Upgrading Your Notebook Hard Drive: Does It Make Sense?

Test Setup And MobileMark 2007 Results

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Platform
Notebook Dell Latitude D630Mobile Intel GM965 Express Chipset
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 (45nm; 2,600 MHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
RAM Corsair ValueRAM 2 x 2048MB DDR2-667 SDRAM 5-5-5-15
HDD I Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 7,200 RPM, 160GB, 16MB Cache
HDD II Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 7,200 RPM, 500GB, 16MB Cache
DVD-ROM 8x DVD+/-RW
Wireless Intel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n) mini Card
Screen 14.1" WideScreen WXGA+ LCD (1400x900)
Graphics Card Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Sound Card Integrated
Power Supply 9-Cell/85 WHr Primary Battery
System Software and Drivers
OS Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 Updated on November 9 2009
Graphics Drivers Version 15.12.4.1666
Storage Drivers IMSM 8.​9.​0.​1023
Benchmarks and Settings
MobileMark 2007 Version 1.06Productivity
SYSMark Preview 2007 Version 1.06Productivity

First, we ran MobileMark on the system running each of the hard drives. Although the power ratings of the new Travelstar 7K500 drive aren’t significantly lower, there was a benefit in battery runtime, even though the benefit of four minutes in a total runtime of more than six hours is tiny.

MobileMark does not reveal performance benefits for the new drive.