Very good article, yet wonder why RAID would be used, as raid primarily increases speed by using additional platters to reduce access time. as SSD has NO Platters, NO RAID Increase. For mirroring, its merely expensive loss, as unlikely to wear out before entire system wears out. Special external disk would suffice for mirroring.

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

Not sure where you got the mention of raid from in the article, but regardless, RAID has nothing to do with platters. Its simply how data is dealt with across multiple DRIVES.

With SSD's you get a pretty big performance increase from using raid-0. It works the same as with a hard drive with data being split amongst the two drives so less time is needed to write and read since the work is being divided.

Just google SSD and Raid and you'll find better examples and benchmarks.

I'm surprised that the lack of encryption on most of the drives wasn't mentioned in the conclusion. It's a deal breaker for every drive mentioned except the Hitachi, unless you plan to leave your laptop locked to a desk.

That Seagate drive sound like an amazing upgrade for something like the HP mininote. I sure hope some speedy 500GB drives arrive next.

It would have been nice if the prices & performance charts were also given in the conclusion. Maybe it's there somewhere in the middle pages, but I really don't have time to read 17 pages. Most of the time it's just the first and the last pages.

thanks for reply, RAID was added after article was posted & its here:

Eight Memoright state-of-the-art Flash SSDs battle Seagate’s Cheetahhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah 15K.5 and Savvio 10K.2 in RAID configurations. Flash SSDs turn out to be far superior when it comes to I/O-intensive workloads, while they don’t necessarily beat mechanical hard drives when it comes to throughput.

I read it fast & comparison is to HDD Raid. Opps, its on p.3 bottom & just glanced as read it as admendium.Basic point is still SSD works without RAID better than HDD.I just was trying to State SSD ?isn't RAID, unless it is & might be worse for it?. NEXT:

In theRegisture few weeks ago Server SSD was listed with pics of in production SSD that cut 4.5 Gb/s data output. I thought, how powerful, what is this? Well, while watching obama I got idea. first new SSD is DDR2, so how could that be SSD or even drive & lets face it at 4.5 gb/s who needs work divided? yet heres what I thought up: That new SSD that is so powerful & server & DDR2 cann't be turned off. That would work. turn it on, load it up & leave it running. 4.5 gb/s from one SSD. BTW i once before mentioned SSD RAID being NOT same as Platter RAID & I got same answer you gave today, so maybe its possible, yet Stats are next step.
Whole thing is proof, NEVER TURN YOUR BRAIN OFF. Hahahaahhh.

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

i install SSD and yes boot time faster and applications run faster but only if you work with one at the time. If two or more you feel like 10 years ago working on P4 or P3

I like the review but don't agree with the conclusion. The WD 3200BEKT is faster in every non synthetic benchmark. The Seagate 7200.3 is only the fastest in synthetic benchmarks. So if you're after real life performance go for the WD. Check the review on Techreport for more information.

Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital send their latest high-performance notebook drives into battle, fighting for the ultimate balance between performance and efficiency.

Next-Gen 7,200 RPM Notebook Hard Drives : Read more

I agree with the poster that said encryption is a must for portable devices -- only a complete moron would walk around with an unencrypted notebook these days. Encryption is now a *fundamental* requirement for not only government agencies, but also most companies. So the comparison as it stands is fundamentally flawed. the tests should be repeated with the hardware encryption enabled on the Hitachi drive and a comparable AES full disk software based encryption running on the others to give us an idea how the drives would perform in a real usage scenario.

I agree with the other post, in that encryption should results should have been included in the results. I am looking to upgrade my laptop hard drive and after having a laptop stolen last year, my next drive will be one that has full hardware encryption. THG, please start including benchmarks and reviews of drives with encryption. Thanks, appreciate your work.

Mike

Why would encryption hardware need to be a part of the hard drive? It is better for the BIOS to take care of the encryption/decryption, and key entry at boot time. That existing BIOS feature makes encryption a moot point for a performance article like this. You guys are just buying the wrong notebooks, if you need encryption on the hard drive.

I am aware of no "BIOS Encryption" which is certified by NIST as secure under FIPS-140-2. There are certified encrypted drive solutions. When someone delivers a certified BIOS encryption I'll consider it -- though there is a risk: with an encrypted drive, if the original machine fails and I know the keys, I can recover by simply installing the drive in a new system. With "BIOS Encryption" the drive is tied to exactly one machine. Better have good backups. ;-)

Just in time for PS3's....

I am not interested in mechanical drives any more - they are yesterday's technology. Give me SSD at its full potential. Mechanical drives will soon become yesterday's equivalent of the steam engine. Why do these companies bother wasting their time "tweaking" storage space on mechanical drives when we would rather get our hands on a 300 Gig SSD ?

Do I get this right?

The WD is faster when it comes to access tme, working with small files - e.g. office files - and consumes considerably less power with DVD files (thinking of those long train rides...)? How much more battery life would that give me app. on a MacBook Pro?

The Seagate basically is faster when it comes to handling larger files and has a lower power consumption on average?

Does anyone have insights on the noise?

I can't find the ST9320421AS anywhere when I search for someone who has them in stock. Anyone know why?

http://edbpriser.dk/Products/Listp [...] T9320421AS

The conclusions regarding the lowest idle power do not match the graphic. The wrong WD drive is shown as being the reviewed drive. The graphic shows the WD2500BEVS as being the reviewed drive with a .75W idle when the reviewed drive is supposed to be the WD3200BEKT which has the second highest idle of .97W of the 4 tested drives. The conclusion says that the WD & SG drives are both less than .8W idle which is wrong. Only the SG drive is under .8W.

All this for $99 on Newegg. Why Can't I see what I'm typing here?

Weird.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136280

very interresting and informativ article, but beside all the power and performance ratings, for me noise is the most important rating for a decision - could a add perhaps some lines for the 7200rpm drives?