Western Digital Scorpio

The Scorpio is Western Digital's family of 2.5" mobile hard drives running at 5400 RPM. They are available with either an EIDE interface or the newer SATA interface. The EIDE series has capacities ranging from 40 GB to 250 GB while the SATA series has capacities of up to 320 GB.

This particular model is a 320 GB Scorpio SATA hard drive, which is not only the highest capacity drive in the family but also the only Scorpio hard drive to support the faster Serial ATA 3 Gb/s interface.

All WD Scorpio hard drives support the following features :

WhisperDrive™ - WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive™ combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. These algorithms also optimize the way a drive seeks for data, which significantly improves power consumption. So now silence (and longer battery life) is golden.

ShockGuard™ - WD's ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non- operational shock tolerance.

Although Western Digital did not provide any information on the recording technology or the number of platters, it is highly likely that this 320 MB model makes use of four platters and perpendicular recording technology to achieve its phenomenal storage capacity.

Packaging

The Scorpio hard drive we obtained for this review was an OEM unit. Like most OEM hard drives, it came in just a sealed anti-static plastic packet with nothing more than a sachet of dessicants to keep it dry. Other than the sparse packaging (and the lack of any documentation), this drive is no different from the retail version, right down to the 3-year warranty.

All you need to do is just cut open the plastic packet and slide out the drive. Be sure to ground yourself before handling the drive as static can damage it. In particular, you should try to avoid touching the exposed PCB located at the base of the drive.

If you like your packaging or need to deliver this hard drive by mail, you can always opt for the retail version of the drive. It comes with its own box and proper padding to ensure the drive survives a mail delivery. Of course, the retail package comes with a price premium.