2.5-inch Hard Drive Roundup

2.5-inch Hard Drive Roundup

Published August 25, 2008 at 01:17:13 PM, by Alex Morman

Overview

Updated on 1-19-06: The graph showing the results for the SYSmark2004SE Total Score incorrectly had the Internet Content Creation scores displayed. The graph has been corrected.

Editor's Note: I would like to take a moment to thank LaptopLogic Contributing Editor John Murphy for his help acquiring all of the drives for this test. Without him this roundup wouldn't have been possible!

One of the most common questions new notebook users have is "Which hard drive should I get?" There are of course a variety of answers depending on budget and uses, but quantitative answers are hard to come by. With this review, we look to comprehensively test the majority of 2.5" hard drives available today.

We have all of the current models from Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Western Digital, and Toshiba. Unfortunately we did not have time to sample any Samsung drives, but it appears their drives are limited to older 5400RPM models as it is. As new drives come out, we will add individual reviews that compare results with the ones obtained in this roundup. Now let's get down to the hard drives!

4200RPM Drives

Specifications	Seagate 120GB 4200.2	Hitachi 120GB 4K120	Fujitsu 120GB MHV2120AT
Model	ST9120824A	HTS421212H9AT00	MHV2120AT
Size	120GB	120GB	120GB
Cache	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer
Speed	4200RPM	4200RPM	4200RPM
Platters	2x60GB platters	2x60GB platters	2x60GB platters
Max Areal Density	Gb/in^2	98 Gb/in^2	98.6 Gb/in^2
Seek Time	12.5ms	11ms	12ms
Power	1.8W/1.8W read/write mode 0.8W/0.26W idle/standby mode	1.4W/1.4W read/write mode 0.65W/0.15W idle/standby mode	1.6W/1.6W read/write mode 0.5W/0.2W idle/standby mode
Sound Levels	2.9 bels operating mode 2.4 bels idle mode	2.7 bels operating mode 2.3 bels idle mode	2.3 bels operating mode bels idle mode
Tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 70C non-operating temperature range 250 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 300 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 300 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance
Interface	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100
Weight	100 grams	99 grams	100 grams
Warranty	5 Years	3 Years	3 Years

Seagate 120GB 4200.2

Hitachi 120GB 4K120

Fujitsu 120GB MHV2120AT

5400RPM Drives

Specifications	Seagate 120GB 5400.2	Toshiba 100GB MK1032GAX	Western Digital 80GB WD800VE
Model	ST9120821A	MK1032GAX	WD800VE
Size	100GB	100GB	80GB
Cache	8MB Cache Buffer	16MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer
Speed	5400RPM	5400RPM	5400RPM
Platters	2x60GB platters	2x50GB platters	2x40GB platters
Max Areal Density	94 Gb/in^2	83.2 Gb/in^2	?? Gb/in^2
Seek Time	12.5ms	12ms	12ms
Power	1.8W/1.8W read/write mode 0.8W/0.26W idle/standby mode	2.0W/2.0W read/write mode ?W/0.1W idle/standby mode	2.5W/2.5W read/write mode 2.0W/0.225W idle/standby mode
Sound Levels	2.9 bels operating mode 2.4 bels idle mode	?? bels operating mode ?? bels idle mode	2.1 bels operating mode 2.0 bels idle mode
Tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 70C non-operating temperature range 250 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -20 to 60C non-operating temperature range 325 G�s operating shock tolerance 850 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 60C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 250 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance
Interface	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100
Weight	100 grams	101 grams	117 grams
Warranty	5 Years	3 Years	3 Years
Specifications	Hitachi 100GB 5K100	Fujitsu 100GB MHV2100AH	Toshiba 80GB MK8032GAX
Model	HTS54101 -0G9AT00	MHV2100AH	MK8032GAX
Size	100GB	100GB	80GB
Cache	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer
Speed	5400RPM	5400RPM	5400RPM
Platters	2x50GB platters	2x50GB platters	2x40GB platters
Max Areal Density	86 Gb/in^2	82.4 Gb/in^2	64.7 Gb/in^2
Seek Time	12ms	12ms	12ms
Power	2.0W/2.0W read/write mode 0.6W/0.2W idle/standby mode	1.9W/1.9W read/write mode 0.6W/0.2W idle/standby mode	1.9W/1.9W read/write mode 0.63W/0.18W idle/standby mode
Sound Levels	2.7 bels operating mode 2.5 bels idle mode	2.6 bels operating mode ?? bels idle mode	2.7 bels operating mode 2.5 bels idle mode
Tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 300 G�s operating shock tolerance 1000 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 300 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -20 to 60C non-operating temperature range 325 G�s operating shock tolerance 850 G�s non-operating shock tolerance
Interface	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100
Weight	102 grams	101 grams	101 grams
Warranty	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years

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Seagate 120GB 5400.2

Toshiba 100GB MK1032GAX

Western Digital 80GB WD800VE

Hitachi 100GB 5K100

Fujitsu 100GB MHV2100AH

Toshiba 80GB MK8032GAX
Don't mind the Lenovo markings on this drive, we borrowed it for test purposes!

