With concerns for battery life and operating temperature, manufacturers often saddle laptops with hard drives than don't run as fast or as hot as their desktop brethren. But with a 7,200 rotational speed usually found in a desktop drive, a 16MB cache, and capacities up to 320GB, Western Digital's Scorpio Black internal laptop hard drive promises speed comparable to that of a desktop mechanism. Quiet, efficient, and only marginally hotter than your standard laptop hard drive, the Scorpio Black is an attractive drive for any high-performance seeking user.

But first, the bad news. If you install the Scorpio Black into your Mac laptop, your warranty will be void. It's not an easy installation and requires at least two types of screwdrivers and at least five minutes of your time. I also advise a clean workspace so you don't lose track of all the tiny screws. If you've installed a laptop or desktop hard drive before, you should not have difficulty installing the Scorpio Black. However, if even a relatively simple task like installing RAM seems intimidating, you may want to find a professional to install the hard drive for you.

Test results

To test the Scorpio Black, we tested it in a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM; we also tested the MacBook Pro with its stock 160GB, 5,400 RPM (rotations per minute) Fujitsu MHW2160BHPL hard drive. As a point of comparison, we also ran the same tests on a 2.4GHz iMac with 2GB of RAM, and a 250GB, 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drive with an 8MB cache.

Based on our test results, the Scorpio Black's performance falls between a desktop drive and a stock laptop drive, though surprisingly it did challenge the desktop drive in key areas. To the Scorpio Black's credit, the folder compression test results were within 6 seconds of the iMac's results and even bested the iMac consistently in our file duplication tests. The Scorpio Black-equipped MacBook Pro was 9 seconds slower than the iMac in our Photoshop test, but it was 12 seconds faster than the MacBook Pro with its stock 5,400 RPM drive.

The usual baggage that comes with a faster laptop hard drive--increased noise and heat--is surprisingly minimized with the Scorpio Black, which uses Western Digital's WhisperDrive acoustics. In our tests, the Scorpio Black drive was pleasantly quiet; it certainly didn't sound any louder than the stock MacBook Pro hard drive during our tests.

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