by Aleksey Meyev
06/30/2008 | 11:26 AM
2.5-inch hard disk drives can now often be seen not only in notebooks but also in small desktop PCs and servers. They have already reached the storage capacity that many users consider acceptable and not much different from what you can get with 3.5-inch HDDs and are even superior to their larger counterparts in terms of power consumption, heat dissipation, dimensions and noise. So, users and manufacturers are getting more and more interested in these devices which allow building very compact desktop PCs (compare the Mac Mini with any ordinary PC even in microATX form-factor) or small NASes. The low noise is quite an important factor for a NAS since it is often running all day long and you don’t want to hear the clicking of the heads of a 3.5-inch disk at night. The small size is necessary for servers as you can assemble a small server with a lot of disks inside. Five 200GB disks are going to be more expensive than one 1-terabyte 3.5-inch HDD, but you can unite them into a fault-tolerant RAID array that can process more requests per second. And these parameters – fault tolerance and high amount of operations per second – are often far more important for server disk subsystems than price.
In an earlier review we compared 2.5-inch 7200rpm drives Hitachi 7K200 and Fujitsu MHW2 BJ with HDDs of other form-factors and spindle rotation speeds. Our testing proved that the 2.5-inch drives were comparable to their 3.5-inch counterparts in most applications and were only inferior at streaming operations with large files. Unfortunately, we did not have Seagate’s 7200.2 series drives for that test. Now we’ve got them here, in our labs, and are going to compare modern 2.5-inch HDDs with spindle rotation speed of 7200rpm from different brands.
The Fujitsu MHW2 BJ series includes three models with capacities of 80, 120 and 160 gigabytes. The recording density per platter is lower in this series than in the opponent products because the other brands have a maximum storage capacity of up to 200 gigabytes. Fujitsu’s HDDs of this series are all equipped with 16 megabytes of buffer memory and SATA interface. As usual, no information about employed technologies is disclosed by Fujitsu.
The company’s website also describes the MHZ2 BJ series with 7200rpm HDDs up to 320 gigabytes, with a 16MB buffer and a thickness of 9.5 millimeters (i.e. they have no more than two platters inside). These HDDs have not reached us yet.
This series is an evolutionary development of the Hitachi 7K100 line. Most of the technologies have remained the same but the recording density and cache have grown twofold. The maximum storage capacity is now 200GB and the buffer is 16MB large in every model. As for inherited technologies, the series features iridium-magnesium-chromium heads, thermal fly-height control to reduce the error rate, a parking ramp to protect data from shocks, and the power-saving features HiVERT and ABLE. The manufacturer claims the new 7K200 series drives are 22% faster than their predecessors.
As opposed to the opponent brands, Hitachi offers both serial and parallel interfaces. Some users may find the opportunity to upgrade their old PATA drive useful. Of course, we will test a SATA model for this review.
As this review is a debut of Seagate’s 7200.2 series in our tests we will also include a model from the previous 7200.1 series into it for the sake of comparison. Like the other HDDs, it has two platters but the lower recording density limits its maximum capacity to 100GB. The cache buffer is 8MB large.
160GB storage capacity
200GB storage capacity
The new 7200.2 series of Seagate’s drives is represented in this test session by two models, 160GB and 200GB in capacity. As you will see later on, the two differ quite a lot in firmware algorithms.
The new series is a worthy opponent to the other brands’ products. Its high-density platters ensure a storage capacity of 200GB in a dual-platter design. The largest-capacity model is equipped with a 16MB buffer, and the others, with 8MB of buffer memory. The interface is SATA 3Gbps. Generally speaking, 7200rpm 2.5-inch HDDs are premium products in each brand’s line-up and the developers try to show their full manufacturing potential in them.
This series includes two versions of HDDs of each capacity that differ in the presence or absence of the letter G at the end of the model name. This letter denotes G-Force Protection technology that shuts the HDD down quickly if the latter falls, thus ensuring additional protection for the stored data.
The following tables list the specs and firmware versions of the tested HDDs.
The following testing utilities were used:
Testbed configuration:
We installed the generic OS drivers for the drives and formatted them in FAT32 and NTFS as one partition with the default cluster size. For some tests 32GB partitions were created on the drives and formatted in FAT32 and NTFS with the default cluster size, too. The drives were connected to a Promise SATA300 TX4302 controller.
IOMeter is sending a stream of read and write requests with a request queue depth of 4. The size of the requested data block is changed each minute, so that we could see the dependence of the drive’s sequential read/write speed on the size of the data block. This test is indicative of the highest speed the drive can achieve.
The numeric data can be viewed in tables (see the links below). We will be discussing graphs and diagrams.
IOMeter: Sequential Read results
The 200GB Seagate 7200.2 delivers the highest top speed in this test – almost 65MBps! The 160GB model from the same series is somewhat slower and comparable to the two other modern HDDs included into the review. You can see that Seagate’s HDDs reach their top speeds faster (on 8KB data chunks) than their opponents from Fujitsu and Hitachi (on 16KB).
