Samsung SpinPoint M6: HM500LI

This HDD perplexed us a lot. It was announced at the manufacturer’s website at the same time with the Hitachi 5K500 but its thickness was 9.5mm, which meant that it had two platters. And it is these two platters that we could not believe in then. Samsung did not declare the number of platters in the product specs (and does not declare it now – the platters/heads statistics in the specs table below is given according to our own examination). We should confess we could not decide at first whether this HDD had new platters or the manufacturer somehow fitted three platters into a thin case.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue: WD5000BEVT

The 500GB model fitted nicely into Western Digital’s Scorpio Blue series. Interestingly, every other model from this series has a Scorpio Black counterpart that features a spindle rotation speed of 7200rpm and a larger cache.

As an opponent from the previous generation, i.e. with a storage capacity of 320GB, we will take a Western Digital Scorpio Blue which came up the best in our comparative test of six 320GB 2.5-inchers.

The following table lists the specs and firmware versions of the HDDs.