Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital WD1600BEVT 160 GB 5400RPM SATA 8 MB 2.5-Inch Notebook Hard Drive

I initially bought this to use as a Time Machine backup drive for an iMac and a Samsung 500GB drive to use in my HP DV6700 notebook. Samsung drive ran too hot where I couldn't rest my palm on the notebook for more than few seconds. Swapped the drives, and found that this drive runs much cooler than Samsung drive. Very happy with it. Amazon did a great packing job for shipping.

I've been using my Western Digital 500gb Scorpio Blue HDD in my PS3 for a bit over a month and so far it is working great. I've always had good fortune with Western Digital drives and this little drive appears to be as reliable as my past WD drives.

A few notes on upgrading your PS3 HDD:
1. Be sure to back up your existing data to an external HDD or at least your save files to a USB jump drive prior to swapping HDD's. According to Sony's "ToS" agreements with PSN content you're allowed a total of 5 separate downloads of your purchased content from the PSN. So if you don't have an external HDD you can simply re-download your content from the PSN store as long as you haven't exceeded the limit. A word of caution though: your save files may be locked (depending on the game) and some may not be able to be copied to a jump drive. Using the PS3's "Back-up Utility" in the XMB to save to an external HDD will copy even protected save files. It's clearly the better option. Also, once your original PS3 HDD comes out of the PS3 that's pretty much it. If you attempt to place it back in your PS3 it will still need to be formated, thus losing all of your data.

2. Backing up your data to an external HDD can take several hours, obviously depending on the amount of data on your PS3's HDD. I had just about filled my 80gb PS3 HDD when I backed up my data. All told the process took about 1.5 hours. Once you've swapped the PS3's HDD for the larger model, restoring the data from the external HDD will take the same amount of time.

3. Even though this WD Scorpio is rated at 500gb that will not be the actual writable disk size. Drives always set aside a certain amount of space... for what I'm not entirely sure. I'm certain part of it has to do with the PS3's OS but the rest I don't know. All told I had 465gb/500gb after I swapped out the drive. Still a massive amount of storage capacity.

4. The PS3 uses 3 screws (at least my 80gb does) to hold the HDD in place. Be sure to have a small Philip's screwdriver - a jewelers screwdriver works best - to remove the screws. Be careful during this process as the wrong size screwdriver can easily strip the screws. An additional 4 screws hold the PS3's HDD to the enclosure. With the right size screw driver the process will take 5 minutes.

That's pretty much it. Swapping the PS3 HDD is as simple as it gets and for most users 500gb's is more than you'll ever need. I've got around 10 PSN games, several demos of games, a complete back-up of my music library and have yet to get under 400gb's. My next step will be to use my PS3 as a media center and stream my movies from my PC.

My review is just for the retailer. I wish I would have seen the listing here on Amazon before I bought from [...]. The reseller there was ANT as well. I thought they just made a mistake but apparently this happens to everyone. How shady of them to not stop sending out 640gb drives. It's a waste of everyone's time all the way down to the UPS driver.

Hi all... as some of the other reviewers have also done, I bought this SATA drive specifically to upgrade my 80GB PS3. And I have to say that although many people have said it is an "overkill" to go larger than 250 or even 320, after installing it a few weeks ago and putting everything from personal pics to ripped mp3s, I now have the ultimate 1-stop shop for almost all of my multimedia needs.

Having a pretty decent TV and home theater set-up, I transferred my ENTIRE library of music to my PS3 and can now play it through the system, view all of my personal pics and videos, and get just as many downloaded videos or demos from the Playstation store as I want without worrying about running out of space.

For the price (just over $100 at the time of purchase) you can't get a better upgrade deal anywhere. I'm sure the price will go down when technology gets better and bigger drives are released. But for now, this is a steal.

The install/swap was VERY easy... needed only a couple basic tools and some table space. It took about 10 or 15 minutes to do the swap, but the whole back-up and restore took me about 30-45 minutes each. It was all worth the wait though.

After formatting and restoring my other system data, it showed I had around 400 GB to work with. I have since moved over about 100GB of media files and have plenty of room for all of the future add-ons, demos, videos, whatever else I may want to transfer from my computer and an endless number of Guitar Hero and Rock Band track packs and tunes! :)

What did I do with my 80GB drive that used to be in my PS3? I went to an electronics store and bought an aluminum USB casing for the HD (about $14) and now use it as an extra backup! Works like a charm... it's small, compact and I'll take that with me when I travel rather than my 2GB USB flash drive.

People who want to upgrade may want to look around on the web for video tutorials to help with the upgrade process. That's what I did and it helped a lot.

I would like to also add, for those of you who might not be sure or haven't tried it yet, mp3 or wma audio files will work on the PS3 and most avi movies work too. I don't have the complete list handy of compatible files that work but as I mentioned before, this is now my ultimate media player, right in my living room. There's only a couple visualizers on the system by default, but it's great if you have people over and want to play some music. Rather than going through the trouble to hook up an iPod to your system, you can just play the music from the PS3 or create playlists. It's so simple and convenient and a great alternative to using multiple devices in your system.

I hope this review helps. I installed it about 3 weeks ago and have had no issues and all has worked smoothly. I highly recommend this for all PS3 users out there. For those of you that want to upgrade your PS3 hard drive, even if you think 500 is too much, trust me when I say - It's worth every byte! :)

I bought this drive for my ps3, it works like a charm. It added a punch to the storage I have on my ps3, there is no noice, it works good, a must buy if you want to update your storage space in the ps3 or any other kind of device.