Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive

Pros: I will keep this short and sweet. I've owned the drive for about 2 years and picked it up on newegg. It was on sell and still is a fast drive with decent cache. I upgraded my old gaming laptop drive in my Asus and it still works without a hitch. Great Product!!!

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: If you received a DOA drive, please contact WD. I buy drives all the time and haven't experienced a DOA one yet.

Pros: Fast (faster than almost any other non-SSD laptop drive), high capacity, seems solid so far.

Cons: The only possible cons are that it runs a little warm (can definitely feel it when resting my wrist above it), and that it likely consumes a little more power than a lower-performance drive. Of course, both of those are more-or-less unavoidable results of it being straight-up better than those lower-performance drives.

Other Thoughts: Bought this as a replacement HDD for my Acer Aspire V3-571G-6622, and I have no regrets whatsoever.

But if you clone another HDD onto this drive (as I did), then make sure to download WD's Acronis Align software to take advantage of the advanced formatting of this drive.

Pros: At least the 3rd one works directly from WD

Cons: Not using it in the laptop as intended. Under test as a desktop drive until it proves itself. Would not trust it as a backup drive at this stage.

Other Thoughts: Had to get the 3rd replacement from WD.
Beware the egg 30 day return starts from the purchase date of the ORIGINAL. Does not include replacements.
WD did not charge return shipping.
Using a laptop drive over 500GB at 7200Rpm judging by reviews from others it seems to be a touch and go situation. I sure will not make the same mistake again.

Manufacturer Response:

We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the Scorpio Black, as this is not the typical experience with the product. It is unfortunate that you experienced several DOA drives, as our drives are all rigorously tested to ensure they are in good working condition before leaving our warehouse. We stand behind our warranty for the duration of the products provided warranty period, and as such, we are here to support our products regardless of the circumstances. We would like to assure you that what you have experienced is extremely abnormal. Should you require anything further from us, you may contact us at 1 (800) 275-4932, or via our support website at: http://support.wdc.com/rs/. Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: None

Cons: Failed after initial install wasting 5 hours of my time

Manufacturer Response:

We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the WD Black, as this is not the typical experience with the product. We are very sorry to hear that your drive did not function so soon after it was delivered. Western Digital does rigorously test and verify all of our drives, prior to shipping, with burn-in and diagnostic tests. As a troubleshooting step, we recommend running either our WINDLG diagnostics software or Macs built-in Disk Utility to check your drives health.
How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/940
How to test a drive for defects or problems on a Mac
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/866
We do stand behind our warranty and replacement policy and would appreciate the opportunity to replace your drive for you directly. Please use the following link for our replacement procedure.
How to get an RMA, (Return Merchandise Authorization) or replace a defective product under warranty
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8
You may contact us at 1 (800) 275-4932, or via our support website at: http://support.wdc.com/rs/. Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: Easy, hassle-free return policy.

Cons: Drive was completely dead right out of the box.

Other Thoughts: While gathering research abroad my girlfriend's HDD began to show signs of being near death. I was visiting her in a week so I decided to get a new HDD and install it when I arrived. I ordered this, knowing that it would arrive a few days before I had to leave.

This drive seemed like a good deal right up until it arrived, when it was completely DOA. I verified the enclosure and cables with a known good drive before I started the return process. The return process was straightforward and easy enough to get rolling, but I was a little put off that Newegg would refund my money only after I had paid return shipping. Still, this was better than the manufacturer's return policy, where they would only replace the drive (no refunds) and still required me to pay return shipping.

I ended up getting a slower drive at a local B&M store. Not as good of a deal and it had lower specs, but it worked right out of the box so it has that going for it.

Bottom line: Don't get this drive if you need something that works right out of the box.

Manufacturer Response:

We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with the Scorpio Black, as this is not the typical experience with the product. We are very sorry to hear that your drive did not function so soon after it was delivered. Western Digital does rigorously test and verify all of our drives, prior to shipping, with burn-in and diagnostic tests. We stand behind our warranty for the duration of the products provided warranty period, and as such, we are here to support our products regardless of the circumstances. We would like to assure you that what you have experienced is extremely abnormal. If there is anything we can do for you at this time, you may contact us at 1 (800) 275-4932, or via our support website at: http://support.wdc.com/rs/. Please indicate within the online case creation or with the first support agent you speak with, that you are responding to a Newegg review, so we route you and your information to the correct team members.

Pros: This drive smoked my factory 5400 rpm HD that was in my laptop. I have a new laptop but that old drive was really holding it down but now it's a whole new system.

Cons: Didn't get it on sale

Pros: Fast
Quiet
Cool

Cons: Can't cook eggs on the cover because it runs so cool

Other Thoughts: I put this and a 128GB Samsung SSD in my HP DV7-6000 laptop (3 spindle laptops rock!!), replacing the 5400rpm 750GB drive that was originally installed. This drive is a perfect companion for the SSD. I couldn't be happier. The 5400rpm drive is now doing duty as an external backup device and is more than fast enough for that role. Having swap and temp on this drive is not noticeably slower than having them on the SSD (at least not with 16GB RAM installed) and I'm avoiding all the excess wear on the SSD.

