Review
To be honest, I was done evaluating this drive few months ago and I was about to put this review up when the Thailand floods came in. The review was put on hold since then (and besides, even if I did put up the review, it wouldn’t be fair to compare it based on price especially on a product that is not yet officially announced in India).
I knew that WD factories have slowly started, but I was taken by surprise when WD India got back to be with an official quote- and an official press release. That’s very impressive. Do note that there are a lot of demand of 2.5mm drives: for retail, OEM and maybe to be used as a portable drive (does Western Digital have contracts with non WD portable storage vendors? Only way to find out is crack open non-WD/non-Seagate drives- or via Crystal Disk info provided the information is not changed). Nevertheless- its a sign that shows Western Digital have resumed making storage cakes! (Lot cooler than calling storage drives).
Coming to the drive. Nothing much to say. For a 1TB 9.5mm thick drive with 2.5″ form factor? That’s brilliant. Most likely this will end up in Desktop Replacements or even Gaming notebooks which have secondary drive- and SSD for the primary. Its good enough to be a primary drive, atleast compared to Slower Green Edition drive counterparts.
For those who want to upgrade to a larger storage space but can’t because their notebook cannot accommodate 12.5mm thick 2.5″ drives? Worry no more!! WD has your back. I will recommend to shortlist this drive if you want a large internal storage drive for your notebook.
Personal curiosity? How will this drive do against newer gen Seagate‘s Momentus XT. Since Seagate has implemented larger Flash NAND for faster boot-load speeds and faster application loads, will Western Digital follow suit? Or will they go ahead with SSD drives. Time will tell.
| India (MRP) | U.S. | U.K. |
| Rs. 10, 650/- | $ 239.99 | £ 182.50 |
Well, U.S. online retail price is higher compared to Indian MRP and U.K.’s online pricing. Maybe U.S. pricing is not updated. Pretty good but I hope the actual retail price in India stays that way. It goes without saying: We’re the first to reflect the price hike, but usually the last to reflect price falls. But since this is a brand new drive that is officially announced today, we might see this drive with somewhere similar to MRP, to say the least.
