Western Digital 250 GB Scorpio Black SATA 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive
I had been looking to upgrade the stock hard drive in my early '08 MacBook Pro, which was a Hitachi 250GB 5400 RPM w/ 8MB cache drive. That old drive was fine, but since speed was my primary concern, and SSD's were too expensive at the time of purchasing this new WD drive, I was looking for the fastest non-SSD laptop hard drive available.
I have both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 on this new WD hard drive. I use Windows 7 primarily for gaming and Snow Leopard for everything else (lots of multi-tasking) non-gaming related. After doing a _LOT_ of research into what the fastest non-SSD drive, I came to a couple of different solutions. A 320 GB 7200 RPM Seagate drive, a 500 GB 5400 RPM WD Blue drive, and the drive I'm reviewing now, the 320GB 7200 RPM WD Black drive. The 500 GB WD drive uses 2 platters, making it "almost" as fast as this 320GB WD drive, but from the many various benchmarks I had come across, this 320 GB WD drive consistently was faster (and in some cases much faster). While the Seagate drive had shown to be faster than this 320 GB WD drive in some benchmarks, I didn't feel confident in the Seagate brand enough (I've personally had some bad experiences with their drives, and I know other people who also have had similar experiences). I know that part is subjective, but still. The 320GB WD drive seemed to be the most reliable, pretty much the fastest, and also happened to be the cheapest of the three ($71). So I bought, got it, and installed it.
[REVIEW BEGINS HERE--->] Some of the reviews here claim that this drive is "noisy" or hotter than their old drive. First things first, this drive is no more hot than a 5400 drive. In fact, it really does feel cooler if anything. Remember that I was using a 2 year old 5400 RPM Hitachi drive before. I also haven't noticed any negative affects on battery life. So already, this drive is awesome. Now, on to the noise debate. The "clicking" of the drive heads themselves (that noise you hear when your hard drive is working or "thinking") is nearly _silent_. It's quieter than my old 5400 RPM drive. This really surprised me here. However, the actual spinning disc platters themselves are a little noticeable, but that will come with ANY 7200 RPM drive. That is not to say that it's loud by any means, it's not. It's still a very quiet drive. I also did not really notice any extra vibration, although there have been one or two times where I did. But even then, it was hardly noticeable unless you're in a completely quiet room where you can hear your own ears ringing.
The drive size is...subjective. 250 GB was fine with me, so 320 GB is even better. But this will change from person to person obviously. I had plenty of room to install Snow Leopard and many applications/files/music/documents/etc., along with Windows 7 and many games. And even then I still have lots of room to spare.
Now the important part; the speed. Damn this drive is fast. The hard drive section of the Windows Experience Index score went from 5.2 in the old drive to 5.9 on this drive (5.9 is the score limit for mechanical hard drives in Windows 7). Everything I used to do is now done in half the time. It's basically a 33% speed increase in loading times across the board. Games load so much faster now. Multitasking with certain applications is no longer a pain in the ass. Things that used to make me wait leave me pleasantly surprised now because they load so much faster. It will give new life to your drive that no other mechanical drive could.
TL;DR: If you want the fastest non-SSD drive available today for your laptop, get this drive.
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