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Half a Terabyte On Your Notebook
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1. 500 GB Drives for High-End Notebooks

Notebook hard drives with 500GB of capacity are not new—Hitachi’s product has been on the market for several months. However, the introduction of Samsung’s HM500LI has made these drives more attractive, as the Korean manufacturer is the first to store the entire capacity of 500GB on two physical platters. Is this the drive you want in your notebook?

Hard drive makers are getting a lot of business due to the continuing shift from desktop to notebook computers. More people are deciding to get portable computers instead of bulky, grey boxes, and many newcomers tend to go for a mobile computer right away. No one will deny the obvious advantages of mobile PCs: you can use them wherever you want or stow them away when you don’t want to see them. As a consequence, the quantity of shipped 2.5” drives is soon going to exceed that of 3.5” models.

notebook hard drive

External Storage vs. Portable Storage

But that’s not all. Related storage products, such as external hard drives, don’t always have to be based on 3.5” hard drives either. Not everyone needs capacities of 750 or even 1,000GB, the larger sizes only available in the 3.5” form factor. Since 2.5” hard drives aren’t much larger than a box of cigarettes, the total size and weight of a portable solution is very acceptable. Hence we differentiate between external storage and portable storage, where external typically comprises high performance, and portable stands for maximum flexibility. We would guess that most users can live with 320-500GB capacity today.

12.5 mm vs. 9.5 mm Z Height

All 3.5” hard drives have a common height of 1” (25 mm) today; this is called “half-height” in reference to the height of much older drives. Manufacturers use this space to accommodate between one and five platters. Things are different in the 2.5” space, where the initial height of 0.5” (12.5 mm) has been replaced by 0.375” (9.5 mm), which can hold up to three platters, as demonstrated by Samsung’s Spinpoint M6. The latter has become the de-facto standard for most notebooks, but some drive manufacturers, such as Hitachi, sometimes still make 12.5 mm drives based on a three platter design. This is how Hitachi was the first to reach 500GB capacity on a 2.5” notebook hard drive. Samsung has now brought down the height to 9.5 mm at this capacity point.

We looked at both the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 and Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 HM500LI, which both provide this capacity, but also show very different characteristics.

2. Not All 2.5” Drives Are Created Equal

While all 3.5” hard drives will fit into every 3.5” drive bay or hot swap frame as long as you use the correct interface, there are more differences in the 2.5” space. The UltraATA interface has finally been replaced by Serial ATA in the mainstream, which is why upgrade users have to pay attention: none of the 500GB hard drives are available with a parallel UltraATA interface. You will have to look for 250GB hard drive if you want to replace an existing notebook disk, as the latest models aren’t available with the older interface.

Spindle Speed Matters

In addition, rotation speeds and cache capacities may vary. While cache capacity does not have a significant impact on hard drive performance, spindle speed is extremely important. Faster rotation speeds lead to better throughput and to quicker access time, as there will be less rotational latency, which translates to waiting time.

Notebook hard drives are available in three different speeds: 4,200, 5,400 and 7,200 RPM. Obviously, the last of these is the quickest choice, but they consume slightly more power and potentially reduce battery runtime on your notebook a bit. However, there are always exceptions to this general rule, as you can see in the power consumption results of our benchmark section.

Enthusiasts want Flash SSDs

Drives running at 4,200 RPM will eventually die out, as there aren’t substantial cost savings or much better capacities compared to models at 5,400 RPM. The 7,200 RPM speed will remain the best for the time being; 10,000 RPM is a viable option for high-performance notebooks, although some sort of hard drive cooling might then be required. For these applications, solid state hard drives based on flash memory are the much better, but also more expensive, choice.

Height Differences

Finally, there are differences between 12.5 mm (Hitachi Travelstar 5K500) and 9.5 mm (Samsung Spinpoint M6) 2.5” hard drives. All of the flash based 2.5” drives fit into the 9.5 mm envelope, as the PCB with the flash memory chips and the controller can often even be fit into an 1.8” form factor. 12.5 mm drives, however, are usually more suitable for external storage or portable storage applications, where space restrictions usually do not apply.

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Here is the difference between the 12.5 mm and 9.5 mm heights. Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K500 requires 12.5 mm of clearance.

3. Three Platters: Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, 500GB

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We would have reviewed this drive much earlier, but Hitachi did not send a review sample right away. Hence the Travelstar 5K500 has been on the market for a few months now; it is still Hitachi’s top model, though. As it is based on a three platter design and a height of 12.5 mm, it will not fit into many mainstream notebook designs that require 9.5 mm drives.

However, there are other applications where the Travelstar 7K500 makes perfect sense. Portable hard drives and similar solutions are one possible area, as are compact home PCs based on Intel’s Atom processor or other small form factor solutions. Wherever users want to combine low noise, low thermals and high capacity, this drive can find a place.

