Scorpio Blue: Big Notebook HDDs Go Mainstream

Efficiency With Streaming Reads

The streaming read efficiency test runs IOmeter, reading 64, 128 and 256 KB blocks from the drive sequentially. This tests maximum throughput. We measure the number of I/O operations per second and track the power necessary for this workload to calculate performance per watt.

As you would expect from the nice throughput results, the WD Scorpio Blue performs rather well in this benchmark. The two drives that beat it are the Seagate and Western Digital 7,200 RPM notebook HDD top models.

At the same time, the average power requirement of the Scorpio Blue was the second lowest. Combined with the high performance, this will result in excellent performance per watt for sequential reads.

Drives that perform well, but need a lot of power to provide high sequential throughput, cannot dominate this measurement. WD’s Scorpio Blue at 500 GB combines performance and low power consumption, hence it leads in this category.