 "Western Digital Blue Slim 1TB WD10SPCX Review")
It looks like Slim is in as far as the hard drive segment goes. But when you see the rate at which ultrabooks are being adopted, hard drive makers have reduce the flab on their internal laptop drives. It makes sense for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to offer higher capacity Ultrabooks at competitive pricing than go for higher capacity SSDs which cannot compete in terms of cost per GB when they are compared with traditional hard drives. After having seen the 5mm Laptop Ultrathin 500GB drive from Seagate last week, we got our hands on the WD Blue Slim laptop drive from Western Digital. So does this drive offer more bang for your buck? Let us find out.
Features
The front face of the WD Slim Blue drive has a large Slim moniker
Western Digital has named this Blue series of drive Slim, as it is just measures 7mm thin. WD also has an UltraSlim drive which is just 5mm thin but it is targeted at OEMs as it comes with an edge connector rather than a standard SATA connector. Coming back to the WD Blue Slim drive, the 2mm additional thickness as compared to the Seagate Ultrathin Laptop drive is more than made up for with the capacity on the WD Slim drive which is 1TB (which is twice that of the Seagate drive). Other features are similar - 5400 RPM of rotational speed, a SATA 6Gbps interface and 16MB of cache buffer. It comes in capacities going from 320GB all the way to 1TB. The WD Blue Slim 1TB drive has a two-platter design.
When it comes to designing slimmer drives with such high capacities, things like shock and vibration control are paramount. WD has used their StableTrac technology, which ensures that the motor shaft of the drive is secured at both ends so as to reduce the system-induced vibrations which can be an issue with multi-platter drives.
At the rear side you have the WD Blue branding and a small PCB in the lower half
The top portion of the drive has a white sticker with the Slim name written across it. At the rear you have the WD Blue branding on a majority of the area and a small PCB in the lower half which is held together by four screws.
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4
RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX
OS Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB
Source Drive: Kingston SSDNow, 120GB SSD
PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Performance
WD Blue Slim 1TB drive has a standard SATA 6 Gbps interface
We try and keep a healthy number of synthetic as well as real life tests to give a better idea of the performance. With hard drive tests, no two runs of the same test will give you exactly the same score, so we run three instances of the same test and then average out the scores to be on the safer side.
The first test we did was the ATTO Benchmark test which gave a sequential read score of 119.83 MB/s and a sequential write score of 116.7 MB/s. We followed this test with Crystal Disk Mark 3.0 which gave sequential as well as random read and write speeds. Given below is the chart of the Crystal Disk Mark scores.
WD Blue Slim 1TB Crystal Disk Mark scores
For the real-life transfer speeds, we transferred a 10GB single file and an 10GB assorted file from the source drive to the Seagate ultrathin drive. After each transfer operation we restart the system in order to clear cache. In terms of real-life transfer speeds it gave around 104.48 MB/s and 102.4 MB/s in sequential read and write speeds respectively whereas assorted file transfer was slower at 95.7 MB/s and 77.57 MB/s for read and writes respectively. These speeds were faster than the Seagate’s 500GB SSHD as well as the UltraThin 500GB drives. Check out the comparison chart below.
Verdict and Price in India
The WD Blue Slim 1TB comes at an MRP of Rs 9200 which works out to Rs 9.87 per GB. In terms of performance, it outclasses both the Seagate SSHD as well as the UltraThin 500GB drives and it also offers a comparatively economical cost per GB. But this again faces the same dilemma as the 5mm slim drive when it comes to buying it over the counter. Unless you already have a slim Ultrabook (with a lower capacity 7mm SSD or HDD) whose storage you are looking at increasing or those who are looking at getting a new Ultrabook where you get the option to put in your own storage drive - the WD Slim 1TB makes a lot of sense.
For regular laptop drive owners looking to replace their drives and who already have a lower capacity SATA 6Gbps drive, the only incentive is higher capacity. If you are only looking at a higher capacity drive and do not care much about performance, then the older WD Scorpio Blue 1TB is available at under Rs 6000. For performance seekers, the Seagate 1TB SSHD is available for around Rs 9500 although it comes in the 9.5mm thick form factor. If your older laptop drive was a 9.5mm one and you are looking at upgrading it, the Seagate SSHD 1TB offers more value for money as not only does it offer a higher capacity but its MLC NAND component will ensure speedy boot and program access times.
So yes, the WD Blue Slim 1TB drive has competitors on multiple fronts and the only way we see it emerging unscathed, is if it makes the deal even more sweeter by offering a more economical price point.
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