7200RPM Drives

Specifications	Hitachi 100GB 7K100	Hitachi 60GB 7K60	Seagate 100GB 7200.1
Model	HTS721010G9AT00	HTE726060M9AT00	ST910021A
Size	100GB	60GB	100GB
Cache	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer	8MB Cache Buffer
Speed	7200RPM	7200RPM	7200RPM
Platters	2x50GB platters	2x30GB platters	2x50GB platters
Max Areal Density	81 Gb/in^2	50 Gb/in^2	83 Gb/in^2
Seek Time	10ms	10ms	10.5ms
Power	2.0W/2.0W read/write mode 0.85W/0.2W idle /standby mode	2.5W/2.5W read/write mode 2.0W/0.25W idle/standby mode	2.2W/2.2W read/write mode 1.3W/0.26W idle/standby mode
Sound Levels	3.0 bels operating mode 2.6 bels idle mode	3.3 bels operating mode 2.7 bels idle mode	2.9 bels operating mode 2.5 bels idle mode
Tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 300 G�s operating shock tolerance 1000 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 40C operating temperature range -40 to 65C non-operating temperature range 200 G�s operating shock tolerance 1000 G�s non-operating shock tolerance	5 to 55C operating temperature range -40 to 70C non-operating temperature range 250 G�s operating shock tolerance 900 G�s non-operating shock tolerance
Interface	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100	PATA Ultra ATA/100
Weight	115 grams	115 grams	115 grams
Warranty	3 Years	3 Years	5 Years

�

Hitachi 100GB 7K100

Hitachi 60GB 7K60

Seagate 100GB 7200.1

Setup Method

For our tests on these drives we used our trusty IBM Thinkpad T42, sporting the following specifications:

Specifications	IBM Thinkpad T42
Processor	Intel Pentium M 730 (1.7GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
Front Side Bus	400MHz
Chipset	Intel 855PM
LCD	15" SXGA+ (1400x1050)
Memory	1GB (2x512MB) DDR333 SO-DIMM
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB VRAM
Operating System	Windows XP Professional w/SP2

The Thinkpad T42 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. For the battery performance test, the power scheme was set to 'Portable/Laptop'. This activates SpeedStep technology, which lowers CPU speed when not needed, thus increasing battery life. Screen brightness and audio were both set to 50% and Wi-Fi was turned off. 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

Bapco SYSmark2004SE is popular benchmark suite consists of two different performance scenarios and generates an overall score by taking the geometric mean of the individual scores.

• Internet Content Creation: In this scenario, the content creator creates a product related website targeting a broadband and narrowband audience. The user first renders a 3D model to a bitmap, while preparing web pages using a web site publishing tool. The user opens a video editing package, creates a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and
  starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into an image-processing package; modifies it and saves the results. Back in the 3D modeling software, the user modifies a 3D model and exports it to a vector-graphics format. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using one of the modified images as input. The user extracts content from an archive. Meanwhile, he uses an animation creation tool to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches and the system is scanned for viruses.
• Office Productivity: In this scenario, the office productivity user creates a marketing presentation and supporting documents for a new product. The user receives email containing a collection of documents in a compressed file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while a virus checking software scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed and
  the user begins creating the collateral documents. The user also accesses a database and runs some queries. A collection of documents are compressed. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet and used to generate graphical charts. The user then transcribes a document.. The user edits and adds elements to a slide show template. Finally, the user looks at the results of his work (both the slide show and the portable document) in an Internet browser.

Futuremark PCMark 2005 1.0.1 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.

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

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.

Windows Startup Time is measured from the moment the power button is depressed until the Windows password protected logon appears. Please note these numbers may not be replicable on a different system, as the Thinkpad BIOS startup takes a fair amount of time.

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 (C:).

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 (C:).

Half Life 2 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 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.

Idle Temperature is measured with the machine sitting on a table for thirty minutes after bootup, with no activity on the machine and power scheme set to "Home/Desktop." MobileMeter is used to measure the temperature.

Load Temperature is measured with the machine sitting on a table running IOMeter. IOMeter fills the hard drive's empty space with a file for use in its own testing. We measured the peak temperature during this time period of heavy drive writing.

Noise is measured purely qualitatively. Unfortunately we have no sound testing equipment suitable for this use, so we resort to using the good ol' human ear. Tests were performed in a quiet room, comparing the drives from a normal sitting position.

SYSmark2004SE

As we've seen before, SYSmark's Internet Content Creation is not very hard drive dependant. We'll see a better correlation in the Office Productivity test.

The three 7200RPM drives available today all perform very competitively, but surprisingly the older Hitachi 7K60 takes the lead here.

