Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT

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Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT

Jayesh Limaye, Mar 03, 2008 1820 hrs IST

A notebook drive with desktop-drive-like performance

Fast, silent, huge capacity

Quite expensive

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Specifications

Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity: 320,072 MB
Capacity: 320 GB
Interface: SATA 3 Gb/s (SATA-II)
Rotational Speed: 5400 rpm (nominal)
Buffer Size: 8 MB
Average Latency: 5.50 ms (nominal)

Seek Times
Read Seek Time: 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time: 2.0 ms (average)

Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA): 3 Gb/s (Max)
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk): 850 Mbit/s (Max)

Physical Dimensions
Metric (W x D x H): 69.85 x 100.2 x 9.5 mm
Weight: 0.117 Kg

Salient Features

As mentioned, the WD3200BEVT has a capacity of 320 GB -- quite a necessity today to be able to accommodate large operating systems and still have oodles of space for your data such as movies, music, and games. Rotational speed is 5400 rpm, and there's 8 MB of buffer -- enough for smooth and sustained data transfers.

The drive features the SATA-II interface

As you can see above, the drive features a SATA interface -- the faster 3.0 Gb/s SATA-II. As WD claims, the drive is indeed quieter and has a much lower degree of vibration than the other notebook drives we've seen thus far. WD's WhisperDrive technology means the drive achieves better acoustics by the use of innovative algorithms. Lower noise levels indeed mean less loss of energy through mechanical vibrations, resulting in lower power usage and longer battery life for the laptop.

Like its desktop counterpart, this drive, too, features ShockGuard a technology to protect the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shock. Similarly, it also features SecurePark technology, which parks the recording heads while the drive is spinning up or down or when it is off, thus eliminating the chances of the heads touching the disk surface. This improves the life of the drive and makes it more reliable.