WD 320GB: Maximizing Laptop Storage

a review by Tom Piper

If you are a laptop owner, then you’ve enjoyed the portability, but probably complained that the hard drives are always about a third of the size of a comparable desktop computer. As I’ve migrated from mostly desktop units at home to mostly laptops for everyday use, this frustration has been very annoying because I want to take everything with me. I could acquire an external auxiliary USB drive, but its that much more to lug around.

Western Digital has recently produced a new WD Scorpio 2.5-inch SATA hard drive that was a major performance upgrade for my two-year old MacBook Pro 17”. Their promise became a reality on my laptop with 320 gigabytes of capacity, an 8 megabyte cache, 5400 rpm spin speed and 12 millisecond access time. The heat of my laptop now is only from recharging it, not from drive access . . . not even when I’m doing a 4-hour continuous backup!

This internal drive is truly a high-performance, low power consumption, ultra-cool and hush quiet. Other than an occasional mini-click, I cannot hear any disk whir or chatter (during installation, I actually had to hold the bare drive next to my ear to hear any activity). So far, it appears that my overall battery life and file access time have improved by 10-20% compared to the 200 GB Toshiba drive it replaced (which replaced the original 120 GB it came with). And, did I already say that it is unbelievably quiet and fast?

When Western Digital brags about this hard drive, they say things like:

• Massive capacity - Whether they are in an external drive or a notebook computer, WD’s 320 GB 2.5-inch drives offer the most available capacity for space-hungry operating systems, plus plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video.
• Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive™ combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. These algorithms also optimize the way a drive seeks for data, which significantly improves power consumption. So now silence (and longer battery life) is golden.
• Reliable and Rugged - WD's ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non- operational shock tolerance.

The bare drive (model WD3200BEVT) retails for $169.99 on the Western Digital website, but I’ve seen Internet prices under $150). Incidentally, if you do want this drive in an external USB 2.0 case (like another member of our user group), the WD Passport Portable can also be found for under $150. These hard drives are a tremendous value . . . I thoroughly endorse it to make your laptop faster, quieter, cooler and more resourceful, inside and outside!

Comments

[Abraham Irawan]

Agreed, I just upgrade my 1st generation 2 yo macbook pro 17
battery life is add up to 30-40 minutes, oh yeaaaahhh
WD is great!