Looking at our slew of 5400RPM models, we see one major disparity that will continue throughout the majority of our testing: the Western Digital WD800VE performs even below other 4200RPM drives. However surprisingly both of the Toshiba drives take the lead here. The 100GB MK1032GAX has 16MB cache and the 80GB MK8032GAX only 8MB, but both drives perform very well. It'll be interesting to see how these do in our real world tests.

No clear leader emerges from the pack of 4200RPM drives, but all perform respectably. Notice the small differences between the 4200RPM and faster drives. Actual office application performance will differ only slightly, with the biggest difference seen in application startup times.

Since SYSmark2004SE simulates real world usage through general internet and office applications, we don't see a huge disparity in performance due to RPM speed. In fact, the Hitachi 120GB 4K120 is only one opint away from the Seagate 100GB 7200.1 despite its meager 4200RPM spindle speed. For the kind of usage reflected in SYSmark2004SE, we recommend users looking at the capacity they need and the best $/GB ratio as higher RPM's don't increase performance terribly much.

PCMark 2005

Below we have a breakdown of the individual PCMark05 hard drive test results:

PCMark's Hard Drive subsystem test gives us the correlation we would expect here. Hitachi's 7K100 wins out the 7200RPM category, as we saw in our Seagate vs Hitachi Head to Head article. The Seagate 7200.1 isn't far behind, but the 7K60's lower areal density and older technology inhibit its performance.

We see two levels of distinction in the 5400RPM bunch. The Seagate, Hitachi, and Fujitsu offerings all perform on levels near the 7200RPM 7K60 and offer impressive capacities of 100GB and 120GB. The Western Digital drive falls behind as it will continue to, but surprisingly the two Toshiba drives are at the bottom also. This has more to do with not having a specific optimization towards the type of tests PCMark05 runs and not with actual performance.

Following up the pack, our 4200RPM models fall in line with expectations. Continuing a trend we will see in further tests, Seagate's 120GB 4200.2 doesn't impress here. The Hitachi 4K120 and Fujitsu MHV2120AT easily surpass it, and do so at a lower price. But we'll get to price in a bit.

As with the Hard Drive subsystem test, we see the expected correlation between spindle speed and simulated performance. Notice though that due to increased areal densities and overall improved disc technology, 4200RPM and 5400RPM drives are increasingly close to 7200RPM drives in overall system performance.

MobileMark 2005

For the longest time, one of the biggest concerns of higher speed drives was higher power consumption. First looking at the 7200RPM drives, we can clearly see the power management advances in modern drives. The 7K60 features older drive technology and as a result, has 16-23 minutes less battery life than its modern counterparts.

Battery life is pretty well spread throughout the 5400RPM models, varying as much as 30 minutes. Now just because you may choose a Seagate 5400.2 over the Fujitsu MHV2100AH, that doesn't mean you're going to lose 30 minutes of battery life during normal usage. The MobileMark 2005 test continuously loops office application scripts with pauses for simulated user interaction. We chose this test to show the worst case power consumption you are likely to encounter. Fujitsu and Toshiba have a strong showing here, posting the best battery life times of the bunch. Seagate is the only real disappointment here, with a lackluster 3:52 runtime.

Hitachi and Fujitsu's 120GB 4200RPM drives both put on respectable showings in MobileMark, again with only Seagate lacking. While Seagate's 7200.1 offered competitive battery life in the 7200RPM category, they are truly lacking in the 5400RPM and 4200RPM fields. We don't feel this is reason enough alone to disqualify Seagate from a buyer's choices, but it is a noticeable downside.

WinBench99

The Disk Transfer Rate test confirms pretty much the same results from IOMeter's Maximum Throughput test. This test also provides the transfer rates at the end of the disk, which are always much lower. We don't see any surprises in the end transfer rates, except that the 4200RPM drives keep a very respectable throughput from beginning to end.

CPU Utilization

Given the large number of data transfers going on in our Max I/O testing, it is no surprise we see higher CPU utilization in this test.

Surprisingly, the 7K100 leads this test. One would figure that the higher performance drive might use more of the CPU, but Hitachi managed to achieve an impressively lower utilization level than Seagate's 7200.1.

Looking at the 5400RPM drives, Hitachi again has an impressive showing in CPU utilization; but is beat out ever so slightly by Fujitsu's MHV2100AH.

Lastly, the 4200RPM contenders show an interesting turn of events: Seagate's 4200.2 has a markedly lower CPU utilization than even Hitachi's 4K120. When examining the 4200RPM results we see another interesting trend: 4200RPM drives have a pretty significant decrease in CPU utilization. Let's see if this holds true with Max Throughput CPU utilization.

The 7200RPM drives have the highest utilization of all the drives, whereas in the Max I/O test they were only a little better than the 5400RPM's. An odd turn of events has the 7K60 about 1% lower utilization than the other 7200RPM drives.

Over in the 5400RPM category we see a general decrease in CPU utilization. There isn't as much of a drop with the 4200RPM drives, but the trend of higher CPU utilization with higher speed drives is continued.

Windows Startup Time

Now we truly do see some interesting results here. There is no cle

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Technical Specifications

No specifications are available.