Fastest 2.5" Laptop HDD?

I used the search feature but all the threads I found are at least a year old... and in a year if we can go from the iPhone to the IPhone 4GS then we can make a huge improvement in the speed of laptop hard drives.

I'd like to know what the fastest laptop hard drives are. I'm not really considering getting a SDD as I really don't have the money to spend 250£ to spend on just a 160GB HDD.

I'm looking for something more like this:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4954

The Scorpio Black 500GB.

However there is then this:

Seagate Launches Fastest Laptop Hard Drive Yet - Data Storage - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

Both articles are pretty old. So that leads me to believe there hasn't been much of an advancement in laptop hard drives. Unless google is failing me today.. because every article seems to be almost pre-2010.

I currently have this hard drive:

That seems pretty bad :/

On top of that this hard drive can actually completely freeze at time and make a sound that is very much like the sound you get if you slam your laptop DVD drive closed... when this happens my HDD hangs for a time of up to 2 seconds. The entire computer including the mouse can stop completely until the sound stops. It sounds like the HDD is stalling or getting stuck or something. This can happen any time from once/three times a week to once a fortnight.

Either way I want a new hard drive.

The Scorpio black seems to be cheaper. 320-500GB on ebay comes in at 50-60£

Seagate's Momentus XT is a bit more expensive. But both are within my price range. So what exactly should I get? I'd like the fastest possible and I don't need anything bigger than 320GB but 500 would be nice.

If there is better please advise me of that as well and the price I'm in Finland so the UK is the closest (and most obvious) choice as a place for me to buy anything online.

Thanks a ton

 

Momentus XT and Scorpio Black are both good choices.

Read more benchmarks and reviews about the Momentus XT, it might be worth the extra $$$ for your use. If not, you cant go wrong with a Scorpio Black.

 

Lovely, is there really such a difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm?
Either way I'll look for some more benchmarks of the Momentus XT. I've just had a lot of trouble with Seagate in the past, 4 out of 4 drives failing and a bunch of other issues that I'll never forgive. Issues with Maxtor drives (yuck) etc.

To be honest it'll be interesting to see how much they score better than this:

Spoiler

 

I am going to tell you this, I bought a MomentusXT 500 GB with my E6410, and honestly I was sourly disappointed with it. Yes the HDTune benchmarks were good, but I didn't see the benefit of the hybrid SSD/HDD drive in all honestly. It felt as responsive as my 640 GB Scorpio Blue in my D620.

Though I don't own a Scorpio Black 500 GB, I have the 320 GB, and it is an impressive drive.

 

So you would say go for the Scorpio Black then? I do quite like WD. I'll do some more research, as long as there isn't a better drive out there for the same price the XT likes to boast that it's 80% faster than most other 7200rpm drives though.

 

80% on the 4GB flash chips, but for the rest of storage its just a normal 7200rpm drive.

 

Well that's misleading, what a scam.. seems kind of useless really.

 

IMO, XT is only good for the feel good factor on boot(I am not sure its performance characteristic as a HDD itself sans the SSD).

The only difference between the 4GB NAND and say a 4GB RAM(as cache which Windows can use) is that RAM is volatile and lost on every reboot(or hiberation).

 

True but what good is 4GB of flash memory when compared to the 500gb of 7200rpm storage space.. it seems like a silly thing really.. so 4gb of the drive is 80% faster than the other 500gb but the rest of the 500gb isn't lol.. I'm still asking really whats the point?

I might just get the Scorpio Black. It seems to be quite a bit cheaper. I'll look around through and compare some benchmarks.

 

That was my point. If you don't reboot often, the 4GB NAND would soon lose value. An extra 4GB RAM serve exactly the same purpose(and faster too).

I have the black but I don't like its noise level, that however is a very personal thing.

 

Not really a scam. Most of the files you read regularly are a very small set. Windows and various executable files, the rest are just rarely used data files.

The XT simply puts the most used bits of files on the fastest bit of memory it can. You know how various drives have 8 or 16MB of cache? Think of the 4GB SSD as another layer of cache. Slower than the 8/16MB RAM cache they have, but still massively faster than the spinning disk. It's the same way a CPU works having L1, L2 and sometimes even L3 cache. Each is slower but larger than the level closer to the CPU, but it still significantly improves speeds because it's faster than the level above it and reduces the number of times the CPU has to go all the way out to main memory or swap to get what it needs.

The thing about a persistent cache is that it takes some use for it to "settle down". You will have to use it for a couple of days at least until everything is optimized and the things you really need are cached into the faster SSD. If you expect everything to change as soon as you install the drive you will be disappointed because that's not how cache works.

