Features:

  • Specifically designed for small form factor desktops, laptops, and Mac computers
  • Performance 2.5-inch hard drives available in up to 1TB capacities
  • Designed for creative professionals, gamers, and system builders
  • Enhanced-availability (EA) models for applications needing around-the-clock access to lower-transaction environments
  • 5-year manufacturer's limited warranty
READ: 1 TB and 750GB are different reviews. 750 Great drive in both servers and laptops!! I own 17 of them.

WARNING: Reviews for both the 750GB WD Black and the WD Black 1TB Performance Mobile are apparently going to the same review text. So beware what you read might not be what you are getting unless the reviewer was more specific. They are NOT the same drive and have different characteristics! I'll list both here. RE: The WD Black 750 GB Drive - 5 stars: I've purchased about 20 or so of these - some from Amazon and some from a local computer store. They work well and have not seen one failure in 3 years. One server has 10 of these as a Raid array. Plus they won't cause problems with fake thermal runaway if you install them in an HP Proliant DL380 G6 / G7 server like many drives will. I'd give you a pointer to an article I wrote on that except Amazon doesn't like external URLs in the reviews. All this and the WD Blacks are 5 year warranty, this is a 7200 RPM drive, and ... well, you just can't go wrong with this drive in your laptop or server! RE: The WD Black 1TB Performance Mobile Hard Disk - 3 stars This is far from a 1 TB version of the 750 GB. It is a different design, consumes WAY more power, and is NOT compatible with the various HP servers without causing thermal run-away. It also runs much warmer (which is not why the thermal run-away, it is because of the temperature value(s) reported by the drive)

Fast, Reliable, Cool

When any of my friends or family need a laptop, they usually ask me to find something for them. This is the hard drive I almost invariably pick. The computer I'm writing this review on is sporting a WD7500BPKX. I give this hard drive 5 stars, but in reality, I would like to give it 4.9. While close to perfection, the drive does fall short in one area: noise. More on that later. I hadn't been with WD since the ATA Scorpio days, but a few years ago, I found this drive on Passmark's charts as the fastest mechanical 2.5" drive that runs reasonably cool. Thicker enterprise 2.5" drives can be quite quick, but aren't always appropriate for laptops because they run hot and obstruct airflow. Pros: Speed: This drive is quite fast. Most 2.5" drives are painfully slow. While this drive is still a mechanical drive, you'll get a noticeable performance boost. Reliability: I've installed about a dozen of these, to the point where I know the model number off the top of my head. No failures or SMART flags set to-date. I don't turn some computers off, I've had these drives stand up to years of use. Durability: I try really hard not to drop laptops, but it does happen. I haven't broken one, none of my customers have yet either. Not a scientific test, but no glaring issues observed thus far. Temperature: After hours of use in an HP Probook 6735b, the drive remains at 38*c. The same drive in a Lenovo T500 rarely passes 34*c. This is the ideal operating temperature for a laptop hard drive. Over 40*c is getting warm, while over 50*c can be a concern. Interestingly, if you’re up on hard drive technology, temperatures under 30*c are also associated with issues. This drive keeps it right between the buoys at 34-38*c in most system. Cons: Noise: Bearing noise is quiet and consistent, but you'll hear a 'white noise' or ‘shudder’ sound when the drive is seeking heavily. Not disruptive at all in a productivity setting, but with two computers running these in front of me now, I can most definitely hear them both. You will also occasionally hear the head load/unload noise as a subtle click. Again, nothing disruptive, most will not even notice. This drive is likely a little louder than your laptop’s fan. Overall: This is a very well-engineered drive. Noise is the only place where these drives fall short. You will know you have them whenever you're working in a quiet space. However, they seem to be reliable, and they're definitely fast. I’ve attached a screenshot of the Crystal Disk Mark results of this hard drive versus a standard OEM drive (probably like the one your computer came with). The results speak for themselves: the WD7500BPKX is significantly faster in many respects. UPDATE: Nov 2016 - I've put many, many of these into service now. This is still my favorite hard drive. Many of the units have years of service on them now. Still ZERO failures. Woo hoo!

Nearly As Fast as Desktop Drive, Faster Than Older Model

This is a very good hard drive, for this size and form factor. I was curious what speeds it got in read/write and could not find any benchmarks out there, so decided to run my own. First though, there are a few things about hard drive speeds: in general, 7200 rpm is faster than 5400 rpm drives, and larger drives tend to be faster than smaller drives (1tb faster than 500gb, all else equal) and desktop drives (3.5") tend to be faster than notebook drives (2.5"). However, as I'll show, this is very fast for a notebook drive. It is nearly as fast as my 1TB 7200 RPM 3.5" Seagate Barracuda. This drive is interesting because it appears to be an updated version of the WD5000BPKX (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Black-Notebook-WD5000BPKX/dp/B00DSUTWMQ/) which only released in January, 2015. It is $6 more at time of review, but has double the cache (32mb vs 16mb). I ran benchmarks on all my drives here http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/171711 Here are the results (given as averages): Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM 2.5" Read 164 MB/s Write 142 MB/s Mixed 141 MB/s Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" Read 171 Write 153 Mixed 151 So it's nearly as fast as the Seagate, but what about compared to the older molder, the WD5000BPKX? That drive is benchmarked here: http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/3355/WDC-WD5000BPKX-75HPJT0 Though results vary, probably depending on the age of the drive, it seems pretty clear this version is much faster. The reports there seem to show the older model is closer to 110 MB/s. I'd recommend this as a new drive, if you can't afford a SSD (which, of course, would be faster). And I think the extra cost over the older model seems worth it, too, since it seems to be faster. This may be due to the increased cache size.

