Six 2.5” High-Capacity Notebook Hard Drives
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Page 1:Supersize My Storage, Please
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Page 2:Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 HTS547575A9E384 (750 GB)
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Page 3:Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M500MBB (500 GB) And HN-M101MBB (1 TB)
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Page 4:Toshiba MK6461GSYN (640 GB)
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Page 5:Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT (1 TB) And Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT (750 GB)
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Page 6:Comparison Table And Test Configuration
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Page 7:Benchmark Results: Data Rate And Interface Bandwidth
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Page 8:Benchmark Results: Streaming Reads/Writes
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Page 9:Benchmark Results: Access Time And I/O Performance
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Page 10:Benchmark Results: PCMark Application Performance
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Page 11:Power Consumption
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Page 12:Who Sells The Fastest High-Capacity 2.5" Hard Drive?
Advanced Format technology makes it possible to build 9.5 mm high 2.5” hard disks with 500 GB per platter. The result is a range of slim and speedy storage giants.
The race to achieve higher and higher hard disk capacities recently entered its next stage. While Western Digital just expanded the GoFlex line with its very first 3.5" 4 TB drive, physically smaller disks are setting records of their own. Now, the very largest 2.5” models (represented by Samsung’s M8 [HN-M101MBB] and Western Digital’s Scorpio Blue [WD10JPVT]) offer 1 TB of storage space.
That’s only half of the innovation, however. After all, 1 TB 2.5“ hard disks have been around since mid-2009. Back then, 1 TB drives used three 333 GB platters, which bumped their height to 12.5 mm (0.5“) and thus prevented them from being installed in most notebooks. Samsung and Western Digital resolved this issue; their 1 TB drives now only sport two 500 GB platters, resulting in a z-height of 9.5 mm (0.374“), which is suitable for laptops.
Advanced Format (AF) Leads to Higher Data Density
The breathtaking speed at which storage density progresses can be partly attributed to the Advanced Format (AF), though up until now it mostly benefited 3.5“ drives. AF sports a sector size of 4 KB, eight times the size of traditional 512-byte sectors. Thus, this format has only one-eighth of the gaps between sectors and one-eighth of the synchronization and error correcting blocks. According to disk manufacturers, AF is responsible for increasing disk capacity by 7 to 11 percent on its own.
In order to maintain compatibility with the outside world, AF-based hard disks emulate 512-byte sectors. Current Windows and Linux systems work flawlessly with AF-based drives; you simply can’t tell the difference. However, older operating systems like Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Home Server may exhibit performance problems because they don’t align their partitions to 4 KB boundaries. You can overcome that limitation by downloading an alignment tool from each manufacturer’s website.
Comparison Test of Six 2.5“ Hard Disks with 3 Gb/s SATA Interfaces
Only two of the notebook hard disks we tested offer 1 TB of storage capacity, namely the Samsung M8 HN-M101MBB and Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT. The main topic of this test is, however, Advanced Format, as three of the remaining four test candidates are AF-equipped: Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K750 HTS547575A9E384 (750 GB), Samsung’s Spinpoint M8 HN-M500MBB (500 GB), and Western Digital’s Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT (750 GB). In total, five of the six hard disks we’re testing employ AF technology.
The only exception is Toshiba and its MK6461GSYN (640 GB), which does not merely emulate 512-byte sectors, but still uses them internally. The Japanese manufacturer didn’t miss the AF train; it already announced its MQ01ABD100, a 1 TB drive that features 4 KB sectors and a 9.5 mm (0.374“) height.
- Supersize My Storage, Please
- Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 HTS547575A9E384 (750 GB)
- Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M500MBB (500 GB) And HN-M101MBB (1 TB)
- Toshiba MK6461GSYN (640 GB)
- Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT (1 TB) And Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT (750 GB)
- Comparison Table And Test Configuration
- Benchmark Results: Data Rate And Interface Bandwidth
- Benchmark Results: Streaming Reads/Writes
- Benchmark Results: Access Time And I/O Performance
- Benchmark Results: PCMark Application Performance
- Power Consumption
- Who Sells The Fastest High-Capacity 2.5" Hard Drive?
Nice article as a whole
someday.....
One minor point: good to know that i7-920 is now part of Sandybridge. Can you check???
What flaw? The fact that the hard drive automatically goes to sleep (parks its head) after eight seconds of inactivity, and since this is hardwired into the firmware it completely dismisses what you set in your Power Options in the Windows 7 Control Panel. Why is this bad? Because if the HDD is inactive for more than eight seconds it needs to unpark its head, and that creates a very noticeable lag when launching applications or working with files because the process takes a few seconds to complete, not to mention it puts more stress on the HDD mechanics.
Unless it's simply for a storage drive where you don't care about performance I recommend you go with Seagate, Hitachi, or Samsung for laptop HDDs instead.
Hitachi 750GB $140-160
Samsung 1TB $220
WD 750GB $160
WD 1TB $230
That's because of the incident at WD's factory
I was looking at Newegg and a 500GB Caviar Black that I had bought a year ago for $50-$60 was $150.
Yeah. Hard drive prices would have made for a great halloween article - they'd frighten all system builders and anyone looking for a storage upgrade. And we'll supposedly be seeing them like that for a while yet.
Flooding in Thailand, yep.
From toms (link up above the discussion)
Other sources:
CRN
PC World
750 TB? i did not know that they made such large hard drives...maybe you mean 750GB
you can always replace it yourself, lol....it's not that expensive, lol
The heat/power consumption isn't an issue.
Hmm, my WD Scorpio Black 750GB park it's heads about once a minute. I can hear it lock. But I have never experienced any lag from it and so far it hasn't worn out. My load cycle count is a 50,000 so far no problems with 2696 of power on hours.