Is this WD HDD any good?

[daneoni]

So basically i used to have a 7200RPM drive and things were pretty zippy but i recently got a new mac which came with a stock 5400RPM and i kinda miss the old speed so i'm thinking of getting the below drive and using the stock drive as a backup medium. However i wanted to know if this is a good drive?

Also tips on how to make a seamless transition between both drives would be much appreciated

Drive details are:

320 GB Western Digital WD3200BEKT Scorpio Black, 2.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 12 ms

Any good?

 

[yawa]

So basically i used to have a 7200RPM drive and things were pretty zippy but i recently got a new mac which came with a stock 5400RPM and i kinda miss the old speed so i'm thinking of getting the below drive and using the stock drive as a backup medium. However i wanted to know if this is a good drive?

Also tips on how to make a seamless transition between both drives would be much appreciated

Drive details are:

320 GB Western Digital WD3200BEKT Scorpio Black, 2.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 12 ms

Any good?

Seems to be the one everyone recommends. Ill be getting one in a few weeks once ive bought my macbook.

 

[geoffreak]

Should be. I think I have one in my MBP atm.

 

[Sneakz]

Many reviews have its slightly (Like 4-5MB/s) faster than the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM. The higher density in the Scorpio Blue is what makes it almost as fast as the 7200RPM Scorpio Black. The 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 might be a better buy.

 

[daneoni]

Many reviews have its slightly (Like 4-5MB/s) faster than the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM. The higher density in the Scorpio Blue is what makes it almost as fast as the 7200RPM Scorpio Black. The 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 might be a better buy.

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

[mperkins37]

In my experience & my wife's (She runs a High School Mac lab for 8 years)
Western digital drives are good for 1.5-2 years before dying.
6 months or less if you are blessed with a clicking one.
Seagates & Samsungs have better average lifespans & Seagates come with 5 year warranty.
Just my 2Cents.

 

[entity]

After reading this article, I decided on the WD 500GB Blue. For less money, it proves to be just as fast as the 7200RPM Seagate. It uses less power, and is quieter. I'm very happy with it .

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

 

[NewEyesOpen]

After reading this article, I decided on the WD 500GB Blue. For less money, it proves to be just as fast as the 7200RPM Seagate. It uses less power, and is quieter. I'm very happy with it .

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

I put one in my new uMBP 15" and it is great. It runs super fast and really cool as well. I'm not overly worried about it failing because if it does, I'll just put in another one. If it fails, it fails, just get another one.

 

[NewEyesOpen]

In my experience & my wife's (She runs a High School Mac lab for 8 years)
Western digital drives are good for 1.5-2 years before dying.
6 months or less if you are blessed with a clicking one.
Seagates & Samsungs have better average lifespans & Seagates come with 5 year warranty.
Just my 2Cents.

Are you referring to the drives in the Mac's in her lab at school? If so, then they could be used harder and pushed a bit more than an average computer user like you or I or anyone else on the boards who uses the Mac for its applications like iPhoto, GarageBand, Final Cut, etc etc. I think that computers in schools as well as their internal components have a greater chance of not lasting as long, especially if it's in the middle to high schools.

 

[antskip]

After reading this article, I decided on the WD 500GB Blue. For less money, it proves to be just as fast as the 7200RPM Seagate. It uses less power, and is quieter. I'm very happy with it .
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

I am sure you will be happy with it. It is a good HDD. But you would probably have liked the Scorpio Black at least as much. I read the reviews and thought the Scorpio Blue sounded perfect, and once installed thought it inferior in speed as well as noise level to my existing 7200rpm Hitachi. So I went back to it, before making the quantum leap to an SSD. The best thing to me about the Scorpio Blue was the capacity and the price. Other things one has to compare for yourself, if you can. But I am sure most alternatives are very very good...

 

[alphaod]

Many reviews have its slightly (Like 4-5MB/s) faster than the 500GB WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM. The higher density in the Scorpio Blue is what makes it almost as fast as the 7200RPM Scorpio Black. The 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 might be a better buy.

Yes the 500GB model is only comparable in sequential read/write, but is slow in random read/write (something most people do more)

 

[daneoni]

So 7200 RPM drives are still better overall?. I'm wondering if i should just do a 320GB or a 500GB, the thing is i'd want to upgrade to an SSD/8GB RAM in future eitherway

 

[antskip]

So 7200 RPM drives are still better overall?. I'm wondering if i should just do a 320GB or a 500GB, the thing is i'd want to upgrade to an SSD/8GB RAM in future eitherway

If you are going to upgrade to a SSD anyway, why not get a HDD now that will be the better external backup/storage drive when that happens? i.e. the 500GB 5400rpm HDD. That's what I did. I started with a wonderful single-platter 160GB 7200rpm HDD, tried out a double-platter 500GB 5400rpm HDD (found it just "bigger", not in any other way better), then went to a SSD, using the 500GB HDD as my primary external backup drive.