Who Sells The Fastest High-Capacity 2.5" Hard Drive?
When we assess the overall performance of 2.5“ hard drives, we find both Western Digital drives at the top of the stack. Overall, the Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT achieves the best benchmark results, impressing us with its high data rates and low access times. While this 7200 RPM drive certainly won’t win any awards for power consumption, you have to expect that from a performance-oriented storage device. On the other hand, it’s not an energy hog either, as it draws a mere 0.9 watts more power than its competitors.
If you value an energy-conscious (and yet, still fast) hard drive, consider the second-place finisher, WD’s Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT. It is not as nimble as the Scorpio Black, but it sports more reasonable power consumption. In spite of its huge 1 TB capacity, the Scorpio Blue is, like the rest of the field, only 9.5 mm (0.374“) high, making it compatible with all notebooks.
The Toshiba MK6461GSYN shows that hard drives don’t necessarily have to switch to Advanced Format to offer high capacity and decent performance. In many cases, the Toshiba drive barely trails the second-place Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT. Overall, there are only minor speed differences.
If your focus isn’t performance-specific, but you instead value energy-saving features instead, Samsung’s Spinpoint M8 models (HN-M500MBB and HN-M101MBB) get a nod, as does Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K750 HTS547575A9E384. None of those drives achieve the performance of the WD offerings or Toshiba’s MK6461GSYN, though.
