2.5-Inch Perpendicular Recording HDD Roundup

2.5-Inch Perpendicular Recording HDD Roundup

Published August 25, 2008 at 01:17:14 PM, by Tim Supples

Overview

Perpendicular magnetic recording is a relatively new storage technology that has moved into the mainstream. Seagate, Hitachi, and Western Digital all incorporate this new technology into their mainstream 5400RPM product lines which span a large range of capacities and prices. Toshiba stands out a bit from the other drives in this article in that they only offer a 200GB 4200RPM model. Sure it has a slower spindle speed, but it has 40GB on top of every other 2.5" drive out there (Fujitsu has had a 200GB 2.5" drive available for a while, but it is thicker and won't fit in most notebooks). We saw PMR 5400RPM drives compete well with non-PMR 7200RPM drives, so it will be interesting how the 4200RPM compares to 5400RPM in the perpendicular recording realm. For a quick refresh on PMR technology, read on below.

If you look at the illustration below, you will see that in conventional longitudinal magnetic storage the bits are laid horizontally, parallel to the surface of the disk. This has always worked fine and brought us to 500GB 3.5" drive capacities and 120GB (or 160GB in Fujitsu's case) 2.5" drive capacities. However as drive densities increase, there is a little problem called superparamagnetism. This super-long word simply means that bits are becoming too small and too dense to hold their magnetic positions. The result is that bits flip, the magnetic north & south poles suddenly reverse, corrupting data and making the storage device unreliable.

This is where perpendicular recording comes in. With perpendicular recording the bits are laid vertically, perpendicular to the surface of the disk. Adjacent alternating bits stand with north pole next to south pole; thus wanting to attract eachother, are more stable, and can be packed more closely. Current longitudinal technology has achieved an areal density around 100 Gigabits per square inch, with experts predicting a maximum 120 Gigabits per square inch before superparamagnetism interferes. The new Seagate 5400.3 lineup sports a whopping 132 Gigabits per square inch areal density, necessary to achieve the 160GB capacity. 132 Gigabits is just the beginning for density though; Hitachi apparently demonstrated a perpendicular recording density of 230 Gigabits per square inch and it can only get better. Keep in mind that with drive density increases, we expect to see read performance increases as well. The more data you pack into a small area, the faster it can be read. Current high capacity 5400RPM drives "feel" near as fast as their 7200RPM counterparts in normal usage, and high density perpendicular drives should equalize that playing field even more.

Now let's get into the meat of things: the drives and how they fare against each other.

Setup Method

Lenovo supplied us with a ThinkPad T60 for our tests:

Specifications	Lenovo Thinkpad T60
Processor	Intel Core Duo T2500 (2.0GHz)
Front Side Bus	667MHz
Chipset	Intel 945PM
LCD	15" SXGA+ (1400x1050)
Memory	1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 667 SO-DIMM
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128MB
Operating System	Windows XP Professional w/SP2

The Thinkpad T60 was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk' with the AC plugged in, meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented.

Synthetic Tests

IOMeter 2004.07.30 is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool, originally developed by Intel. We ran four different tests using IOMeter, consisting of two different tests performed at both 100% read and 100% write. CPU utilization is also measured during each test. To obtain an idea of CPU utilization, we averaged the read & write utilization during each of the Maximum I/O and Maximum Throughput tests.

• Maximum Throughput: This test simulates maximum drive throughput using 64KB packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.
• Maximum I/O : This test simulates maximum drive I/O performance using 512 Byte packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.

WinBench99 is a subsystem-level benchmark that measures the performance of a PC's graphics, disk, and video subsystems in a Windows environment. We ran the Disk Transfer Rate test.

Futuremark PCMark 2005 is the latest update to Futuremark's popular overall system benchmarking program. The 2005 version adds multithreading, DirectX 9, Windows Media Player 10, virus scanning, High Definition video playback (WMVHD), and a vast number of other tests to its suite. Testing your computer's CPU, RAM, hard drive and graphics card, PCMark05 drives your computer to the max to determine its strengths and weaknesses.

Bapco MobileMark 2005 is the latest version of the premier notebook battery life and performance under battery life metric based on real world applications.

• Office Productivity: The workloads in this category model a mobile professional at a fictitious automobile company. The worker creates documents using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, accesses email, and creates graphics and animation with Photoshop and Flash to include in a multimedia presentation. An Internet browser is used to view presentations. The user also invokes file compression and virus detection in the background.

Real World Tests

Note: All of the timed tests were repeated three times, with the drive defragmented and rebooted between test runs. The final score is the average of the three scores.

400MB File Copy Time is measured as the time is takes to copy a 400MB file from the Windows desktop to the root folder of the drive.

400x1MB File Copy Time is measured as the time is takes to copy 400 1MB files from the Windows desktop to the root folder of the drive.

Half Life 2: Episode One Game Start Load Time is measured as the time from when "Half Life 2" shortcut is run until the main interface menu is displayed. Intro videos were disabled, but no other settings were altered. Game resolution was set to 1400x1050.

Half Life 2: Episode One Level Load Time is measured as the time from when the new level is selected until the "Half Life 2" intro sequence is displayed. The first level in the game was used. Game resolution was set to 1400x1050.

