2.5-Inch Hard Drives Roundup

Application tests

However, PMR models from Samsung offer the best performance in multi-threaded writing and reading tests with 100 MB files - they do it owing to good optimizations of caching algorithms.

Seagate drives demonstrate the slowest multi-threaded reading. What concerns writing, it's Hitachi. Priority of firmware algorithms in this test (even though it's a streaming test) makes 7k1 models slower (!) than the fastest 5k4 models. It must be taken into account, when you choose a hard drive for compact systems.

We evaluate HDD performance in a typical PC user mode with WinBench 99 Disk WinMark in Business and High-End patterns (open the links to the diagrams), as well as with two other popular track tests - Futuremark PCmark04 and C'T H2benchW.

All out contenders come in a tight group in the first test. We have leaders, of course (Hitachi 7k1 and Samsung/WD PMR 5k4 models), but they are not unconditional favourites.

The situation in C'T H2benchW is different. Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 is the absolute leader here. But the second place is unexpectedly taken by Seagate M5400.3 SATA, it even outperforms the M7200.1 model from the same manufacturer! However, many other 160 GB 5k4 models fare well in this test, especially hard drives from Samsung and Hitachi.

And finally, the Adobe Photoshop swapping performance test again shows booming competition of the new 5k4 models with last-year 7k1 ones: WD Scorpio ML80 is the obvious leader among its "fellow-tribesmen". It has almost caught up with the excellent Hitachi 7K100, and Samsung models have caught up with Seagate 7K100.