Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB review

Laptops can be notoriously difficult to upgrade, so adding a faster hard disk is one of the few things you can do easily increase performance. Western Digital’s Scorpio Black range of 2.5in hard disks all have 7,200RPM spindle speeds, so should be faster than the typical 5,400RPM disks found in most laptops.

In our file transfer benchmarks, the Scorpio Black produced some very fast read speeds. Large files were read at 113.7MB/s and small files at 68.7MB/s: both very quick scores for a 2.5in hard disk. Large file were written quicker than average at 83.4MB/s, but small files were much slower at just 32MB/s. In spite of this, the overall average still makes it one of the fastest 2.5in disks around. Although there aren’t many laptops capable of running it, the disk could still load Crysis in 35 seconds.

The Scorpio Black 750GB also has one of the largest capacities found in a 2.5in disk. With 699GB of usable space after formatting, it should provide plenty of space without resorting to external USB disks. Unlike other large capacity laptop hard disks, it does this without exceeding the standard 9.5mm depth, so it will fit in almost all laptops.

You do pay slightly more for the extra performance; at around £80, the Scorpio Black is £20 more than most similarly sized drives. Ultimately the Scorpio wins out though for its superior transfer speeds and a lengthy five-year warranty.