Technical Details

Hitachi offers two models, 400GB and 500GB, although the price difference is small. As you can tell from the model number, the drive spins at 5,400 RPM. Serial ATA 3 Gb/s was chosen to connect to host PCs. All drives have an 8 MB cache memory and a specified operating temperature of 5-55 °C.

Performance

Hitachi states an average seek time of 12 ms, which translates into an average access time of 18.5 ms in our benchmark tests. This isn’t quite a fantastic result, as other 5,400 RPM 2.5” hard drives reach 16-17 ms, but it is fast enough for storage applications and mainstream systems.

The maximum throughput of almost 63 MB/s is also only average: Hitachi’s double-platter Travelstar 5K320 is faster at almost 65 MB/s. However, the three platter Travelstar 5K500 is as efficient as Hitachi says: the manufacturer states that it is proud of maintaining almost the same power envelope for this model as that of its 320GB predecessor, which we can confirm: a 3.0 W maximum power requirement and 1.0 W idle power are excellent for a three platter solution.

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

4. Two Platters: Hitachi Travelstar 5K320, 320GB

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We decided to include the Travelstar 5K320 for the sake of completeness, as our last Hitachi notebook drive article dealt with the 7K200 and the 5K250.

Technical Details

Unlike the 5K500, the Travelstar 5K320 is based on only two platters. However, both models utilize the same perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) recording technology and have similar storage densities, which explains why the performance is comparable. The 5K320 is available at many more capacity points, such as 320, 250, 160, 120 and 80GB, although only the 160 GB and 320GB models utilize the full capacity per platter: the others are derivatives to satisfy market demand at popular capacity points. All Travelstar 5K320 drives are equipped with 8MB cache memory and spin at 5,400 RPM.

Performance

Interestingly enough, the power consumption of this two platter drive is almost identical to that of the three platter Travelstar 5K500. However, the 5K320’s performance is slightly better in terms of throughput, application performance and also access time (18 ms rather than 18.5 ms).

Model Variations

Hitachi offers two options for the regular Travelstar 5K320: the BDE variants come with built-in hardware encryption, while the EA models were designed for enhanced availability (24/7 operation). The Travelstar 5K320EA is not available at 80GB, but is at all other capacity points.

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

5. Record Throughput: Samsung Spinpoint H6 HM500LI, 500GB

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Now let’s look at the brand new Samsung drive. The HM500LI is a new member of the Spinpoint M6 family, but it stores the same 500 GB as Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K500 on three platters. This makes this drive a great choice for portable storage applications, as well as compact notebook designs that require 2.5” SATA HDDs with 9.5 mm height. From our experience, it’s safe to say that the HM500LI should perform much better due to the increased data density. Let’s see if that’s the case.

Technical Details

The drives spin at 5,400 RPM and have 8MB of cache memory. Like Hitachi, Samsung offers only two versions of this product: 400 and 500GB. All smaller Spinpoint M6 drives are based on the same drive family, but they are based on a different storage density and per-platter capacity. Samsung uses a Serial ATA 3 Gb/s interface for the drive, as well.

Performance

Samsung also states an average access time of 12 ms, which translates into an effective access time of 19 ms. This is the slowest average access time we’ve yet measured in our test lab, and it has an impact on the PCMark Windows XP Startup benchmark.

However, the Spinpoint M6 HM500LI offers the fastest throughput we’ve ever measured for 2.5” hard drives: 76.5 MB/s is much faster than the 70 MB/s of its 320GB predecessor, and it’s faster than any of the competitors with the exception of flash-based SSDs. An almost 40 MB/s minimum transfer rate also is a new record for notebook hard drives. As a result, the HM500LI leads the file write benchmarks, and even dominated 7,200 RPM drives when it comes to throughput.

Another small downside is power consumption: the new HM500LI requires as much power as a 7,200 RPM drive, and clearly more power than Hitachi’s offerings.

notebook hard drive /

notebook hard drive /

6. Drive Comparison Table
Manufacturer Hitachi Hitachi Samsung
Family Travelstar 5K320 Travelstar 5K500 SpinPoint M6
Model Number HTS543232L9A300 HTS545050KTA300 HM500LI
Capacity 320GB 500GB 500GB
Rotational Speed (RPM) 5400 5400 5400
Available Capacities 80, 120, 160, 250GB 400 GB 400 GB
Platters 2 3 3
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s
Cache (MB) 8 8 8
NCQ yes yes yes
Warranty 5 years 5 years 3 years
Height 9.5mm 12.5mm 9.5mm

