Seven Mobile ATA Hard Drives Compared 125
AnInkle writes "Though hard drives are allegedly the fastest advancing high-tech product, most laptop manufacturers persist in saving a buck by outfitting their units with a low-end, low-cache, low-capacity, low-spindle-speed HDD. The Tech Report takes a different angle from other mobile hard drive reviews by including one of those maligned 4,200 RPM, 2MB cache models in their roundup of 2.5" hard drives, which includes 'a 160 GB perpendicular monster and a couple of 7,200-RPM speed demons.' The results are clear that most of us would see a tremendous boost in performance by upgrading this one component."
suprise :( (Score:5, Funny)
If you think THATs suprising, imagine my face when I found out that FLAMMABLE and INFLAMMABLE mean the SAME THING.
Re:suprise :( (Score:2)
One of my favorite quotes, from one of my favorite episodes
Re:suprise :( (Score:2, Informative)
Flammable vs. Inflammable [lifetips.com]
Anyways, back on topic. The day I see a mobile HDD survive an 3-story fall onto solid concrete, then I'll be impressed. And yes, I've seen it. Except for the surviving part.
Re:suprise :( (Score:2)
flammable Audio pronunciation of "flammable" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (flm-bl) adj. Easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly; inflammable
Re:suprise :( (OBLIGATORY SIMPSONS) (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://w
Quite true indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
However, one day the included 6Gig harddisk with a really low speed (Must have been a 4200RPM, but could be less) and I bought a new 5400RPM 80Gig harddisk . That was pretty much the upgrade that gave me most speed. That, and I could finally install more than one OS and keep the machine usable ;-)
Fast harddisks do matter.... Even if I tought that it was one of the least important things in the overall speed of the machine.
Re:Quite true indeed (Score:2)
Copy a big directory: 2m18s -> 1m17s (Wow!)
Boot up: 54s -> 47s (Ok...)
Compile some code: 58s -> 56s (Meh.)
In short, it depends on what you're doing. Unfortunately the things I wait for the most, didn't speed up much. Overall, going from 4200rpm to 7200rpm is an OK upgrade but I think overrated. Power consumption of the laptop as a whole only increa
Re:Quite true indeed (Score:2)
Re:Quite true indeed (Score:2)
Re:Quite true indeed (Score:2)
however, the latency tests on the benchmark were not sufficient, they should really cripple and fragment the hdd before they make the benchmarks. there is the point where the 7200rpm drive with 20% less seek time really hits in.
with continious data like the "default test setup", the speed difference isn't really worth to mention.
if my ubuntu runs, it's all great and fast. if it works
Hard Drives are the slowest advancing components (Score:3, Informative)
There isn't a good solution available either. RAIDs can get expensive, flash and similars can be fast but there are problems with interfaces (quality, selections,
What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:1)
The largest laptop drive currently available is 160 GB, and that has only been available for a few weeks.
So, in roughly 3 years, the capacity of 2.5" hard drives has doubled. (A far cry from Moore's law.) Processor speeds haven't kept up with Moore's law either, but they have certainly more than doubled in the
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Six years ago most laptop drives were 3600 rpm. Now most laptop drives are 4200 rpm (yes there are plenty of 5400 and 7200 rpm drives out there, but I'd wager to say that most people don't have them.) T
Re:What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Not magic 'burst' throughput (which is akin to measuring horsepower at the piston rings) but real throughput.
Open two command line windows, and on each one start a copy of a zillion small / medium size files from some directory to another directory on the same drive (your MP3 directory would be perfect.) Two threads just doing concurrent reads and writes of uncached data
Past=!Present, Mhz=!Speed (Score:2)
That ended quite a while ago.
We were stuck at 250GB for _years_.
Pertenticular recording could give another boost the next years, maybe an order of magnitude, yes, but the last 5 years HD were very slow in progress.
Re:Hard Drives are the slowest advancing component (Score:1)
[\dry wit]
Re:Hard Drives are the slowest advancing component (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hard Drives are the slowest advancing component (Score:2)
The original law related to increased transistor count for money per year. Here we have some people changing it to Mhz increase per year. Then they want to compare it to hard disk transfer speed increase per year while others are saying storage capacity (or density) per disk per year is more appropriate.
No wonder there is so little agreement.
Power consumption (Score:4, Interesting)
Still not much, but a factor to consider.
power is rate * time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:power is rate * time (Score:2)
Re:power is rate * time (Score:2)
Old rig: takes 10 minutes. You turn off your rig.
