Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640 GB Mobile Hard Disk Drive

There are two fundamental differences between Western Digital's Scorpio Black and Scorpio Blue drive families - spindle speed and storage capacity. The Scorpio Black drives spin at 7,200 RPM and are currently limited to a maximum capacity of 320 GB. The Scorpio Blue drives, on the other hand, spin at a more sedate 5,400 RPM but have a maximum capacity of 1 TB. The Scorpio Blue drives offer these key features :

• Massive capacity - Whether they are in an external drive or a notebook computer, WD Scorpio Blue SATA drives continue to offer the highest capacity for space-hungry operating systems with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video. A slight increase in overall drive height (750 GB and 1 TB only) has driven storage capacity for 2.5-inch form factor drives upwards to a realm once thought to be impossible.*

• Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. 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.

• Reliable and rugged - 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.

• Fast and efficient - Ultra-fast 3 Gb/s SATA interface speed yields performance fit for demanding mobile applications.

While Western Digital offers Scorpio Blue drives in capacities of 1 TB and 750 GB, these models are 31.5% thicker than standard 2.5" drives and may not fit most notebook storage bays. They also spin at a slower spindle speed of 5,200 RPM. The model with the largest storage capacity, that also conforms to the standard 2.5" form factor, is the 640 GB WD Scorpio Blue hard disk drive, and this is the drive we will be looking into today.

For more details, read our Comprehensive Review!

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Review

• Comprehensive Review

Model

• WD6400BEVT

Formatted Capacity

• 640,135 MB

Guaranteed Sectors

• 1,250,263,728

Bytes Per Sector

• 512 bytes

Sectors Per Track

• NA

Cylinders

• NA

Platters

• 3 Platters

Read/Write Heads

• 6 Read/Write Heads

Recording Method

• NA

Interleave

• 1 : 1

Spindle Speed

• 5,400 RPM

Cache Buffer

• 8 MB SDRAM

Internal Data Transfer Rate

• 106 MB/s (sustained, maximum)

Maximum I/O Transfer Rate

• 3.0 Gbits/s

Average Seek

• 12.0 ms

Track-to-Track Seek

• 2.0 ms (average)

Average Latency

• 5.5 ms

Drive Ready Time

• 4 seconds (average)

Interface

• Serial ATA 3 Gb/s

Supported SATA Data Transfer Mode

• 3.0 Gbits/s

SATA Hotplug Capability

• Yes

Maximum Height

• 9.5 mm
• 0.374 inches

Maximum Width

• 69.85 mm
• 2.75 inches

Maximum Length

• 100.2 mm
• 3.94 inches

Maximum Weight

• 117 g
• 0.26 lb

Power Requirements

• +12V DC ± 10 %
• +5V DC ± 5 %

Power Consumption

• 2.5 W (Read / Write)
• 0.85 W (Idle)
• 0.25 W (Standby)
• 0.10 W (Sleep)

Ambient Temperature

• 0 °C to 60 °C (Operating)
• -40 °C to 65 °C (Non-Operating)

Maximum Shock

• 350 G @ 2 ms (Read)
• 1000 G @ 2 ms (Non-Operating)

Drive Acoustics

• 23 dBA average (Idle Mode)
• 26 dBA average (Performance Seek Mode)
• 25 dBA average (Quiet Seek Mode)

Non-Recoverable Read Errors

• 1 error per 10¹⁴ bits read

Load/Unload Cycles

• 600,000 (minimum)

MTBF

• NA

Warranty

• 3 Years Limited Warranty (OEM or Retail)