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: Access Times And I/O Performance

h2benchw is a low-level metric that directly accesses the hard disk, ignoring the operating system’s sector translation. This test is relevant because all four candidates use 4 KB sectors internally, but present them as 512-byte sectors to the operating system. We aren't presented with any surprises, however. The Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 leads the pack, and the Toshiba MQ01ABD100 trails behind.

None of the four 2.5" disks fare particularly well in the database, Web server, or workstation benchmarks. Had we tested the enhanced availability versions of the two Hitachi disks, we would have hoped for better results.

In the end, Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT winds up winning all four Iometer benchmarks.