New rig: takes 9 minutes. You turns off yer rig.
Voila, less power!.
It's true that if you sit there using it constantly you will have less total run time, but my point is that you will get more done in less time (same total power use if you run the bat flat) with a faster drive.
I guess there are some people that only care about total run time. They'll just poke around until their battery d
Re:power is rate * time (Score:1, Informative)
If the computer runs faster you may use less power.
Which one consumes less energy depends on both the power and the total time (which, granted, was the point of the post).
Re:power is rate * time (Score:1)
Re:power is rate * time (Score:2)
Hmm, I'd get bored faster the slower my computer was. Perhaps I need to rethink my logic.
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the time, my 5400 rpm drive is fine on my laptop. When I want performance (say for video editing), I'm most likely to be somewhere where I can plug in to the wall, and use a higher performance, higher capacity firewire drive for m
Nerve racking (Score:2)
It's enough for someone to fire up a match for me to panick and go check if it's not the HDD. Works every time.
It's Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they're saving an average of 111 bucks in these examples. The "low-end" model is about 35% of the cost of the others (on average).
Now look at the performance differences. WorldBench is clocking the more expensive drives as only 30% faster (on average) than the "low-end" drive.
My own conclusion: yes, you're getting a performance boost if you pay more... But it's definately not a 1 to 1 ratio. In fact, for the money, the "low-end" drive is the best solution. So... Why do "most laptop manufacturers persist in saving a buck (or 111 bucks)? Because it's a better choice for the average consumer! Believe me... If Company A started selling only expensive drives, their market would go niche (like Alienware), and most people would purchase a "lower-end" machine.
Re:It's Simple... (Score:5, Interesting)
But these drives are not just faster, they're also higher capacity. An ipod holds more than these low-end drives, and anyone who wants their laptop to be their MP3 player will happily spend $100 extra for ~80Gb more space.
Yep, some people will buy the cheapest thing without looking at what they're missing out on. But it wouldn't be hard to market a lappy as "NEXT GENERATION: MASSIVE 100GB DISK DRIVE". But what would I know, I'm not in marketing.
Re:It's Simple... (Score:2)
Point well taken... Overall, you're probably getting a 1:1 increase for your money. (Or maybe you're getting more bang for the buck by spending more when you consider all things). But I think that people like you and me can see the value in the high end drives. That's a given.
But my next door neighbor, for example, asked me for advice on buying a notebook that would let him surf/email/type in his living room wirelessly. I recommende
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
Re:It's Simple... (Score:2)
What if my Grandma had balls? She's be my Grandpa. What does this have to do with anything?
You can't take an analogy to an extreme and then expect it to still hold true.
Do you think taxes are too high? Well what if we disbanded the IRS and nobody ever had to pay taxes again? No more fire dept, police, schools, courts, military, etc. Would you like that? No? Then okay... You should agree with higher t
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
Ok, well let me strip my comment of the sarcasm so you can follow it.
Your metric sucks.
If an average consumer uses a laptop for 3 years, and the performance hit due to a low end HD is on the order of 10 minutes of productivity per day on 300 days out of the year, thats a loss of 150 productive hours. Assuming the consumer's time is worth more than $1.35/hour, they are better off with a faster hard drive. Thats before we
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
Me is able to follow much. Not need simple words.
Your metric sucks.
I don't even use the metric system! WTF are you talking about!
If an average consumer uses a laptop for 3 years, and the performance hit due to a low end HD is on the order of 10 minutes of productivity per day on 300 days out of the year, thats a loss of 150 productive hours. Assuming the consumer's time is worth more than $1.35/hour, they are better off with a fa
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
LOL. Okay, you made me laugh. But please tell me you don't jerk off in the employee kitchen. I eat in the employee kitchen... =)
Re:It's Simple... (Score:1)
Great Point (Score:2)
I never thought of it that way before, but consider:
I can name a couple of PC brands like Alienware and Voodoo [voodoopc.com], but I can't really think of anyone who is "known" for making similarly high-end laptops.
I realize that's because most people need them for mundane, business-related tasks, but with so many (myself included) using laptops at work as desktop replacements, you'd think the specs would matter more.
Our company just rol
Re:Great Point (Score:1)
I see your point. Maybe the market's ready for a high-end notebook alternative...
Re:Great Point (Score:2)
However, I didn't even know, until I saw it, that Voodoo made laptops.
Re:It's Simple... (Score:2)
Re:It's Simple... (Score:2)
We are geeks so we know but when they look for a new laptop they look for processor speed and memory and wifi connections. Thats it.
