It's not hard to drive in the West (Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320 GB)

Member Name: blissman70

Product:	Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320 GB
Date:	11/11/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good space for everyday use, great price and works like a charm

Disadvantages: Not quite the 320BG stated...

All computers need a many things to do the job they are supposed to do, from a processor to a motherboard, but a Personal Computer would not be so personal with a hard drive to keep all that important information on it.
A hard drive holds Data that you need to run your computer, the drives, the Operating system, applications and the files you have built up over the time, so eventually, most smaller hard drives will fill up eventually.
This build up of data will then leave you with two options, either deleting what you feel may not be needed or buying a larger hard drive to create more space with out losing your data...

So when the 80GB internal hard drive on my daughters Dell, laptop, running vista premium, began to fill up with all sorts of her 'crap' she asked me to get her a bigger one so she didn't lose any of her stuff.
After a good search for the right internal HD I finally came across a selection by several different companies, all claiming to offer the best quality at a good price. But the one that jumped out at me was from a company called Western Digital, who I had dealt with before and felt quite confident about.


** Brief description... (technical stuff coming up)

* 2.5" internal hard drive
* 320GB hard drive
* Serial ATA
* 300 Mbps transfer rate
* 5400 rpm spindle speed
* 8 MB buffer zone
* Works with all Windows (not sure about 7)
* Shockgaurd technology protects the drive from shocks
* Whisperdrive technology gives a quiet performance with great power consumption.
* SecurePark technology, which means that the reading head never touches the disk, therefore giving longer life to the drive.
* 70mm by 100mm by 9.5mm
* 117 grammes

So, in layman's terms, it is a good sized storage unit for inside certain laptops, it runs at a whisper, (almost) and with all the technology to save your battery from draining to quick.

** IN CONCLUSION...

Once this hard drive was delivered, (and may I say it came well protected in recyclable packaging and it was delivered within 48 hours of ordering, which, considering there was a postal strike, is some speedy delivery indeed, so hats off to amazon and the Royal Mail for that), It was a simple matter of putting the information onto it from the old hard drive. So, using the caddy/enclosure which housed the 2.5" SATA hard drive, turning it into an external hard drive, I went about cloning all the data from the 80GB onto the new WD 320GB.
Then, once done it was a matter of taking the old hard drive from my daughters Laptop and sliding the new one home... job done and not one bit of information lost during the process, (although to be sure I did put the Windows Operating System Disk and ran it as a repair rather than a full install).
Once up and running I had to put it through its paces, (much to my daughters disgust as she was forced to do other things instead, like reading books), so I gave it a full service, testing the claims that Western Digital made.

They claim that it is one of the quietest internal drives on the market and it does sound quite quiet as it searches for what it's been asked of, although you can still hear it working.
They also claim that it is optimised so as to improve battery life, well, I have put it to the test several times and can definitely say that the claims are quite true indeed as I have noticed a vast improvement in how long the battery actually does last, even though it is a couple of years old, (maybe I should buy a new one next). .
The speed of data transfer is as fast as any other system I have used, whipping open files, programs and other items in a flash so I don't feel like I'm waiting around for a bus.

The actual hard drive itself looks like a small metal box on one side and a complicated mess of microchips and wiring on the other, (although when you see pictures of a Hard drive for sale in places like amazon then you would half expect them to look like a miniature turn-table that a small disc jockey would use, but don't be alarmed, the actual hard drive is housed quite safely inside the casing.

Unfortunately, like all sized Hard drives, when it states the actual size of the drive in GB it never actually gives you that amount. So when this 320GB drive is actually formatted and slotted inside your system there is only about 300GB of usable space, although some of that is used by your OS, apps and other important stuff which helps run your PC, but 320GB is quite adequate for most users.
My daughters laptop now has over 230GB of space so she can store all those videos, pictures, homework files and other personal stuff on to it, (although little does she know that even with it being password protected I can still check on what is stored onto her PC as I like to make sure there's nothing 'dodgy' going on for her own safety)

In all, a very cheap hard drive which fits most newer types of laptops, (although do check your laptops specs before ordering). It runs almost silently under your tapping fingers and it actually does give your battery a little extra help.
So if you want to get this nice little space booster for your laptop then you can get it from amazon for around £40.00, which is a bargain indeed.

** NOTE...

I was able to clone a hard drive onto this new one but if your old Hard drive is damaged then you can simply install your OS from scratch once this Hard drive is in your machine.

** And, for all you gamers out there, this drive is PS3 compatible, which is good.

Summary: Western Digital are improving all the time

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