Conclusion:
Western Digital has produced another top notch hard drive. The Scorpio 250GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive is a great addition or upgrade for anyone looking for the maximum storage possible in the 2.5" form factor. With a 250GB drive in your laptop, a great deal of multimedia content could be stored for hours of entertainment while traveling. In a professional setting, the capacity should provide ample room for any business presentations, documents, or other files you might possibly need to bring with you.
In addition to a traditional installation inside a computer, the 250GB Scorpio drive would make an excellent choice for use in a portable enclosure, and as tested it can even be used to upgrade to a Sony Playstation 3.
There are two things to consider on the negative side for this drive, with one perhaps being of more interest to most users. While the performance of the drive is quite impressive, it is limited by its SATA 1.5 Gbps interface. Having the performance boost of SATA 3 Gbps would be a great feature, and would really put this drive over the top. The other issue was related to using the drive in a Sony Playstation 3 system. While not a problem with the drive, but with the gaming system, the drive's full capacity cannot be used as Playstation 3 seems to be limited to a partition size of about 205GB, leaving 27GB unaccounted for.
A search of
PriceGrabber finds the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive starting at about $178 from many reputable outlets. This is a very good price, and at roughly $0.71 per GB, compares quite favorably to other 2.5" drives.
I can easily recommend the
Western Digital Scorpio 250GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive for its large capacity and performance, and as such it earns the award of "Highly Recommended".
Pros:
» Largest 2.5" hard drive on market
» Performs better than other 5400RPM drives
» Performs almost as well as a 3 Gbps drive in some tests
» Runs cool and quiet
» Compatible with Playstation 3
Cons:
» SATA 1.5Gbps interface
» Three year warranty is OK, but five years is obviously better
Special thanks to
Western Digital for providing the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB 2.5 Inch SATA Hard Drive to Bigbruin.com for review!