PCMark 2005

If this isn't an anomaly, we're not sure what is. In the exact same system, the Seagate drive beats the Hitachi drive in the Hard Drive subtest of PCMark05. In the total score, the Hitachi bests the Seagate. Now granted the Total scores are within our approximate 3% margin of error, but the Hard Drive scores are not. Regardless, these tests tell us what we've known all along. Hitachi and Seagate trade blows in many different tests, both performing very close to eachother. The Toshiba drive however starts its trend of keeping up rather well despite its slower 4200RPM spindle speed.

WinBench99

Performance in the 5400RPM models is nearly identical here, putting out scores extremely competitive with 7200RPM non-PMR models. The really interesting piece of data to pull from here though is how the "measly" 4200RPM drive here performed. Competitive performance out of the gate is looking good for the 200GB drive from Toshiba.

IOMeter

IOmeter worked its magic again, filling these empty drives with a test file and finding just how fast these little beauties will go.

The Hitachi and Seagate models are trading blows here, this time with the Hitachi coming out on top in a rather strong showing. We re-tested the Seagate drive several times with the same results, showing an oddly low maximum throughput, most likely due to just a quirk with IOMeter. As you can see, once again the Toshiba MK2035GSS performs strongly!

CPU usage shows an oddly high amount for the Toshiba Max I/O, but our other Toshiba non-PMR SATA drives shows similarly high numbers.

File Copy Tests

Now we move onto our real world tests, which show some very interesting results indeed.

Trading places from our previous test, the Seagate drive manages some very impressive copy times. Toshiba's 4200RPM 200GB model shows the weaknesses of its slower spindle speed, but performance is not dismal by any means. A lot of the 5400RPM drives took longer than 30 seconds to run this test in our PATA Roundup.

We see the same pattern here, taking a little longer due to the more rigorous test. Is an extra 40GB worth 10-15 seconds of lost time? You be the judge!

Half Life 2: Episode 1

Our second batch of a real world tests, we look at game load times with Half Life 2: Episode 1.

Hitachi 5K160 shows a slight gain over the Seagate 5400.3, but more importantly we see how not far behind the Toshiba 4200RPM drive is. For the sizeable increase in capacity, gamers need not worry about lacking load performance.

MobileMark2005

As you can see, we lost around 10 minutes of battery life with the Toshiba drive. Either a result of the greater areal density or the longer disk access times due to the slightly lower performance, you still shouldn't see as much as a 10 minute different in real world use. The Productivity test runs constantly until it drains the battery, so you would have to be a pretty heavy user to see such a drop in runtime.

Conclusion

Specifications	Seagate 160GB 5400.3	Hitachi 160GB 5K160	Toshiba 200GB MK2035GSS
Capacity	160GB	160GB	200GB
Price	~$170	$139	$249
Dollars per Gigabyte	$1.06	$0.87	$1.25

No conclusion about these hard drives would be complete without a look at pricing and availability. All three models have been announced for some time, so one would assume they are readily available, right? Unfortunately Seagate's 160GB 5400.3 SATA drive is not readily available. Numerous retailers list the Seagate part number as stocked, but not in-stock, with the average price being around $170. The Hitachi 160GB 5K160 was more commonly available and at a very attractive price, $139, but keep in mind the Hitachi drive comes with a 3 year warranty compared to the Seagate and Toshiba with 5 years. The high capacity Toshiba shows up in major online retailers, but carries a noticeably higher price tag. With a dollar per gigabyte cost of $1.25, it costs you over 40% more per gigabyte for the privilege of owning the only 200GB 2.5" SATA drive on the market (save Fujitu's model which won't fit in a standard notebook anyway).

We were wowed by Seagate's PATA perpendicular drive and its SATA brother's performance is just as impressive. Hitachi's 5K160 is their first perpendicular venture and it turned out quite well, keeping up the well-fed Seagate-Hitachi performance rivalry we see between their drives. However the real black sheep here was Toshiba's MK2035GSS, with its lowly 4200RPM spindle speed yet massive 200GB storage. Despite only spinning at 4200RPM, the drive kept up well in all the tests and really only showed its weakness in extremely disk-intensive activities; and even that "weakness" was losing a few seconds of time. It won't be long before we see 200GB 7200RPM 2.5" drives, but Toshiba was the first and at the time of publishing, is still the only company to offer a 2.5" 200GB hard drive. Those who need the extra storage or want the room to grow, get Toshiba's MK2035GSS while it's hot. It is even great as an external drive, where spindle speeds aren't as important (due to the overhead of USB/Firewire), but you can have 200GB in a small, self-powered storage device.

For the ultimate in performance and capacity, Seagate and Hitachi fit the bill, and at a nicely lower cost as well. Hitachi leads the value category here, but also beats Seagate in availability. We love the whisper quiet operating of Seagate drives and the industry leading (over Hitachi anyway) 5 year warranty, but we couldn't find a drive in stock at a major retailer. Tisk tisk Seagate.

In the end, we were happy with the performance of all the companies PMR offerings. However we were particularly impressed with the competitiveness of the 4200RPM Toshiba drive, offering 25% more storage than its competitors and keeping up nicely in the benchmarks. Hopefully Toshiba will continue enhancing its storage lineup with high capacity, high performance PMR options. Look for more Toshiba drive tests as well as numerous other manufacturers' offerings in the Laptop Logic 2.5" SATA Roundup, coming soon to a web browser near you.

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