I only use WD drives all of them except for one has given me years of trouble free service. my first WDC drive was a 15MB unit with my 486 machine a zstation 425

I can't tell if Seagate makes anything worth buying anymore.

I have a question: Is drive temperature proportional to power consumption? I really don't want to increase the already incredible ball roasting power of my Macbook, so I want a cool drive.

And what about shock protection? How important is this in a notebook drive? I never drop my laptop but it could happen...

My only criticism of Western Digital is that you often have to get their high capacity drives, even if you don't need the space or extra moving parts, if you want to secure new technology platters. This happens because unlike other drive makers WD does not document when existing models migrate to a new platform.

In the case of these notebook drives, only the 400 and 500 GB Scorpios currently ensure 250GB platters, but buying a 250 GB Scorpio you can reasonably end up with an old tech, dual platter build.

This problem is more pressing in my area, and probably other markets outside the US, because here high capacity drives take longer to come down in price, and old tech stocks stay longer in the channel.

does anyone know if you can buy something similar to the velociraptor 2.5 sled for 3.5 mounting? even if it is not as fancy with fans and cooling, i sure would like to be able to buy a sturdy 2.5 sled/3.5 bracket mount adapter. suggestions?

Geoff, what's the firmware on the Seagate 7200.4?

It's amazing how WD comes out from every HDD review as the winner in some way or another. Good products.

Note about the article:
Could we please remove the X25 results from page 11? Or to put in a page without it and with the mechanical drives only? It makes the graphs pretty useless now and it would be interesting to see the differences between the various drives.

This article came out just a day after I received my Western Digital Scorpio. I was inches away from getting the Samsung, and I'm glad I didn't.

These drives' power consumption is low enough that except for spinup they could easily be powered off of a single USB port when used in an external enclosure (USB power is 5V and the spec requires that ports provide at least 500mA; many provide more and the upcoming USB3 spec calls for 900mA which should be plenty). Since external enclosures are one of the main use cases for these beasts and since manufacturers don't often tell you what you need to know about their drives' spinup power, it'd be nice if TR would add spinup power to their testing.

When it comes to buying a hard drive, I trust Western Digital to deliver fast acting relief for 'bout'toXplode space.

Get yours today.

I would like this done with the mechanical desktop hard-drives around 1TB again, since seagate has released its newer HDD's in hope of fixing old problems.

Nice to see WD do well.
Even though I am usually a Seagate fan, I just picked up a 320 WD Black drive.

Woot. I actually just got the WD drive from Bestbuy for $100.
I dropped my netbook and that is my replacement drive. Very nice to have 500GBs on my laptop. I'm using it to back up my desktop since I always have my netbook on me.

WD just keeps on delivering.

WD is showing us what steady and planned development can do. A few years ago, WD was mostly synonymous with the Raptor. Now they can be bought anywhere. For any given capacity WD drives are statistically more reliable and better performing than the competitors, and in many retail stores, their 2.5" HDDs are cheaper than Seagate's.
Good, WD, keep up the good work.

Typo on the first page.

"which is just a smidgen less storage than 512MB SSDs"

TR: Thank you so very much!

I was just setting off on a 'lil search 'round the Net for a bit of a run down on the state of play re: 500 GB notebook drives. I plan on sticking on in my MacBook.

I look forward to reading this (very timely) review.