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

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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.

Benchmark Results: Streaming Reads/Writes And 4 KB Random Reads/Writes

Hitachi's Travelstar 7K750 handles streaming workloads best. However, it's trailed quite closely by Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT and Toshiba's MQ01ABD100. Although the Hitachi Travelstar 5K1000 falls further behind, it's still no slouch when it comes to streaming.

Typically, disks with high spindle speeds and low access times shine in random read/write tests. However, the three 5400 RPM disks take the lead compared to our lone 7200 RPM sample in Iometer's random read/write test.

Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT is the fastest, followed by mid-range performances from Hitachi's Travelstar 5K1000 and Toshiba's MQ01ABD100, with the Travelstar 7K750 finishing last, despite its 7200 RPM spindle.