Western Digital Scorpio Drives

Western Digital divides their internal hard drives into four distinct families :

• the Desktop Storage line - WD Caviar Black, WD Caviar Green and WD Caviar Blue drives,
• the Mobile Storage line - WD Scorpio Black and WD Scorpio Blue drives,
• the Enterprise Storage line - WD VelociRaptor, WD S25 and WD RE4/3 drives, and finally,
• the CE (Consumer Electronics) Storage line - WD AV drives.

Western Digital's Mobile Storage line has two different products :

• Western Digital Scorpio Black - for high-performance applications
• Western Digital Scorpio Blue - for big storage capacity

There are two fundamental differences between the two 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.

Packaging

Like most OEM-packed hard drives, the WD Scorpio Blue 640 GB hard disk drive came in just a sealed anti-static plastic packet with a sachet of dessicants to keep it dry. Other than the sparse packaging (and no documentation), this OEM-packed 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 removing and handling the hard disk 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 disk 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 as well.

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