Customer Reviews

Western Digital 250 GB Scorpio Blue 100 Mb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive - WD2500BEVE

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This 250Gb drive replaced the original 80Gb drive in my G4 PB. The drive affords plenty of extra storage space and by thus adds some extra life to the machine. The reviewer who mentioned that the drive is noisy must have gotten a defective unit: my drive is as quiet as it could be - I can barely hear it in a quiet room and absolutely can not hear it if there is any background noise such as office or lab chatter. The old drive was much smaller and noisier. Very worthwhile upgrade!

Great drive. Simple installation. Note that this is a PATA drive (wide hard-drive connector cables).

When I bought this item it was listed as "Western Digital 250GB 2.5" PATA Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD2500BEVE" on Amazon. That link now takes me to "Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB 2.5" PATA 5400RPM 8MB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD2500BEVE". I am not sure if these are the same. I also bought "Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Hard Drive Upgrade Kit" to clone the hard drive of my Toshiba 1115-S1554 that began complaining weeks ago of an imminent hard drive failure. I made an clone of the old drive and exchanged the drives. New image did not boot. I partitioned the hard drive in to two 125BG blocks and cloned - that did not work. I imaged using XXClone, that also did not boot. Then I partitioned so that the boot partition had same size as the old one (partitioned to 40GB, 90GB and 120GB blocks) and tried separately Apricorn cloning software and XXClone imaging unsuccessfully again and again. Eventually I ended up installing OS from fresh using Toshiba recovery package that came with the laptop years ago. It worked. In the process I must have mechanically installed and uninstalled this 250GB hard drive more than a dozen time each in the laptop and Apricorn enclosure and partitioned and formatted several times. Even after all this, the WD 250GB hard drive is working like a champ. I am glad that that the clucking noise I was used to hear from my old drive is gone. I have a quiet working laptop at the end with plenty of storage space. I have several other WD drives that work reliably. I would recommend this product.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED replacement for 17" PowerBook G4. Upgrading from 60GB to 250GB gives you maximum storage for EIDE/ATA drives available today. Provided you backed-up (cloned) your original drive to an external HD using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper, it's a snap to restore the new drive to pre-installation status. This drive runs cooler and faster than original 4200 rpm HD. The processor generates the most heat on PowerBooks and that heat does not affect the hard drive. Follow the step-by-step directions available in the free installation guides at http://www.ifixit.com to do the hard drive switch yourself. No problems whatsoever with this WD hard drive.

This is without a doubt the worst drive I've ever owned. Like many other reviews here and on Newegg and other sites, this drive had data corruption problems, leaving it unable to boot. After wiping it close to ten times, I had it replaced after just four months. Now, two months after I received a replacement, I'm hearing loud clicking noises, meaning it's breaking down. Worse, Western Digital makes me pay return shipping if I want to receive a replacement drive before I send back the broken one (and with hard drives, you need to work that way), so I have to pay every time their crappy hardware fails! Disgustingly bad hard drive, terrible service. I'll probably never buy from Western Digital again, but I certainly would advise everyone to run the hell away from this product! It will break, I guarantee it.

I bought this because I was running out of space, everyone in the review claimed that it is *super* quiet and it was cheaper at the time of my purchase. This HD makes high frequency beep noise and "tick-tick-tick" sound all the time (even idle). Most people may not hear that frequency noise but I do. It bothered me a lot. I exchanged the HD twice and both of them behavior the same so I believe that it is not a defect issue. My old 80GB Toshiba HD doesn't have this problem. Indeed, I prefer my Toshiba more than this. Unfortunately I need more space and this HD is a lot cheaper compared others including S&H. I have owned and used this HD since last Thanksgiving (Nov 23, 2008). And now I begin getting used to the noise but I still hear it all the time. If you are sensitive to noise like me (especially high frequency), you may reconsider alternative if you could find one.

One more thing, this HD is for ATA-6 EIDE with 250GB capacity. Before you purchase it, make sure your BIOS supports high capacity drive. Otherwise you may run into the issue of 120GB capacity issue. Upgrading BIOS is another alternative if available. Partition the drive is another way to resolve the issue.

This is the largest drive I can get for my powerbook g4 (15 inch) 1.5 ghz as it only accepts ATA drives. My original drive failed after 3.5 years of working (toshiba 80gb) and i had to replace it, so i got this one, which is also a 5400rpm drive but performs a lot better for some reason. It's 3 times larger, it's far quieter, and it's new so obviously doesn't have any bad clusters yet. A very reliable drive so far.

I have never had a problem with western digital drives. My three surviving drives that I still use are all WD: an external 500gb USB drive, another old 40gb drive I still use as a boot disk, and the current one I have in my laptop.

Also, Amazon's shipping of this drive was incredibly fast...

I have to say that I was amazed by the performance of this Western Digital drive. They seem to have come a long long way in the last 12 years. Yes my only experience with WD was 12 years ago and I had been a fan of Conner/Seagate for the last 12 years. This drive is quieter and has better I/O capabilities than the 100GB 7200rpm PATA Seagate Momentus that it replaced. Many people will warn you that it is impossible to install a 250GB HDD on a Dell 700m laptop. I had no problems at all. Plug it in, format, then run the OS installer of your choice.

This drive replaced a 3+ year-old 60 GB drive in my iBook G4. The new drive is as quiet as the old one, as responsive as the old one, and quadruple the capacity. I'm totally satisfied with my purchase.

I bought this drive, the WD2500BEVE 250GB PATA disk drive, for less than $130 and used it to replace the Seagate 160GB drive in my IBM Thinkpad T42. To perform the transfer, I used a drive tray that permits a second hard disk to be added to the Thinkpad and Acronis Disk Director software to copy the partitions.

The speed of this drive seems at least as fast as the Seagate it replaced. It is virutally silent and was barely warm after copying all of my partitions. Considering the price and 3-year warranty, it is a remarkable bargain in storage for your laptop.

Highly recommended.