NotebookReview takes a look at the new WD Scorpio Black and Scorpio Blue Hard Drives:
The Western Digital Scorpio Blue series of 2.5-inch hard drives ($40-$100 street price based on capacity) are rated at 5400rpm with 8MB of cache and are intended for mobile devices that need high-capacity storage, fast and quiet performance, and low power consumption. These drives sacrifice the extreme speed of 7200rpm hard drives, but offer more storage capacity (up to 500GB) and less power consumption under load. Scorpio Blue drives come with a 3-year warranty.
The Western Digital Scorpio Black series of 2.5-inch hard drives ($50-$90 street price based on capacity) are rated at 7200rpm with 16MB of cache and are designed for notebooks that require the fastest possible hard drive performance. These drives sacrifice high capacity (only up to 320GB rather than 500GB) and consume more power in order to achieve the best possible performance. Some Scorpio Black drives (WDxxxxBJKT models only) are equipped with free-fall sensors that detect when the drive is falling and, in less than 200 milliseconds, parks the head to help prevent damage and data loss. Scorpio Black drives come with a 5-year warranty.
