WD_BLACK 2.5-inch Performance Mobile 500GB

At 7mm it fits every 2.5-inch laptop bay, including the thin 7mm bays in most laptops from the last decade. Your laptop needs a 2.5-inch SATA bay, and most laptops sold since 2020 have only M.2 slots. Many budget laptops ship with an empty bay but no SATA cable or bracket, so check both before ordering. Our laptop upgrade checker lists the laptops we know have a bay.

It spins at 7200 rpm with a 64MB cache. That is the faster of the two laptop spindle speeds, so it opens large files a little quicker than a 5400 rpm drive.

It uses SMR (shingled magnetic recording), which the datasheet states. Reads behave normally, but long continuous writes, such as copying a whole backup at once, slow down sharply once the drive's cache fills. For a photo, video or game library that is rarely a problem; as the drive Windows runs from, it is.

Use it as a second drive for bulk storage next to an SSD, not as the only drive. If 500GB is all you need, a 2.5-inch SATA SSD fits the same bay and is several times faster. Compare them in our SSD listings.

• WD_BLACK 2.5-inch Performance Mobile 1TB (WD10SPSX): 1TB, 7mm

• Western Digital datasheet
• Western Digital product page