HotHardware reviews Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 2.5" inch hard drive
Most of you probably already know that 2.5" notebook hard drives typically aren't as big or fast as hard drives found in desktop machines. In case you aren't aware, most laptops are sold with 5400RPM hard drives that range from 60GB to 100GB. In contrast, most desktops are currently sold with 7200RPM hard drives with capacities of up to 1TB. Just like desktop hard drives, though, laptop hard drives have gotten quite a bit bigger and faster over the last couple years.
While desktop hard drives hit 1TB (1,000GB) a while ago, laptop hard drives recently reached 250GB. At least one manufacturer will have a 320GB laptop hard drive available soon, but that still doesn't get us anywhere near 1TB in our laptops. Thankfully, though, if performance is your main concern, you can get a 7200RPM laptop hard drive now if you chose to do so.
Today, we have one of the largest laptop hard drives on the market in our labs, the 250GB Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS. At 5400RPM, it may not be the mobile speed king, but this 2.5" SATA hard drive offers a plethora of nice features, like an 8MB cache and WD's WhisperDrive and ShockGuard technology. Plus, the benchmarks might just surprise you about how well a 5400RPM drive can perform. Read on to see how well the Scorpio WD2500BEVS performs compared to a 100GB 5400RPM 2.5" hard drive and a 500GB 7200RPM 3.5" drive...
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