Go look in ads for circuit city and Best Buy? Not even the graphics cards are listed as consumers dont care.
So if Joe sees laptop A: for $1411 or laptop B: for $1300 with the same specs which one do you think he will go home with?
Same argument for winmodems and the consumers picked the winmodem machines because they were $100
Try argument on CPU's (Score:2)
The speed increase from a low end to high end is rarely more than 30% but the price is often 2-3X higher.
By the way combining a high end CPU with a low end Diskdrive is pretty much maximum folly but this is the way they are configured. Resason: People do not know anything about the disks but "know" they "need" the faster Intel chip to make TehIntanet go faster
Re:It's Simple... (Score:2)
So yes, I'd say these tests prove the difference is worth the price premium.
Faster Harddrive? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Faster Harddrive? (Score:2)
Re:Faster Harddrive? (Score:2)
Re:Faster Harddrive? (Score:2)
Other Benefits (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Other Benefits (Score:2)
I don't know if it actually works that way, but it's my theory and I like it.
Re:Other Benefits (Score:2)
The primary issue is cost (Score:2)
10K 2.5" SAS coming to laptops? (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=
It's not just heat that's the problem. (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention, they ice up during rapid spin down (Score:2)
Other poster is right, the drives are too tall to fit in a laptop.
Re:It's not just heat that's the problem. (Score:1)
Re:It's not just heat that's the problem. (Score:2)
Only in the northern hemisphere.
Re:It's not just heat that's the problem. (Score:2)
Re:10K 2.5" SAS coming to laptops? (Score:2)
ian
Re:10K 2.5" SAS coming to laptops? (Score:2)
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/98/104676.ht
I want reliabity (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I want reliabity (Score:1)
Re:I want reliabity (Score:2)
I don't know if the current generation Dell laptops have removable bay CD drives, as it has been a while since I bought a new laptop.
Re:I want reliabity (Score:1)
How would this work? two drive motors? A better option would be removable stepper motors, If one of your motors went(platter or heads) it could be swapped out without compromising the protective atmosphere in the casing. this would drasticly reduce your spenditure on harddrives
Hah (Score:2)
Re:I want reliabity (Score:1)
Instead of adding more and more capacity to hard drives, I'd like to have a reeeeeeeally fast drive with about 5GB. All else can remain the same: cables, plugs, size, electricity bill, etc.. Those 5GB will be more than enough for my operating system and most used applications and the *useful* things I do with my computer will get done faster!!! I don't mind keeping the MP3s and pr0n on a "normal" drive or in a server away from my desktop.
thank you
Warning: hyperbole detected (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me see if I understand your point correctly (Score:1)
I feel the same about computing. If I could boost my laptop's overall performance by 10% by making a single change, I consider that pretty impressive.
Re:Warning: hyperbole detected (Score:2)
Yeah. Some tests were only won by a few percentage points. Others absolutely obliterated the 4200rpm drive by over 300%. Overall effect? Who knows... depends on how you use it. Either way, I'd say it's worth the price difference.
Compared? (Score:2)
What I wonder is if after the experience, at least one of them is behaving odd or making funny noises on startup.
Face it (Score:2, Insightful)
While it is nice to have fancy shmancy specd laptops to tote around, you can only put faster (read: more power / heat) devices in a laptop to a certain extent. There is a curve that follows along with an opposite one, which refers to efficiency / portability and the other to power / speed.
The other end of this discussion that I've not seen discussed yet is being mobile also presents real dangers to physical disks. Perhaps
Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because rational consumers 'persist' in saving a buck by buying the least expensive thing they think will fill their needs.
Most people buying PCs have absolutely no idea how to compare one computer to another. Even most Jeff K's understand nothing beyond screen dimensions and clock speed (and I've worked with enough IT people toto understand that Jeff K is the rule, not the exception). Of course, even the bottom of the line $650 Dell XPS comes with a 7200 RPM 8MB Cache HD, so I'm not sure what kind of poor sucker is still getting the 4200 RPM dog described in the article.
Re:Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:2)
Re:Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:2)
The iBook is the bottom-of-the-line model, not the mid-range model. The midrange PowerBook has a 5400 RPM drive, and the top-of-the-line MacBook has a 7200 RPM drive option.
I don't see why consumers have such a tendency to skip on relatively cheap upgrades such as extra RAM and faster HD.