The performance growth due to the twofold increase in recording density can be observed easily: the speed has grown by a third.
You can also note that the 7200.2 series drives from Seagate are much faster than their opponents with small data chunks.
There is one problem in the firmware of the 160GB Seagate as its performance plummets down on 4KB data chunks. This is not going to be conspicuous in real-life applications, but anyway.
IOMeter: Sequential Write results
It’s different at writing. The Fujitsu MHW2 BJ delivers the highest top speed and is followed by the new drives from Seagate that show similar results. They are ahead of the Seagate 7200.1 model but not as far ahead as at reading. The Hitachi 7K200 has poor results in this test. Perhaps the developer will solve this problem in the future revisions of the model.
Two things can be noted about the behavior of Seagate’s 7200.2 drives. Like at reading, both drives effectively unite small requests into large ones, and the 160GB model again has problems with 4KB data chunks.
In this test IOMeter is sending a stream of requests to read and write 512-byte data blocks with a request queue of 1 for 10 minutes. The total number of requests processed by the HDD is over 60 thousand, so we get a sustained response time that doesn’t depend on the HDD’s buffer size.
The Seagate 7200.2 and Hitachi 7K200 drives have similar response times while the Fujitsu is worse in this test, being even slower than the previous-generation Seagate 7200.1.
The Hitachi 7K200 is the leader at writing, enjoying a large advantage over the second-best Fujitsu. Seagate’s drives lose the test.
As you know, the ratio of response time at writing to reading is indicative of the efficiency of a drive’s deferred writing algorithms. Seagate’s new products do not differ much from their predecessors and are inferior to their opponents in this respect.
Now we’ll see the dependence between the drives’ performance in random read and write modes on the size of the data block size.
The new HDDs from Seagate and the Hitachi go neck and neck at random reading. The Fujitsu is slower, especially with small data chunks.
It is different at random writing: the Hitachi is ahead with small data chunks and joined by the Fujitsu with medium-size data blocks. The Hitachi’s low sequential write speed shows up with large data chunks and this drive slows down whereas the Seagate HDDs catch up with the Fujitsu then.
In the Database pattern the drive is processing a stream of requests to read and write 8KB random-address data blocks. The ratio of read to write requests is changing from 0% to 100% with a step of 10% throughout the test while the request queue depth varies from 1 to 256.
You can click the following link to view the tabled results for IOMeter Database pattern.
We will build diagrams for request queue depths of 1, 16 and 256.
The drives form two groups when working under low loads. One group includes Seagate HDDs whose graphs are almost straight lines. As opposed to them, the Hitachi and Fujitsu have a curve in the middle of the graph. As a result, the 7200.2 series drives from Seagate are ahead at low percentages of writes whereas the Hitachi and Fujitsu are better at high percentages of writes (80% and 90% from total requests).
The Hitachi should be called the overall leader here as it is but slightly slower than the Seagate team at reading but faster than them at writing. The Fujitsu is the loser, delivering rather low results throughout the test, excepting at 100% writes.
Comparing the different drives from Seagate, we can see that the new generation has become faster at random reading. Interestingly, the 160GB model is somewhat better at high percentages of writes than the other products from this brand.
The shape of the graphs remains largely the same at a queue depth of 16 requests. Everything we’ve said above becomes even more conspicuous. For example, the Seagate 7200.2 drives are faster than the others until high percentages of writes. The Fujitsu is the obvious loser, especially under the most complex load (when there is about the same share of read and write requests).
Take note of the difference of the 160GB Seagate from its 200GB series mate: the former speeds up at pure random reading.
When the request queue gets longer, the peculiarities we’ve noticed become even clearer. The Hitachi and Fujitsu are much better at 100% writes, the 160GB Seagate is excellent at 100% reads, and the Fujitsu slows down at medium loads.
The following diagrams show the performance of each Seagate drive at five queue depths.
The 7200.1 drive has the same shape of the graphs as the 200GB 7200.2 model, but the 160GB 7200.2 drive differs from them at high percentages of reads.
Here are the same diagrams for the other two drives:
The multithreaded tests simulate a situation when there are one to four clients accessing the virtual disk at the same time – the clients’ address zones do not overlap. We’ll discuss diagrams for a request queue of 1 as the most illustrative ones. When the queue is 2 or more requests long, the speed doesn’t depend much on the number of applications. You can also click the following links for the full results:
When there is only one read thread, the Seagate 7200.1, the oldest of the drives, is slow due to its low recording density. The 200GB Seagate 7200.2 is an obvious leader. Interestingly, the 160GB Seagate from the same series is slower by about 10%.
When there are two or more read threads, the Seagate drives suffer a terrible performance hit. The Hitachi and Fujitsu slow down, too, but not as much as their opponents.
Seagate’s drives are not as hopeless at multithreaded writing as at reading, though. The Fujitsu is ahead with one thread and is followed by the Seagate products (ranked according to their capacity) and the Hitachi. When there are more write threads to be processed, the Fujitsu slows down, giving way to the Seagate 7200.2 models. The Hitachi is the slowest irrespective of the number of write threads. It is even inferior to the Seagate 7200.1 that has lower-density platters.