Excellent price for what you get

Bought one for a client's laptop (hard disk unexpectedly croaked). Dead disk was a 5400rpm HGST, so this 7200rpm WD was quite an upgrade. Client is very happy, and I got paid (which makes *me* happy). It's been running for nearly a month without issue. I'd buy this again. Capacity isn't applicable, so I didn't rate it; 500GB is plenty for my client. Noise level...what noise? Ease of installation depends highly upon where it's being installed. In the case of my client's Toshiba, it was a serious pain - I had to remove the entire bottom of the laptop. A Dell (or even HP) laptop would've been much easier, and a desktop would've been easier still. So I didn't rate 'Easy to install' either.

Saved my laptop!

I have a pretty old HP laptop that was functioning well until recently when I received warnings of imminent hard drive failure. I was sure I was going to have to buy a new computer, which wasn't in the Christmas budget. So, I bought this hard drive, which with cloud storage these days, is MORE than enough for me. The item arrived timely and well packaged. It was easy to install into my laptop (I was sure to save the little cord from the old HD). A very simple affair and my laptop runs like a dream. I'm thrilled to have saved this laptop for the price of this HD. Great product!

Noticeable performance improvement

I purchased this drive to replace my existing Scorpio Blue in an Acer Aspire 5315 laptop. I also had purchased a full copy of Acronis True Image 2014 from another source. Using True Image I cloned my existing 320 Gb drive to the new 750 Gb. This took about an hour at USB 2 transfer rates. After this, I swapped drives and restarted my Acer and everything came up as before except it has been faster. Acoustically the drive seems no louder than the drive it replaced and is in fact quieter than the cpu fan. Doing backups, one with Windows System Image and one with True Image, the new drive attains over 100 Mb/s sustained transfer rate easily compared to the 65 Mb/s of the older drive. After several hours, the drive is stable at 108 degrees F. i had spent quite a bit of time reviewing the 7200 rpm possibilities of laptop drives and this seemed like the best option for the price. This model was only a few dollars more than the 500 Gb model. The manufacturing date is from November 2013 which is very recent. I've only had use of the drive for a few hours, but so far the transition has been seamless. My Windows 8.1 Pro setup is operating just fine. While my system does not have SATA 3 capability, I doubt this impairs the performance by running on SATA 2. So if you are in the market for a laptop drive as a replacement, you must consider the size of the drive (2.5" or now some are 1.8") and height (9.5mm, 7mm, or 10 mm). As for performance, unless I moved to SSD or hybrid drive, this is the fastest I can get. SSD's are still pretty expensive for anything larger than 120Gb and while hybrids are cheaper, they are still more mechanical than SSD. For me, my system needed a 9.5mm height drive and this fit the bill perfectly.

Works with Asus Vivobook but may need to purchase hard drive caddy

I run multiple virtual desktops and the 500gb M.2 SSD was not enough storage space to keep the number of desktops that I needed. Drive was small enough to put in to laptop, but laptop did not come with a hard drive caddy. Purchased Deal4Go SSD Hard Disk Drive Caddy Bracket with SATA HDD Cable (Short) and had no issues with install. Only have had the drive for a couple of months, so not sure about longevity, but works great as of right now. Will update as time goes on. A little expensive for what you get, but worth every cent in my opinion. Delivery was faster than expected. Because of the current state of delayed shipments, was expect in two weeks, but it arrived in three days. Nice surprise.

PS4 upgrade

I purchased this item because I wanted to upgrade the hard drive in my PS4 Slim. This item gave me an additional 500gb and boosted the spindle speed from 5400 to 7200 RPM. The item arrived yesterday, and later that night. The process from start to finish too me about 2 hours. I had no issues during the installation. The hard drive gave me more storage and slightly faster RPM. And with Western Digital, you can't go wrong, I've never had any issues with all their storage products I own. Buying quality over value was important!

Fast

I've replaced the original HDD of my notebook, which was Seagate ST750LM022, with this one, and I've been using it for two weeks. For me, the following changes were tangible: 1. Increased performance: Of course not as much as using an SSD drive, but in comparison to my previous HDD this drive is much faster. While the Windows 8's score remain the same for two HDDs (5.9), the increased performance is clear. Just don't expect a huge enhancement. 2. Increase power consumption: The battery life time of my notebook has been decreased from 7 hours to less than 4.5 hours! It seems awful, but I don't have any complain about this, since this is a black edition product of Western Digital and is specifically designed for performance. 3. HDD noise is a little bit higher, but it is still in an acceptable level and can be neglected. 4. Vibration of this HDD is more than the previous one, which should be natural for 7200 rpm drives. Hope this information help you find your right HDD.

Works great in my MacBook Pro A1278 that I got in ...

Works great in my MacBook Pro A1278 that I got in July 2013. I needed a Torx T6 screwdriver to install it on the internal rails. It's spins slightly faster 7200RPM vs 5400RPM for the old one, and is a tiny bit noisier. I replaced my 3 year old battery at the same time because it was starting to bulge (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZR5G3Q8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1). My computer no longer crashes on a daily basis! For a little less than $100, I hope I can make this laptop last another 3 years.

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