Re:Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:2)
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features
Re:Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:1, Interesting)
The rational does not persist, rather it is a new way of thinking. It probably has something to do with the guilt of having to throw away a top-of-the-line-x-years-ago-that-cost-an-arm-and-a -leg-back-then equipment which is worth nothing today (actually in some cases it costs money to get rid of the equipment). In my case, I can't throw away, but I don't use for obvious reason
Re:Can we lose the troll writeups? (Score:1)
The main goal of an article like this is to educate the consumer. Lots of us may not have known how much performance we sacrifice by buying a laptop with a crappy HDD. You wisely point out that most people have no idea how to intelligently compare these th
swapping is the bottleneck (Score:5, Informative)
At least under windows, memory swapping is implemented very stupidly. Basically the system will spend (your) time swapping even when there's plenty of memory available. I've observed it swapping applications to disk with over 75% memory available. This causes all sorts of noticable delays when you try to actually use your system (e.g. switching from application A to application B). With 2GB available, windows should run out of excuses to swap but it will still swap.
Disabling swap space effectively stops this behavior. Especially on slow harddisks this means a huge performance improvement. Depending on your software you can do with much less memory. I've disabled swap space on machines with only 512MB which you are unlikely to exceed running just office type applications. In all cases that I did this the result was an immediate, noticable performance increase.
In case you do run out of memory, you get an out of memory error. I find that closing applications usually is a good solution. Much better than windows continuously wasting my time with unnecessary UI blocking harddisk activity. Anyway, given the low cost of memory, I'm very intolerant towards having my time wasted due to the fact that there's not enough.
Re:swapping is the bottleneck (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't even get me started on the supidi
Re:swapping is the bottleneck (Score:3, Informative)
Re:swapping is the bottleneck (Score:2)
The results are clear... ? (Score:3, Insightful)
In all honesty, the slowest thing about my computer is me. Even if an app were to load instantaneously, my brain is still gonna spend a few seconds getting its shit together to actually use the application, let alone do anything truly useful with it.
Re: The results are clear... ? (Score:2)
Re: The results are clear... ? (Score:1)
So true, I ve myself the same problem. Do you know where i can upgrade this component?
I m also looking for an extended waranty. The manufacturer (MOM Ltd.) is really cheap on this an I begin to see some degredation in performance and stability.
Re: The results are clear... ? (Score:2)
Glad to know that (Score:2)
One thing's for sure. It ain't Lithium-Ion battery life [wikipedia.org].
Pokey Hard Disks (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a nice middle ground for laptops, I think. When my
Plenty of ignorant comments ;-) (Score:2)
Size, weight, power consumption, price, capacity, rotation speed, platter density, and ruggedness.
For mobile harddrives, the number of platterns is verylimited by size, and platter size itself is limited.
So they never get anywhere near the capacity of its desktop equivalent. However, less and smaller platters means also less power consumption so its still another point why its so in mobile computers.
The platter density helps capacity, and bandwith and
RPM Myth (Score:2)
As an anecdote, my 4200 RPM laptop drive is much faster than my 7200 RPM desktop drive, both using ATA 100 and disk-bound applications. I think one reason is that the laptop drive has more cache. But there are loads of other factors. Platter size is one interesting point where bigger doesn't always mean faster, especiall
Because size matters (Score:2)
The best drive for noise and heat. (Score:2)
Note that it is the only perpendicular drive in the round-up and that the article says it is the most expensive.
Re:What happens (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would make a lot of sense to have 10% of your disk solid state, only spin up the real drive as necessary. I don't think multigigabyte memory will be affordable anytime real soon.
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:2)
The cheap flash memory in thumbdrives is not the only flash memory around. 100,000 cycles nowdays for flash would be considered bad. I'm seeing 1,000,000 refered to now for decent CF.
It would make a lot of sense to have 10% of your disk solid state, only spin up the real drive as necessary. I don't think multigigabyte memory will be affordable anytime real soon.
Mu
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:2)
I was referring to replacing an 80GB drive, which isn't currently feasable. If you used a few GB for the OS and frequently used files you could get away with running the harddrive very little, which makes sense.
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183698&cid=15
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:2)
It doesnt make any mention of what Hard disks will do in the 2 to 5 year period.
You also chose the worst $per meg disk on the market.
Otherwise. I like your analysis.
Re:where are the flash hard drives? (Score:2)
My research shows this hasnt been the case for the last 3 years and I have reason to think the next 3 wont be any different.
I always thought the reasons flash was successful in small capacity MP3 players was that flash is much smaller than even the smallest hard disks, it uses less power thus reducing the size of the battery needed and has higher G shock tollerance. I guess another reason they are used is that hard disks lose th