 

You can rank the speeds of the laptop storage drive technologies (from slowest to fastest):

• 5400rpm 2.5" hard disk drive
• 7200rpm 2.5" hard disk drive
• Hybrid hard disk drive (7200rpm + 4GB NAND flash memory)
• Solid State Disk

If I were to tank the speeds myself (and this is purely my opinion), I would rank them as:
- 5400rpm drive (1 out of 10 in performance)
- 7200rpm hard drive (3 out of 10 in performance)
- Hybrid Hard disk drive (4 out of 10 in performance
- Solid State Disk (10 out of 10 in performance)

A Hybrid drive isn't a scam. The Seagate Momentus XT uses its 4GB of NAND flash memory to store your most commonly used files. And when your computer requests a file that happens to be stored in those 4GB of NAND flash memory, it will be very fast. What you're paying for with the Seagate Momentus XT is basically a hard drive with a giant block of cache memory.

Here is an excellent review about the Seagate Momentus XT... one of the best:
Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

The weakness of the Seagate Momentus XT is that it is only faster than a regular 7200rpm hard drive when the data you want is in that 4GB of NAND flash memory. If it isn't in those 4GB, then it's as fast as any other 7200rpm hard drive.

And more importantly, it isn't faster in areas that matter (Random 4KB reads, and I/O's per second). When you look at hard drive speeds, ignore Sequential Read/Write speeds. Everyone pays attention to those, because they are "big" numbers. But what really matters is Random 4KB reads and I/O's per second, because most of what you do with your computer uses a random read pattern. IOPS matters when you multitask, and stack up multiple random read patterns together.

That is also why a 5400rpm hard drive is significantly slower than a 7200rpm hard drive... they may have very similar sequential read speeds (~60MBps vs ~80MBps) but the small difference in random access speeds (21ms vs ~14ms) really adds up when your hard drive needs to repeatedly try and access files scattered across your hard dirve (which is typically what happens when you "use" your computer, like booting your OS, loading applications, multitasking, etc).

In the areas of Random 4KB read and IOPS, both 7200rpm HDD's and hybrid HDD's are weak:


An SSD is literally 100x faster than mechanical hard drives in Random 4KB read speeds (0.5MBps --> 40+MBps), and similarly fast in IOPS (500 IOPS --> 40,000 IOPS). It is literally like going from a 56Kbps dial-up modem to a 5.6Mbps broadband connection. If you want an idea of what that looks like, check out this video I made. I boot Windows 7, and load 27 applications in about 1 minute.
YouTube - Why I love my SSD - Windows 7 boot + loading 27 applications in about 1 minute.

If performance matters to you, I would urge you to reconsider an SSD. The sweet spot for SSD's when it comes to price/performance is 120GB. Something like a G.Skill Phoenix 120GB, Corsair F120 120GB, or Intel X25-M 120GB can all be bought for about $200 USD.

What you do is get one of these screaming fast drives, and load it with stuff where load times actually matter (OS, applications, games). For your large media where speed doesn't matter (videos, photos, music, , etc), get an inexpensive large external USB hard drive, and keep that stuff on there. It is more expensive and more inconvenient than a single large 500GB hard drive that you just put in your system and forget about, but it is the only way to get a monumental boost in performance out of you storage device.

 

Also might want to wait for OP to respond to what he is using his laptop for. If you are just doing office work, there isn't a need for an SSD, though nice to have. There are also disadvantages to SSDs.

 

^^^^ can you please elaborate on disadvantages? I have 80 GIG ssd on my rig , for OS and often used programs and steam games .Page file and most everything else is on 500 GIG 2nd drive. (which I rarely hear turn on).
Nice summary kent1146
Great thread everyone!

 

Disadvantages include:

- Much more expensive gb/$

- Significantly less space compared to a traditional hard drive

- Significantly harder if not impossible to do data recovery vs a traditional hard drive

 

Tsunade_Hime is spot-on with the first two disadvantages. In exchange for the performance of an SSD, you sacrifice affordability and storage capacity.

A 120GB 7200rpm mechanical HDD costs around... $40? A 500GB 7200rpm mechanical HDD costs around $70. An SSD will cost you around $200 for 120GB of space, and costs around $400 for 240GB of space. An SSD is MUCH more expensive in $/GB. The only way around this disadvantage is to simply be willing to spend more money in exchange for performance.

