Conclusion
WD is aggressively exploring higher capacities. The 640GB Scorpio Blue provides ample capacity and sweet performance for upper-mainstream notebooks and portable storage devices. The two announced 750GB and 1,000GB 2.5” drives won’t fit into most notebook designs due to their 12.5mm height, but they should still raise the bar for compact, high-capacity storage.
Toshiba also lists a 640GB 2.5” mobile hard drive, the MK65GSX series, but so far this has been a paper launch. The reviewed Fujitsu MHA2500CH is an in-house competitor for the Toshiba MK5055GSX.
Capacity-wise, there is no alternative to Western Digital’s 640GB Scorpio Blue. The drive has no real disadvantage and delivers reasonably low power consumption. Its throughput is top notch, and access times are quick. Application performance could clearly be improved, but this is probably why there are 7,200 RPM alternatives like the Momentus 7200.4, which still leads in 2.5” mobile hard drive performance. If you want the fastest possible drive for your notebook, you should go for the Seagate drive or an SSD. The best compromise between capacity and performance is currently WD’s 640GB Scorpio.
Fujitsu’s MHA2500CH offers a 500GB capacity at 5,400 RPM and finds a lot of direct competition from Hitachi (Travelstar 5K500.B), Seagate (Momentus 5400.6), Samsung (Spinpoint M7), and Toshiba (MK5055GSX). All deliver comparable overall performance. The Fujitsu drive is efficient and quick, but it’s not the fastest application drive.
Latest Internal Storage News
Latest Internal Storage reviews
- 05/16 – Intel SSD 330 Review: 60, 120, And 180 GB Models Benchmarked
- 05/11 – Do-It-Yourself: Upgrading Apple's 27" iMac With An SSD
- 05/01 – Marvell-Based SSDs From Corsair, Crucial, OCZ, And Plextor:...
- 04/26 – Best SSDs For The Money: April 2012
- 04/25 – Hitachi's 4 TB Hard Drives Take On The 3 TB Competition
toshiba and fujitsu have already merged
Random read + Random write please next time.
While it may not fit every drive bay of the many laptop manufactures. WD has a 12.5mm 1TB 2.5" drive.
I bought the WD 500GB drive a few months ago now and am very pleased with it. I don't have benchmarks, but it feels a LOT faster than my older 60GB drive and extended my battery life a bunch. Running Win7 on top of that almost doubled my battery life under normal usage.
Wondering can a 12.5mm 2.5" drive fit in the PS3?
Wondering can a 12.5mm 2.5" drive fit in the PS3?
I wouldn't bet on it, but 640gb should be enough for a while
Yes I too am wondering if the 9.5mm 120GB/250GB 2.5" Toshiba hard drives that Sony ships inside the PS3 Slim can be replaced with a 12.5mm 2.5" drive. I don't have access to a PS3 Slim or a fat 12.5mm drive so I can't confirm myself.
Oh, that's why these HD makers have capacities as low a 80gb.. newsflash... flash memory is beginning to overlap these.. a redesign of the PS3/XBOX be made to use usb flash or sdhc flash instead of a HD at comparable prices!
I was about to comment that the numbers of hd's shipped in the 2.5" capcacities seemed like oversupply.. but when you factor in the low capacity hd's for consoles, it's about right. Still, anything below 250gb should be discontinued, IMO and come with 16mb cache memory (that's a big spread to have 80gb - 1000gb capacity in HD's when flash is beginning to overlap 64gb & 128gb usb sticks coming out and prices are bound to come down eventually).