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The WD Scorpio Black laptop drive is fast, quiet, efficient, and nearly as fast as conventional desktop drives.
Supporting a SATA 3Gbit/sec interface, the 2.5-inch WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT comes with an ample storage capacity of 320GB, spin speed of 7,200rpm, and has a 16MB buffer size. All these specs hint at a high performance drive and our benchmark results agree. With average random read and write speeds of 59.8 MB/s and 59.9 MB/s, respectively, and an overall CPU utilization of just over 10 percent, the WD Scorpio Black ranks above every laptop drive we have reviewed.
Access time was clocked at 14.9 milliseconds and our real-world file-transfer tests were carried out with a 6.42GB ISO file and a folder structure comprising of 2.16GB. Average read-write transfer speeds of 68 MB/s (for the ISO file) and 56.8 MB/s (for the folder structure), respectively, are very good indicators of the drive's ability to gauge day-to-day workability.
Throughout our tests the WD Scorpio Black was barely audible, though some noise is due to its faster spin speed. Similar current-generation competing drives to watch out for are the Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 and Seagate Momentus 7200.3.
The WD Scorpio Black comes with a five-year warranty. This drive can also be used for external storage and digital media players (for eg. Playstation 3). One look at the asking price of Rs.10,500 (US$213) makes it clear that performance doesn't come without a hefty premium. But if you want to get the most out of your laptop, the WD Scorpio Black is certainly a very good drive to bank on.
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