Here it is, the new capacity king: the Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS. But is it the new performance champion as well?

It stores as much as 250 GB across two platters at 125 GB each. We expect a 120 GB version with a single platter soon as well. The average access time of 17.8 ms is not particularly fast, but still acceptable for a 5,400 RPM drive. We should keep in mind that high data densities are counterproductive to short access times. But data transfer rates are surprisingly fast; a maximum of 54.5 MB/s is more than the maximum transfer rate of the 7,200 RPM drive Hitachi Travelstar 7K100, but Western Digital cannot outperform the 7,200 RPM champion Seagate Momentus 7200.2. However, even the average and minimum transfer rates of the WD2500BEVS beat the Travelstar 7K100 as well as any other 5,400 RPM 2.5" drive - bravo!

The PCMark05 application benchmark underscores what we found in our low-level tests. However, the relatively long access time prevents an even better result in the Windows XP Startup Performance benchmark.

Although a maximum power requirement of 3.4 W is somewhat less than optimal, it is still less than the 4.6 W of Hitachi's Travelstar 7K100 at 7,200 RPM. Keep in mind that the Scorpio WD2500BEVS outperforms the older 7,200 RPM in every benchmark except access time and I/O, but requires 50% less energy. Clearly, this isn't a drive to save energy, it is a product for power users who want both maximum performance and high storage capacity.