Notebook Hard Drives: 750GB And 640GB Models Reviewed
Remember when 500GB was the most you could get from a notebook drive? It seems like most vendors have made the transition to 640GB. Western Digital even has its own 750GB model that fits within the 9.5 mm z-height. So, which of these drives is the best?
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD7500BPVT (750GB)
Western Digital currently offers the highest capacity on a conventional laptop hard drive with a 9.5 mm z-height. All others have yet to hit this capacity point. WD has also been the first with 750GB and 1TB capacities on 2.5” drives, but these are based on a 12.5 mm height. Is the highest capacity drive also the fastest drive?
According to WD’s 95.6 MB/s throughput, it is, although Samsung’s Spinpoint M7E is close behind. The only drives that deliver higher throughput are those running employing a 7,200 RPM spindle speed. WD’s 47.2 MB/s minimum throughput is also best in class. That’s not the case for access time, although all four drives are close to each other. The 750GB Scorpio Blue delivers around 100 I/O operations per second, which is good, even if Toshiba and Seagate are faster.
The WD drive has the lowest active idle power requirement at only 0.6W. All others require 0.7W to 1.0W. If you were to compose a capacity per watt index, it would be obvious which drive dominates. Power during HD video playback is a bit higher than on the other drives (1.2W compared to 1.0W to 1.1 W). In the end, WD offers the best throughput and performance per watt on throughput.
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