On top of the more expensive $/GB, there are limits to the capacity of an SSD. Realistically, the largest SSD you can buy is a 240GB SSD for about $400. Meanwhile, you can easily find mechanical HDD's that go up to 500GB or 750GB quite easily. The most common way around this disadvantage is to use a high-capacity external USB hard drive for the content that really eats up space and doesn't depend on speed (e.g. photos, videos, music, , etc), and just put up with the inconvenience of carrying around another drive.




As for the data recovery... I think that needs to be put in context. There are several companies out there that will do data recovery on mechanical hard drives. When your hard drive dies unexpectedly, you can send them your dead drive and they will do their best to recover whatever data they can from that dead hard drive. Typcially, these services cost in the $1,000's.

Tsuname_Hide is correct that it is much more difficult to do that kind of data recovery on an SSD. But:

(A) If you would never spend $1,000's for a data recovery service to begin with, then this "disadvantage" is irrelevant.

(B) An SSD is much more resilient than mechanical HDD's to physical drive damage (the most common cause of a hard drive failure). You could drop an SSD on concrete and it would be fine, because there are no moving parts to damage from physical shock.

 

Thanks for the clarification, pardon my spelling BTW. So as long as I do regular full backs ups with reputable program (paragon Marcium , etc) to an external drive and do incrementals, I should be good when the eventual failure takes place?

 

Yes. You should always be doing regular and reliable backups. And as long as you are doing those backups, your data will be safe when the eventual drive failure happens.

 

This is fairly a new drive from WD but performance is amazing. Look at the tests, WD Scorpio Blk 500 can't achive any of those speeds I can assure you.
I'd say it's the fastest, runs a bit expensive but not SSD expensive.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/548956-wd7500bpkt-750gb-7200rpm-western-digital.html

 

I just don't know about the prices... give it a few years and mechanical hard drives will be as dead as windows 95... and they'll cost 1/3 of the price. The problem is I hate external drives I don't even have one because I have this 500gb drive.

It was amazing to see your computer start up 27 or so programs in just a few seconds, it was like something you see in a dream and then afterwards you wake up to a harsh reality all over again.

I'm not sure that a SSD will make the kind of improvement I want. Basically I want to play Aoc (Age of Conan) it's a pretty huge game, 34Gb and it comes on 2 dvd's. So sure a SSD would probably more than halve loading times, but that's not what really 'bothers' me. Loading times are fine, it's LAG that is a reaaaal pain the , graphics lag.

I may just buy a 500gb Scorpio black and just be happy with that. The HDD I have now is scaring me half to death with all of it's random freezing even when I haven't touched the computer in an hour I can just hear the hard drive freak out.

I'll do some research. I couldn't settle for anything less than a 120GB SSD but even those are SO expensive... A 64GB SSD will set me back 120€ where as the Momentus 500gb costs the same.. if a 120GB SSD cost that much I'd take it and do what you say, run an external for the rest of my junk that isn't important. But on a 64GB drive I could install windows and AoC... that's it. No room for anything else... which is redicilous. I think I'll either get the Scorpio or something.

Thanks a lot for your help. That video explained more than 10,000 words. It's extremely fast at loading compared to a crummy mechanical drive but I'm not made of money.. on top of buying a new mobo with the 5650 in it and a few other things I may not have the money until they become cheaper lol.

Thanks again !

 

My friend you may have just found what I was looking for all along it isn't expensive at all on ebay and the tests look amazing from the links provided in the thread !

Thanks!

EDIT: Wow it was running hot though! That's tbe I guess after a test but wow *sizzle*

 

I'm glad that I could give you information that helps you make a decision. Based on what you posted, it makes absolute sense for you to go with a WD Scorpio 500GB. Spending $70 on a decently fast, reliable HDD, and not worrying about it anymore makes perfect sense to me.

 

If the 750Gb one is faster even by a bit I'll get it instead and close the book on SSD's for now until they become cheaper. The 750Gb looks the same price on Ebay anyway but I'll look around.

So it's 30% faster basically (look at the spoiler) and 25% bigger. Which is what I want.

Spoiler

 

that is about the same as my ht 7k500

 

Hitachi 7K500 is pretty much the fastest 2.5" HDD available on the market. At least according to ALL benchmarks I've ever seen.

And I'm quite happy with it. I also had a Seagate 7200 - it was fast... but vibrating as a broken washing machine... literally!! I could only live with it for 3-4 weeks, sold it and bought the Hitachi

 

Where and what size hdd?

 

its 500 gb most places have it for 60$

the 750 gb wd is faster but not 30% its barely faster I think thats below 5%

the test you showed is actually slower than my 7k500 in a couple tests and about the same in others.

I think the wd 7k750 is the fastest drive right now let me agree with that part. Its on sale right now for 100 so thats reasonable.

my momentus xt, MINE is actually slower than MY hitachi 7k500 in all the tests I did.

Phil had tests and his was faster. They are all about the same though. When set on quiet mode like mine is the xt gets a lot slower. I think its supposed to be faster.

I did 3 different programs to test and I even switched the drives in the bays in my laptop.

the hitachi 7k500 kills all drives in one measurement which is burst speed. I dont know why dont ask me.

 

7K500 is a 7200RPM 500GB HDD.

Just look for Hitachi 7K500
Been using it for nearly 9 Months now and really happy with it!

 

Okie dokie then thanks for all of that and I meant 30% faster than my current drive. My max speed is 80Mbs a second, min is 38Mbs etc, in the picture the one I compared mine with (mine is on the right, the scorpio is on the left) the scorpio was 30% faster

 

I've had my Hitachi 7K500 for about 14 months and it is a very good drive.

I'm also looking for a fast and more spacious hdd to replace 7200 RPM 320GB Hitachi in my other laptop. It's a very good drive too, but I need more space.

Was also considering the WD Scorpio Black 750 GB, but I'm afraid that it could produce more heat than the Hitachi, while being faster by 5-10% and more responsive in multitasking.

Another option is to wait for the 7K750GB Hitachi.

 

Most of these speeds are pretty irrelevant in day-to-day tasks since you'll never hit max nor will most users do multiple large file transfers within their HDD. In most reviews, the difference in speed and power consumption between the top 7200 and even 5400RPM drives aren't very significant. If you've ever used a SSD, then all HDDs will seem to perform the same.

 

Sgogeta is correct.

The numbers you are looking at are Sequential Read speeds. Everyone likes to look at these numbers, because they are the "big" numbers.

On a mechanical hard drive, what actually matters is seek time. Most of what you do with your computer will use Random Read patterns, which is largely influenced by Seek Time. The lower the Seek Time, the faster the drive will be in day-to-day use.

That is why a 7200rpm hard drive is so much faster than a 5400rpm hard drive. It's not Sequential Read times that matter. The 7200rpm hard drive has a significantly lower seek time (~14ms vs 21ms), and thereby will be faster in Random Read operations.

 

There just making it like a placebo effect. When the end user's think of it as a "Hybrid-drive" they think it would as much as fast as the normal ssd which is wrong. Seagate oversold it.

 

That isn't correct. There is actual data and hard evidence to show that a Seagate Momentus XT is faster than traditional mechanical 7200rpm hard drives.

Anandtech's article that reviews this drive is an excellent source of this data:
Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

From the Conclusion of the article:

"...what Seagate has shown here is that with a minimal amount of NAND you can achieve some tremendous performance gains.."​

It's not just marketing fluff or placebo effect. There is actual testing done by respected independent 3rd party sources to confirm Seagate's claims.

 

I understand now, so what matters is the IOPS and all of the random access speeds. Like all of the scatter graphing basically. I still want a 7200rpm drive instead of a 5400rpm. I don't want my HDD bottlenecking the rest of my laptops performance.

I'm going to have a look at the scorpio black vs. the hitachi drive. Heat doesn't bother me and neither does sound as long as the drive works well.

 

Correct.

You can actually find some comparisons on StorageReview.com where they compare the Western Digital Scorpio Black 7200rpm vs. Hitachi TravelStar 7200rpm drive.

Ultimate Notebook Hard Drive Performance: Western Digital Scorpio Black vs. Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 | StorageReview.com
Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 Review (500GB) | StorageReview.com

Here is the Takeaway from those articles:
- The two drives perform practically identically. There is not going to be any real-world performance difference between the two.

Personally, I would buy the Western Digital Scorpio Black for one very good reason... I like Western Digital's Support quality much better. When I RMA my Western Digital drives, I had the option of advance-ship replacement, where they ship out a replacement drive to me immediately, and give me up to 1 month to ship the defective unit back. When I had to RMA my Hitachi 7k160 drive several years ago, I had to send the drive to them first, and wait 2-3 weeks for a replacement drive to arrive from Thailand.

 

If access time is whats important to you

the momentus xt is by far the fastest in the access time test.

 

Any HDD you get will be the bottleneck of the system whether it's 5400RPM or 7200RPM. If you can't afford the SSD, seriously consider the Seagate XT instead.

 

I might look around for the XT then, I want to do gaming and not have the hard drive limit loading times too much. It's obvious the game data wont be put in the flash memory but it would be nice to have some fast boot times and other things as well. The Momentus XT cant be much slower than the Scorpio Black anyway they're both meant to compete against each other and the added 4GB flash memory will probably make a huge difference in what I use often.

Though it's hard to make a choice because some people have had serious doubts with their Momentus XT (Hybrid) drives... I just want something 7200 all round that runs beautifully.

Why is the Velociprator so slow? It's meant to be 10,000RPM...

Is it possible to find out if the 500GB Scorpio Black is the same speed as the 750GB? Because the 750GB is double the price and only 250GB bigger. I don't need anything bigger than a 500GB to be honest.

Lastly but perhaps most importantly what is the difference between the WD5000B EKT and the WD5000B PKT? There's a 2€ difference between the two on this website I am looking at as well as the B EKT is OOS (Out of Stock).

 

The Velociraptor isn't that slow (although it's aging a bit at this point), but it won't fit in your notebook; while technically a 2.5" drive, it takes more power than a notebook provides (I believe it actually needs a 12 volt input), and without the 3.5" caddy it normally fits in, tends to overheat quickly.

The 750 GB Scorpio Black is a bit faster than the 500 GB Scorpio Black (sequentially), but does a bit worse in access times and 4K read/writes. There's a review of it here.

The BPKT is an advanced format drive, while the BEKT is not (source here).

 

Which one would you choose in order to upgrade a 2 year old acer ferrari 1100 notebook

a) WD 5000 BEKT (7200rpm, 500GB)
b) WD 5000 BPKT (7200rpm, 500GB Advanced Formatting)
c) Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid

I am using it for everyday things not something particular.

What about momentus XT consumption?

 

If you're doing a variety of different tasks, stay away from the Momentus XT. The drives uses its onboard SLC RAM to "learn" your usage patterns and optimize for them. If you're doing different things every time you boot your system, the drive will never learn, thus defeating its purpose.

 

I won't be getting an SSD until prices drop down to reasonable levels (unless manufacturers offer you the option from the get go to have a lower capacity SSD for the OS (in the range of 60 to 80GB) and a secondary high capacity 7200rpm HDD (without the overall price-tag breaking your bank account).

The current price/capacity ratio is through the roof (read 'ludicrous') and not cost-effective (despite the obvious speed gains).

The Hybrid drive won't show any benefits except for short term use because as other people mentioned, the 4GB of NAND was envisioned primarily as a huge (and very fast) cache.

Right, now, the more cost-effective solution would be to get a high capacity 7200rpm HDD.
A Scorpio Black of 500GB or higher capacity (depending on your needs) is recommended, or Hitatchi Travelstar (also the newest one of 7200rpm).

 

What do you mean by doing the same things...Internet ? Video editing with different footage??

Lets say that momentus is out of the question should i prefer a WD with advanced formating or not (windows 7 - 2year old notebook)??

 

Advanced format is a new way of arranging data that uses 4 KB sectors instead of the old 512 byte sectors. This means that making larger capacity drives is easier than before. The problem is, older OSes like XP don't really support advanced format well. Since you have Windows 7, this isn't really an issue, so either one will do just fine. Basically, it doesn't really matter.

 

I am currently running dual WD Scorpio black 320gig HDD in my sager np9890 (approx 4 months) and I have been very happy with them so far. Yes they produce some heat, but it isn't anything excessive. They have run flawlessly so far. When I replace my current machine I plan on going with dual 750gig Scorpio black drives eventually. I am still not sold on the reliability of the solid state drives, and I can get 10x the storage space for the same amount of money as one of the intel 510 120gig SSD........so it's a no brainer to me.

 

Seagate XT is the fastest. Also check the top review in my signature, it compares the XT to the WD5000BEKT.

 

If you don`t want the fastest (Momentus XT) due to it`s price, the second choise should be 5000 BEKT, because it behaves better than advanced format drives on small writes (under 5k) and is more compatible.
If you want some more drop resistance, you may consider HDD with free fall sensor like seagate xxxxxAS G series (the G stands for g-shock).
Avoid the cheap BPVT, because they have hardcoded idle timer at 8 seconds which causes high HDD start/stop count. While utilizing 4096 byte advanced format sectors, they report wrong sector size of 512 bytes to the os, which is the main reason for their compatibility/performance issues under linux/mac os and windows xp.

 

Source for this assertion?

 

Romberry,

Here is one:

See:
Roundup: 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drives with 500 GB, 640 GB and 750 GB Storage Capacities - X-bit labs