Test Setup

System Hardware
Processors 2x Intel Xeon 3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
Platform Asus NCL-DS, Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAM Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)
2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB
120GB, 7,200 RPM, 8MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Mass Storage Controller Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)
Promise SATA 300TX4
Promise FastTrak TX4310
Driver 2.06.1.310
Networking Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Subsystem Integrated ATI RageXL, 8MB
System Software
Performance Measurements c’t h2benchw 3.6
PCMark05 V1.01
I/O Performance IOMeter 2003.05.10
Fileserver-Benchmark
Webserver-Benchmark
Database-Benchmark
Workstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OS Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition,
Service Pack 1
Platform Driver Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics Driver Default Windows Graphics Driver
7. Benchmark Results: Data Transfer Diagrams

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

The transfer diagram of Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 HM500LI looks very good, as the drive provides more than 75 MB/s maximum throughput and doesn’t fall below about 40 MB/s.

8. Read And Write Transfer Rates

Read Transfer Rates

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The HM500LI by Samsung is the fastest mechanical 2.5” drive we’ve ever seen, providing an excellent 57.8 MB/s average transfer rate on our reference test system. It beats all of the competitors in this benchmark.

Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K500 doesn’t do very well in this benchmark. At 62.6 MB/s, it is as fast as Samsung was two drive generations ago with the HM250JI.

Write Transfer Rates

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The results are similar for the write throughput benchmark. Samsung dominates and is best of its class in write throughput.

9. Interface Bandwidth And Access Time

Interface Bandwidth

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This benchmark is used to verify the interface claims of drive manufacturers. Clearly, the Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 and 5K320 utilize Serial ATA 3 Gb/s, as they reach 160 MB/s. The Samsung Spinpoint M6 HM500LI stays at 127.7 MB/s.

Access Time

notebook hard drive

The Samsung HM500LI is as bad in the access time test as it was good in the data transfer benchmarks: 19 ms is a new record on the low side. However, the two Hitachi drives aren’t all that great either, at 18 and 18.5 ms.

10. Application Performance: PCMark05 Windows XP Startup And Write Performance

XP Startup

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Although the Samsung drive provides excellent transfer rates, the long access times have an impact on the application benchmark that simulates launching Windows XP. The drive is almost last here, although other models deliver 25% better performance in this benchmark.

File Write Performance

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The file writing benchmark is not affected by access time; it relies on throughput. For this reason, Samsung’s HM500LI does very well here.

11. I/O Performance

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

notebook hard drive

The I/O performance of any of the three drives is not capable of matching up to other 5,400 RPM drives or to 7,200 RPM drives. Clearly, none of the three contenders was designed to deliver as many I/O operations per second as possible.

12. Power Requirements

notebook hard drive

We already mentioned that Hitachi did a great job in creating the three platter Travelstar 5K500, which maintains almost the same power requirements as the 320GB two platter Travelstar 3K320: both require approximately 1 watt of power when idle and 3 watts when active. Samsung’s new 500GB drive disappointed, as it requires 1.3 W in idle and up to 3.6 W under load. These are power consumption numbers we’d expect for 7,200 RPM drives, but not for a new three-platter 2.5” 5,400 RPM model.

13. Conclusion: 500 GB Notebook Drives are Still Unbalanced

We have seen several new records during the testing for this review. Hitachi and Samsung are the first to offer 500GB hard drives in the notebook space. Samsung breaks a throughput record by getting close to 80 MB/s with the HM500LI. However, it also reached a negative record in the access time tests with a slow 19 ms. That said, Hitachi’s drives aren’t really much faster in this respect.

Although both drives have their strengths and weaknesses, it appears to us as if both manufacturers raced to the 500GB capacity point and jeopardized the balance among performance, capacity and energy efficiency somewhere along the way. While Samsung squeezes amazing transfer rates out of the standard 2.5“ form factor, the slow access time and 10-25% increase in power consumption is not acceptable for a system hard drive. Hitachi, on the other end, cannot yet fit its 500GB drives into a 9.5 mm drive bay, and the throughput and access times aren’t impressive, though certainly fast enough.

We have to conclude that we have higher expectations from new hard drives. A new product should not perform worse than its predecessor, which is the case for Samsung. Hence we can only recommend these drives for pure storage applications; in the case of Samsung, it’s because of the high power requirements and slow access times, and in the case of Hitachi due to the 12.5 mm height, which disqualifies it as a system drive for high-end notebooks.

Related Articles:

2.5“ HDD Galore: Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba Drives for 2008

Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 and 5K250 Hit the Band

Seagate Momentus 5400.2 FDE: Data Encryption on a Drive

WD and Toshiba Join the 320GB 2.5“ HDD Club

Enthusiast 2.5“ HDDs: Speed or Capacity?

Should You Care about Hybrid Hard Drives?