WD Black WD1600BEKT, 160GB - Reviews

Aankoop
Ik heb deze WD drive gekocht voor miijn Samsung NC10. Ik heb gekozen voor de 160GB single platter versie, zodat het stroomverbruik en eventuele vibraties binnen de perken blijven. Ik heb ook nog de Seagate 7200.3 overwogen. Volgens diverse benchmarks op Techreport.com is de Western Digital Scorpio Black echter sneller in de praktijk.



HD Tune resultaat.
HD Tune meet de doorvoersnelheden en toegangstijd. De toegangstijd van 14.4ms is opvallend laag.



(de rest van deze review is in het engels omdat ik deze ook op een engelstalig forum heb geplaatst)

Real World Performance
The WD1600BEKT will be compared to the stock drive of the NC10: Hitachi 5K320, 5400rpm. Both are 160GB single platter drives with the same density. To measure the real world performance I have performed a couple of simple benchmarks. Each test was run about three times, averages are displayed. The hard drives were cloned with Acronis True Image, so that the content was exactly identical.

Booting XP
I measured the time it took from pressing the power button until first seeing the desktop and then until the wireless lan was connected.
Hitachi 5K320: 31 sec, 55 sec. (until desktop, until wlan)
WD1600BEKT: 31 sec, 47 sec.
Comment: Some improvement although I hoped to see more improvement.

Hibernating
Running Firefox (10 tabs), Live messenger, Internet explorer, Utorrent, Emule.
Timed by hand from pressing hibernate until power completely off. After that resuming.
Hitachi 5K320: 27 sec, 19 sec. (hibernate, resume)
WD1600BEKT: 15 sec, 17 sec.
Comment: Especially in writing the content of the memory to the drive the WD is a lot faster, almost twice as fast.

Launching Firefox
Including several plugins and 10 tabs with common websites. First measurement at all tab titles displayed, second measurement at content displayed.
Hitachi 5K320: 20 sec, 30 sec.
WD1600BEKT: 12 sec, 21 sec.
Comment: This is a nice improvement. This is where a good 7200rpm drive pays off.

Power measurement
Power drain measured with RMClock playing movie from hard drive with WMP, lowest brightness, max battery profile.
Hitachi 5K320: 11.5 watt
WD1600BEKT: 11.2 watt
Comment: To my surprise the WD seems more power efficient than the Hitachi in this test. In my normal usage I don't notice any change in battery life.

Virus scan
Scanned 66804 files on the C drive with Avira free version.
Hitachi 5K320: 10 min 11 sec
WD1600BEKT: 7 min 45 sec
Comment: Significant improvement. Almost 25%.

Noise, heat and vibration
After reading a few WD3200BEKT reports of clicking noise and vibration I was a bit worried. The drive turns out to be very quiet, similar to the Hitachi. I did notice a slight increase in vibration. Not much, but noticeable. The highest temperature I have witnessed so far is 39 C, with a room temperature of 20 C. This was after doing a lot of benchmarking. This is pretty cool for a hard disk, especially considering it's a 7200rpm.

Conclusie
Zoals je kunt zien zijn er wel prestatie verbeteringen, maar ze zijn niet echt spectaculair. In de praktijk merk ik dat opstarten vanuit hibernate rapper gaat en dat Firefox wat sneller start. Al met al heeft de upgrade me 17 euro gekost (kon de oude voor 40 verkopen). Dat is het net waard vind ik. Als je meer aan multi tasking doet wordt het meer de moeite waard, zoals te zien in deze review waar de verschillen tussen 5400 rpm en 7200 rpm goed tot uitdrukking komen.

In de afbeelding hier beneden zijn de resultaten te zien van de IOPS meting van HDTune en het resultaat van CrystalMark. Tevens is er voor de vergelijking het HDTune resultaat van de 160GB Hitachi 5400rpm.

Gebruikt in combinatie met:

• Samsung NC10-KA04
• Windows XP