Upgrading Your Notebook Hard Drive: Does It Make Sense?

Features
By Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos
published

Test Setup And MobileMark 2007 Results

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Platform
NotebookDell Latitude D630Mobile Intel GM965 Express Chipset
CPUIntel Core 2 Duo T9500 (45nm; 2,600 MHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
RAMCorsair ValueRAM 2 x 2048MB DDR2-667 SDRAM 5-5-5-15
HDD IHitachi Travelstar 7K200 7,200 RPM, 160GB, 16MB Cache
HDD IIHitachi Travelstar 7K500 7,200 RPM, 500GB, 16MB Cache
DVD-ROM8x DVD+/-RW
WirelessIntel 4965 WLAN (802.11a/g/n) mini Card
Screen14.1" WideScreen WXGA+ LCD (1400x900)
Graphics CardIntel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Sound CardIntegrated
Power Supply9-Cell/85 WHr Primary Battery
System Software and Drivers
OSWindows Vista Ultimate SP2 Updated on November 9 2009
Graphics DriversVersion 15.12.4.1666
Storage DriversIMSM 8.​9.​0.​1023
Benchmarks and Settings
MobileMark 2007Version 1.06Productivity
SYSMark Preview 2007Version 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.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos