Three 7200 RPM Notebook Hard Drives For 2011

Benchmark Results: Power And Efficiency

Power Consumption

The lowest-power 7200 RPM 2.5” drive is WD’s Scorpio Black.

Streaming operation requires the most power, but the differences between the test candidates are rather small.

Full HD video playback power consumption may be important if you like to watch several movies on an intercontinental flight. WD and Samsung stay at around 1 W, while the new Momentus 7200.5 isn’t very efficient at this type of workload. It requires the drive to deliver a limited, but constant data stream.

High I/O activity results in 2.4 to 2.6 W power requirement on all three drives.

Efficiency

Performance per watt clearly is best on the Seagate Momentus 7200.5 when it comes to sequential operation. On one hand, the drive delivers the best throughput numbers, and on the other hand, its power consumption is even slightly lower than the two other products.

If you care for I/O efficiency, then you’ll also be off best with the new Seagate drive, but WD’s Scorpio Black is actually pretty close.