| When it comes to hard drives, the basic design has remained unchanged for the most part, and until recently that formula has been very successful. However, with the prices of SSD’s falling and the growing demands for mobile storage, Western Digital is trying to teach an old dog some new tricks. |  |
With the introduction of the Western Digital Scorpio Blue (WD5000LPVT) drive, Western Digital is taking the traditional spinning drive model and adding some SSD reminiscent enhancements. With its new single platter design, WD is able to offer 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB capacities while reducing the drive size down to 7mm allowing them to play in the Ultrabook arena. Take that and some improvements in the energy efficiency department…and the WD5000LPVT is ready to compete with SSD’s head on in a price vs. performance backyard brawl. So…how do things shake out? Let’s compare the WD5000LPVT to an Intel branded SSD and find out.
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Before we get started, let’s take a closer look at the specs for the WD5000LPVT:
- Performance Specifications:
- Hardware
- Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
- Buffer Size 8 MB
- Transfer Rates
- Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
- Physical Specifications
- Formatted Capacity 500,107 MB
- Capacity 500 GB
- Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
- User Sectors Per Drive 976,773,168
- Physical Dimensions
- Height 0.27 Inches / 6.8 mm
- Depth 3.94 Inches / 100.2 mm
- Width 2.75 Inches / 69.85 mm
- Weight 0.20 Pounds / 0.09 kg
- Environmental Specifications:
- Shock
- Operating Shock (Read) 400G, 2ms
- Non-operating Shock 1000G, 2 ms
- Acoustics
- Idle Mode 17 dBA (average)
- Seek Mode 0 22 dBA (average)
- Temperature
- Operating 32° F to 140° F / -0° C to 60° C
- Non-operating -40° F to 149° F / -40° C to 65° C
- Electrical Specifications:
- Power Dissipation
- Read/Write 1.4 Watts
- Idle 0.55 Watts
- Standby 0.13 Watts
- Sleep 0.13 Watts
- Warranty:
- Two-year limited
