Choosing a 2.5" laptop hard drive.

scott

  Choosing a 2.5" laptop hard drive. A point of view of a data recovery specialist

Nowadays, more and more users prefer a compact and inexpensive notebook to a desktop PC. There is a vast choice of notebooks of different types on the market, from simple laptops based on Intel Celeron processors, up to powerful mobile stations based on AMD 64-bit processors. An average laptop carries one hard drive of 20 to 120 GB; there are also two-HDD portable systems, but they are rare. The purpose of this article is to help to make a right choice from the whole variety of existing notebook hard disk drives which user can find on the market.

The most known manufacturers of laptop hard drives are IBM, Hitachi (the company has recently bought a subdivision of IBM that worked on hard disk development and production), FUJITSU and Toshiba. Hard disk drives made by seagate, Samsung and Western Digital are less known. Quantum, Integral and Conner Technology HDDs are an antique now. Following the Table 1 shows the statistics of the frequency of using different hard drives in notebooks (statistics is done by the author on the basis of a 4 year experience in repairing the notebooks and notebook hard disk drives):


Manufacturer Popularity, %
Hitachi + IBM* 56
Fujitsu 14
Toshiba 12
Seagate 10
Samsung 4
Western Digital 4
Total 100%

The analysis of notebooks made by different manufacturers (RoverBook, iRU, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu-Siemens, IBM, Dell, Samsung, Sony, ASUS, NEC, HP/Compaq) shows slightly different results (Table 2), but in general the percentage remains practically the same:


Manufacturer Popularity, %
Hitachi + IBM* 47
Fujitsu 20
Toshiba 15
Seagate 12
Samsung 5
Western Digital 1
Total 100%

*Hitachi and IBM are shown together because Hitachi owns the subdivision of IBM that develops and produces hard drives.

What drives one can find on the present Portable PC Market, and which of them can be named as a better choice? Let's make a short review by the manufacturers, and we're starting with less known ones.

Western Digital
The company offers WD Scorpio series that comes in capacities from 40 to 80 GB (5400 RPM). There are 6 models with different capacity and buffer size: WD400UE, WD600UE and WD800UE drives with 2 MB buffer, and WD400VE, WD600VE and WD800VE drives with 8 MB buffer. Looking at the sixth character of the model name it’s easy to tell the buffer size for a particular HDD. These drives represent WD’s newest optimization and productivity increase technologies, and also data security technologies: Whisper Drive technology with Soft Seek algorithm, ShockGuard technology and DuraStep Ramp technology. WD drives show a good productivity (the average seek time comes to 12 ms and the maximum interface transfer rate of 100 MB/sec are quite reasonable).


Samsung
Presently Samsung Corp. brings to users’ attention SpinPoint M40 Series. There are 4 models: MP0302H, MP0402H, MP0603H, MP0804H (30…80 GB). They perform 5400 RPM and have 8 MB buffer. The stated seek time and interface transfer rate for those drives are the same as for WD Scorpio models.


Seagate
The company offers a number of series of drives. A 60...100 GB Momentus 4200 series (models ST960821A, ST980821A and ST9100822A) have 8 MB buffer and perform 4200 RPM. Average seek time is 12.5 ms; and 100 MB/sec is the maximum interface transfer rate. The 30..120 GB Momentus 5400 FDE and 30..120 GB Momentus 5400.2 can have PATA-interface (models ST93811A, ST94813A, ST96812A, ST98823A, ST9100824A and ST9120821A, 30, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 GB accordingly) as well as SATA-150 with NCQ technology support (models ST93811AS, ST94813AS, ST96812AS, ST98823AS, ST9100824AS, ST9120821AS, 30, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 GB accordingly).

The differences in design and firmware in between the two last groups are not too big: the first group is designed for users who need to be always sure in confidentiality of their data (a drive codes data by its own; the drives from the second group work without encryption). All those drives have same seek time and a maximum transfer rate as for Momentus 4200 series.

Lastly, the most promoted and the most modern series among Seagate 2.5 form factor hard drives are Momentus 7200.1 series (7200 RPM, 8 MB buffer, 60…100 GB). These drives, as well as two previous series, can have PATA-interface (models ST96023A, ST980825A and ST910021A), or SATA-interface with NCQ technology support (models ST96023AS, ST980825AS and ST910021AS). Having 100 MB/sec maximum interface transfer rate, the drives show quite good average seek time — 10,5 ms. An important feature of these drives is a 5 years warranty term, announced by Seagate, and also an option to chose the most suitable interface (PATA or SATA).


Toshiba
The company is well-known as a leading manufacturer of hard drives for portable PC. It produces 0.85-, 1.8- and 2.5-inch hard disk drives. The disappointing fact is that all Toshiba drives have only 1 year warranty. Nowadays Toshiba offers GAS and GAX series. The difference is in spindle rotation speed and in buffer size (GAS series: 4200 RPM, 8 MB; GAX series: 5400 RPM, 16 MB). The first group includes two model types, the first group: 80 GB (MK8025GAS), 60 GB (MK6025GAS) and 100 GB (MK1031GAS); the second group: 20 GB (MK2023GAS), 30 GB (MK3031GAS), 40 GB (MK4026GAX), 60 GB (MK6022GAX, MK6026GAX) and 80 GB (MK8026GAX). All these drives have 12 ms average seek time and the maximum interface transfer rate is 100 MB/sec.


Fujitsu
Hard disk drives, offered by Fujitsu Company, perform 4200 RPM for MHV2xxxAT, MHT2xxxAT, MHU2xxxAT series and 5400 RPM for MHV2xxxAH, MHV2xxxBH, MHT2xxxAH, MHT2xxxBH series. All models have capacity of 20 to 120 GB. Specifically in MTH family there are drives with 20…80 GB; all MTU drives are 100 GB and the MHV family has 40…80 GB drives. All these drives have 12 ms average seek time and the maximum interface transfer rate is 100 MB/sec.


Hitachi
Hitachi, perhaps, is the biggest company on the HDD market. At present time there are two types of laptop hard drives — Endurastar (20…30 GB J4K30, J4K20, N4K20 and N4K30 drives) and Travelstar drives. Travelstar type has a big variety of hard disk drives families: 7