Product Reviews

Notebook hard disks tend to be far less spacious than those found in desktop PCs, but Western Digital's 250GB Scorpio is the roomiest notebook disk yet, rivalling the capacity of some of its desktop counterparts.

The Scorpio is also one of the fastest 2½in hard disks we've seen. It spins at only 5,400rpm, but came close to the speeds of theoretically faster 7,200rpm disks. It wrote large files at 39.2MB/s and read them at 43.8MB/s. Small files were written at 10.5MB/s and read at 11.8MB/s.

This speed doesn't come at the expense of battery life. With the Scorpio installed, our notebook's battery lasted an extra 18 minutes. Other 2½in hard disks we've reviewed have decreased battery life.

The Scorpio is the best notebook hard disk we've seen. Just bear in mind that it uses a SATA instead of a PATA connection, so check which interface your notebook uses before buying.