Pros: Speed, price, reliability

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Put this in an old 2007 MacBook running Lion and it screams. HUGE difference between that and the previous drive. I'm getting 120MB/sec reads and writes according to blackmagic speed test. I have a Kingston SSD in an identical MacBook and it gets 100 write and 125 read. For a older machine that has 1st gen SATA, this is a no brainer!

Pros: No problems sliding this new drive in place of the laptop's old smaller drive. A faster spinning drive makes the laptop more snappy. Not any noisier than the old slower drive (can't hear a difference). Installation went flawless: No physical size or connector differences between this new WDC drive to the old HGST (Hitachi) for the old drive.

Cons: Just a note: Since others have mentioned premature disk death, and because this will be my first long-time use of a 2.5" hard disk, I'll install some monitoring software (e.g., free Acronis Drive Monitor) to check the health of the hard disk. If it lasts past the 9-month pregancy period then it'll last for 5-6 years and I won't need to waste memory and CPU cycles to monitor a drive that has proven itself. Since hard disks ALWAYS die (the question is when, not if), I have external drives to which I schedule regular backups. Hopefully I don't encounter a drive death but they do happen regardless of what brand and model you buy.

The only real 'con' that I encountered was having to get a new driver for my old laptop (see Other Thoughts). That's not a fault with the drive but something other users might consider researching before swapping in a MUCH larger hard disk than what's already in the machine. It caught me by surprise simply because I didn't expect even 6-year old drivers to have a problem with a 750GB drive.

Because this is a faster spinning drive, it may generate more heat (mostly when continuously accessed, not from just spinning faster). The WDC blue and green drives spin at 5400 RPM (as does the HGST old drive this one replaced) because manufacturers need to reduce heat as much as possible for such tightly packed components. Since this laptop is to replace a dead desktop, it will sit permanently on my desk, so I got a cooler stand with 2 80mm fans to help cool the laptop. However, even without using the fans, I haven't noticed elevated temperatures in the laptop - but I also haven't done a lot that would severely tax the faster spinning new hard disk, like huge-file video file conversion.

Other Thoughts: To clone my old drive onto the new drive, it must first be removed from the laptop and accessed as an external drive. Then clone from the external [old] drive onto the newly installed bigger drive. Direct cloning would mean a large portion of the new hard disk would be unusable until repartitioned (create a partition in the unallocated space or resize the cloned partition). This was easy using Acronis True Image (with plus pack) which clones and then resizes. I researched this cloning procedure before replacing the drive. Those that tried cloning from the old drive (still in the laptop) to an external drive (the new drive) and then trying to swap in the new drive encountered failures. Has to be the other way around: old drive as external cloned to new drive installed in laptop.

Created 250GB OS partition (cloned from old now external 120GB drive) and used rest for Acronis Secure Zone to store backups. Keeping the old drive as-is (no writes to it) in the Vantec enclosure as a backup for now in case the new drive dies.

I did have to do one thing with my 6-year old Compaq laptop: after upping to the 750GB WDC drive, a new RAID driver was needed from Compaq. I don't RAID anything but this driver is used for non-RAID hardware file I/O. After installing the new big drive, I got errors in Windows Live Mail, Outlook, and some other apps that pointed to problems with file access. Installing the new HP driver fixed those problems. After encountering the WLM database problem, a Google search found a forum post noting the required newer driver and it worked like a charm.

I don't bother spinning down hard disks. Not interested in the little bit of energy saved versus the electrical fatigue caused by the surge current to spin up the platters. Hard drives have just barely capable motors to spin up the platters and I have no desire to stress on spinup just to save a few pennies a year on electricity. So this drive will remain spinning 24x7. That does NOT mean the drive is always hot. An always spinning hard disk generates very little additional heat. It's constant accessing that will make it hot, like when doing a sector-by-sector cloning of the drive. Using the drive makes it hot. Leaving it spin but not accessed generates little heat, severely reduces thermal expansion (mechanical stress), and eliminate surge current on spinup (electrical stress).

So far, this 7200 RPM drive is not producing more heat than did the old 5400 RPM drive - but access is definitely quicker.

Pros: +Price: Best buy I could find on a small budget.

I've been running this HDD for about 3 months now and I haven't had any problems yet, given I run my laptop 10-18 hours daily. I definitely would suggest this drive to anyone who needs some extra space in their laptop for a low budget. The 7200rpm makes a difference when dealing with more space when compared to a 5400rpm model. It is still fast at ~500gb used.

Cons: -speed: as expected, it's no SSD

Can't really think of anything else...

Other Thoughts: This is a value buy, not great but gets the job done. If that is what you are looking for, then this is a great upgrade.