9.5 Versus 12.5 mm: Which Notebook HDD Is Right For You?
Notebook drive manufacturers can choose between two drive heights: 9.5 mm and 12.5 mm. At 9.5 mm, most drives are limited to two spinning platters, while 12.5 mm has enough room for three, enabling higher capacity. We compare the two 2.5" variants.
Benchmark Results: I/O Performance And Access Time
All I/O performance tests reveal that the 640GB two-platter drive is faster. Since the difference is pretty large, it's obvious that high I/O performance wasn’t part of the 1TB model's performance requirements.
Access Time
Access time is longer on the three-platter drive, which corresponds to what we’ve seen in I/O testing.
At this point, we have to assume that the high-capacity drive was optimized for throughput, while the 640GB model received firmware more suitable for I/O intensive workloads.
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