Four 2.5" Hard Drives From 500 GB To 1 TB, Benchmarked

Features
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Thanks to advances in manufacturing and 4 KB sectors, we finally have 2.5" hard drives with 500 GB per platter and a notebook-friendly 9.5 mm Z-height. Thanks to their high data density, even power-friendly 5400 RPM drives offer impressive transfer rates.

Power And Performance Per Watt

Among the three power-optimized drives, Hitachi's Travelstar 5K1000 draws the least power, followed by Toshiba's MQ01ABD100 and Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT. The Hitachi Travelstar 7K750, which emphasizes performance, scores worst among the four candidates.

The Travelstar 7K750 leads the streaming performance-per-watt comparison due to its solid sequential performance. The exceptionally power-frugal Toshiba MQ01ABD100 trails closely, in spite of being slower.

In the database-oriented performance-per-watt benchmark, Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT pulls ahead of its three competitors.