other day to start a hackintosh on with an emachines e725 I picked up cheap. When I first had it going I heard the heads parking quite a bit and thought oh great, but I haven't noticed any of it since.

I've got a different problem though. Before even formating it, Disk Utility was showing it 50GB short of 750. The WD site says OSX is already optimized for the advanced file format and no special action needs to be taken to utilize full capacity. I know its not going to read full capacity, but 50GB? Anyone have any ideas about this?

 

[Dwalls90]

I've got a different problem though. Before even formating it, Disk Utility was showing it 50GB short of 750. The WD site says OSX is already optimized for the advanced file format and no special action needs to be taken to utilize full capacity. I know its not going to read full capacity, but 50GB? Anyone have any ideas about this?

Yes - format it using disk utility under SL, install/restore your system, and when SL boots the entire 750Gb will show up. Most hard drives/Operating systems actually 'use' up 7-9% of a hard drives space because of the way that bytes are counted.

 

[Betelgeuse]

I've got a different problem though. Before even formating it, Disk Utility was showing it 50GB short of 750. The WD site says OSX is already optimized for the advanced file format and no special action needs to be taken to utilize full capacity. I know its not going to read full capacity, but 50GB? Anyone have any ideas about this?

Yes - format it using disk utility under SL, install/restore your system, and when SL boots the entire 750Gb will show up. Most hard drives/Operating systems actually 'use' up 7-9% of a hard drives space because of the way that bytes are counted.

As @Dwalls90 points out, it's just the way the bytes are counted. Hard drive manufacturers usually count 1 kilobyte as 1000 bytes, whereas most operating systems count 1 kilobyte as 1024 bytes. The same thing happens at the megabyte and gigabyte threshold, so this happens three times in modern drives. So:

1000/1024 * 1000/1024 * 1000/1024 * 750 GB (HD Manufact.) = 698 GB (OS)

It's not that you're "losing" hard drive space. It's just that it depends on how you count a kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte. Apple (for reasons that I don't know) recently decided that they would start using the hard drive manufacturers' standards.

 

[Absent]

Thanks for the responses. I'm on Leopard so it is just counting the 750 billion bytes that do show up correctly. I found out that Snow Leopard now counts bytes like the HDD manufacturers count bytes, which just lists the drive having higher capacity than it really does.

Reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg line about buildings that mark the 13th floor as the 14th out of superstition.

"Man, you know what floor you're on. Jump out the window, you will die earlier!"