ULTIMATE NOTEBOOK DRIVE?
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500G
versus other SATA notebook drives

Originally posted February 6th, 2009, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist
Redo posted February 18th, 2009, using newer version of DiskTester
and adding the WD Scorpio Black

Many of you emailed us expressing a wish that there was a 500GB 7200rpm 9.5 mm thick notebook drive option for the 'unibody' MacBook Pro. Your wish has come true. Introducing the Seagate Momentus 7200.4.

We benchmarked it using QuickBench and Disktester against the Hitachi 320GB 7200rpm drive that shipped with our MacBook Pro 2.8GHz test unit along with the popular WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm 320GB notebook drive.

These next two graphs show how many 4K, 64K, and 256K random transactions can occur per second on each drive.

GRAPH LEGEND
Momentus 500 = Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 7200rpm SATA notebook drive (ST9500420AS)
Scorpio 320 = Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200rpm SATA notebook drive (WD3200BJKT)
Travelstar 320 = Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 320GB 7200rpm SATA notebook drive (HTS723232L9A360)

CONCLUSION
The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB notebook drive sets a new standard for large sustained transfers and storage space -- yet it's only 9.5mm thick. Though we tested model ST9500420AS, there is a model ST9500420ASG with "G-Force Protection Feature."

One of the reasons for our redo of this article was to add in the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive. Like other WD drives we've tested recently, it beats the other brands in overall small random performance.

WHERE TO BUY THE MOMENTUS 7200.4 or other notebookd drives

Other World Computing

TransIntl.com

NewEgg.com

WHERE TO BUY SATA NOTEBOOK ENCLOSURES & EXPRESSCARDS

• TransIntl.com has the miniXpress825 S (eSATA + FW800/400 + USB 2.0) plus the miniXpress34 eSATA card.
• Wiebetech has the ToughTech XE mini (eSATA + FW800/400 + USB 2.0).
• OWC has the Mercury On-The-Go (eSATA + USB 2.0) and various ExpressCard/34 eSATA cards.
• LaCie has the SATA II ExpressCard 34 card.

WHERE TO BUY NOTEBOOK RAID ENCLOSURES

• LaCie sells the Little Big Disk Quadra in 400G and 500G configurations. (It has an eSATA, FW800, FW400, and USB2 port.)
• Sonnet Technology sells the Fusion F2 in a 640G configuration. (It has two eSATA ports -- one for each drive. It uses the FW400 port for power.)
• G-Technology sells the G-RAID mini in up to 500G configurations. (It has a FW800, FW400, and USB2 port.)

WHERE TO BUY A MACBOOK PRO

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© 2009 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email , the webmaster