Enterprise Storage: Two 2.5" 600 GB Hard Drives Tested

Benchmark Results: Power And Efficiency

Power Consumption

Idle power is radically low on the new Toshiba MBF2600RC drive because the spindle slows down when the drive is idle. Otherwise, it wouldn't turn in results as conservative as it's turning in. Seagate looks worse, though that's not really true. The new Savvio 10K.4 still delivers very low idle power consumption compared to other 2.5” enterprise hard drives.

Delivering data at peak throughput takes a bit more power on the Seagate drive than on Toshiba’s product. This is disappointing, as the last Savvio 10K generations did better.

The 1080p video playback test isn't a typical enterprise workload, but it shows how much power is required if the drives have to deliver a continuous, limited stream of data. In this case, Toshiba again does better.

Power consumption at high workstation I/O activity triggers the highest power consumption numbers on the Toshiba drive. Seagate requires the same power here.

Efficiency

Performance per watt for streaming read workloads looks extremely good on the new Toshiba drive. It delivers high throughput, while maintaining relatively low power consumption.

Workstation efficiency is also better on the Toshiba drive because of its higher performance paired with equivalent power consumption relative to the Savvio 10K.4. However, other drives deliver better power efficiency in I/O-intensive workloads.