WD's Scorpio Blue 1 TB notebook hard drive gets benchmarked

[Shawn Knight]

Western Digital’s new 1 TB Scorpio Blue 9.5mm, 2.5-inch mobile hard drive which launched less than two weeks ago has already been analyzed and benchmarked by the crew over at Hot Hardware. The high capacity notebook drive was pitted against two other spinning disks where it scored respectable numbers across the board.

Specifically, Hot Hardware tested the Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive against a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500 GB drive and a Seagate Momentus 640 GB unit.

“So we're looking at a 5400RPM mainstream consumer-targeted drive here, versus WD's Scorpio "Black" series, which are 7200RPM performance drives for notebooks. However, since areal density per platter has been increased with the 1 TB Scorpio Blue, you'll see that, though its rotational speed is lower, its performance numbers are actually surprisingly good.”

Performance was indeed very good, topping the faster-spinning Scorpio Black in SiSoft Sandra’s Physical Disk Benchmark, CystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark. Hot Hardware concludes that you can't go wrong with this drive if plenty of space is what you are after.

The Scorpio Blue features two internal 500 GB platters and makes Western Digital the first to reach such capacity in a 2.5-inch notebook-friendly design.

I don’t think anybody would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed, but capacity limitations and high price tags have kept them from reaching mainstream success. Speedy spinning drives in large capacities are still a hot commodity since most can’t afford to pay more for a storage solution than their entire notebook cost.

As of writing, the Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive retails for $104.99 at Newegg, quite a bit cheaper than the $139 Western Digital announced when the drive was introduced.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/44934-wds-scorpio-blue-1-tb-notebook-hard-drive-gets-benchmarked.html

 

[Guest]

"I don’t think anybody would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed"

Either that's a mis-print and you meant to say "aren't" or I would strongly disagree and say that SSDs are Exactly where the industry is headed. Be careful of your negatives ^^

 

[howzz1854]

he said it right... "solid state drives 'are' where the industry is headed"

 

[howzz1854]

what about the access time, of all the tests, they failed to report the access time.

i for one would like to see Seagate's Momentus XT line (hybrid SSD) to make it into the 1TB arena.

 

[KG363]

Guest said:
"I don’t think anybody would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed"

Either that's a mis-print and you meant to say "aren't" or I would strongly disagree and say that SSDs are Exactly where the industry is headed. Be careful of your negatives ^^

Pretty sure he has it right

 

[lawfer]

Guest said:
"I don’t think anybody would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed"

Either that's a mis-print and you meant to say "aren't" or I would strongly disagree and say that SSDs are Exactly where the industry is headed. Be careful of your negatives ^^

Huh?

He said he doesn't think nobody would argue (as in, against) that SSDs is where the storage industry is headed. I think you got it wrong...

 

[herpaderp]

Wait...what? That newegg link posted is for the 12.5mm tall drive, and I can't find the 9.5mm one. Are they supposed to be priced the same, and I just can't find it, or will the new one replace the older, larger one?

 

[Guest]

I actually like less data density in mobile drives because based on the results of the 2TB+ desktop drives the reliability falls off the cliff past a certain capacity.

It also could be that the drive quality is decreasing for all major vendors these days.

 

[Guest]

!he said it right... "solid state drives 'are' where the industry is headed""

No, he said nobody would argue a point that that's where the industry is headed.

"I don’t think anybody would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed"

If I break that into two parts
"solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed"
which is preceded by
"I don’t think"

If you said - "I would argue that solid state drives are where the storage industry is headed", then what you're saying is that you agree with the point that SSDs are where things are headed. ('Argue' in this context means to promote the following point, not to disagree with it).
He said he doesn't think people would do that, which means he doesn't think people would argue that point, which means they don't think SSDs are where things are headed.

And the guy seems pretty bright so I don't think that's what he meant ^^
Anyways enough of me being a language Nazi, the story is still pretty interesting. And storage size of that magnitude in a portable laptop is pretty awesome, especially if you have 2 drive bays in your laptop. Having an SSD in one as a boot drive and then a large HDD as a secondary storage drive would make a great combo.