The drives are tested under loads typical of servers and workstations.
The names of the patterns are self-explanatory. The Workstation pattern is used with the full capacity of the drive as well as with a 32GB partition. The request queue is limited to 32 requests in the Workstation pattern.
The results are presented as performance ratings. For the File-Server and Web-Server patterns the performance rating is the average speed of the drive under every load. For the Workstation pattern we use the following formula:
Rating (Workstation) = Total I/O (queue=1)/1 + Total I/O (queue=2)/2 + Total I/O (queue=4)/4 + Total I/O (queue=8)/8 + Total I/O (queue=16)/16.
This pattern resembles Database at high percentage of reads as is indicated by the results: the Seagate drives are ahead at any queue depth, and especially at short queues. The difference in their firmware shows up, too. The 160GB Seagate is ahead of its 200GB mate under high loads. The Fujitsu is slow here, being inferior even to the old Seagate 7200.1.
The results of this test resemble those of the previous one: the Seagate 7200.2 drives are ahead, the 160GB model being faster than the 200GB one. The Fujitsu is the worst runner again, but falls really far behind only under very high loads.
The new drives from Seagate are unrivalled under Workstation load. The old 7200.1 is good, too. It competes with the Hitachi and outperforms the Fujitsu under low loads. It even takes third place under high loads because the Hitachi slows down to the Fujitsu’s level then.
When the test zone is limited to 32 gigabytes, the drives deliver higher speeds and get closer to each other, but the standings are the same overall. The two drives from the Seagate 7200.2 series are in the lead. The single notable difference from the previous test is that the Seagate 7200.1 has slowed down to the Fujitsu’s level while the Hitachi is obviously third.
The performance of the Seagate 7200.1 is not a surprise because its recording density and capacity are lower than those of its opponents, so the reduction of the test zone does not increase its performance much. And this is also why the low results of the Fujitsu look especially depressing.
We will use WinBench 99 to record the drives’ data-transfer graphs.
The following diagram compares the drives’ speeds at the beginning and end of the partitions created on them:
The Fujitsu offers a surprisingly high speed of reading at the end of the partition although its speed at the beginning is far from high. The 200GB model from the Seagate 7200.2 series is the best drive overall.
Next, let’s see what we have in the WinBench 99 tests for a 32GB partition (the results are sorted by the High-End Disk score).
Detailed WinBench 99 results, FAT32
Detailed WinBench 99 results, NTFS
The Seagate 7200.2 drives are beyond competition irrespective of the file system, especially in Business Disk WinMark 99. Interestingly, the Fujitsu does much better with FAT32 than with NTFS in this benchmark, but is still far inferior to the leaders.
For this test two 32GB partitions are created on the disk and formatted in NTFS and then in FAT32. After that a file-set is created. It is then read from the disk, copied within the same partition and then copied into another partition. The time taken to perform these operations is measured and the speed of the disk is calculated. The Windows and Programs file-sets consist of a large number of small files whereas the other three patterns (ISO, MP3, and Install) include a few large files each.
Let’s start with NTFS since this file system is more widespread than FAT32 today.
This test’s results depend on the specific file-set, i.e. on the average file size. The Seagate drives do better with large files, the 7200.2 series models taking top places then. The Fujitsu is also good while the Hitachi is the slowest one, just as we saw in the IOMeter: Sequential Write test. However, the Seagate products slow down with small files: the Hitachi gets close and overtakes them while the Fujitsu takes first place.
The average file size is not so important at reading: the 200GB Seagate 7200.2 is first with the ISO pattern while the Fujitsu wins with the MP3 file-set. Generally speaking, every drive with high recording density delivers high and almost the same speed, being much faster than the Seagate 7200.1.
The HDDs are sensitive to the size of the processed files at copying, but without any observable regularity. We can only say that the old Seagate 7200.1 is the overall loser whereas the 200GB Seagate 7200.2 is the overall winner. The 160GB Seagate is far slower than the 200GB model with every file-set due to the difference in their firmware.
When copying from one partition to another, the high-density models are again much faster than the previous-generation Seagate 7200.1. The 200GB Seagate 7200.1 wins the test, but enjoys a really large lead over its opponents only when processing large files.
The Fujitsu is first when creating files in FAT32. The Hitachi shows poor performance and is even inferior to the Seagate 7200.1 in every pattern, save for Windows.
The new-generation HDDs all deliver similar performance at reading, being much faster than the Seagate 7200.1.
When copying within the same partition, the Seagate 7200.2 series drives are better with large files whereas the Fujitsu and Hitachi, with small ones.
The 200GB Seagate 7200.2 is better than the others at copying large files from one partition to another (the 160GB model from the same series is considerably slower). The Hitachi is the best when it comes to copying small files.
PCMark04 benchmarks drives in four different modes: Windows XP Startup is the typical disk subsystem load at system startup; Application Loading is the disk activity at sequential starting-up and closing of six popular applications; File Copying measures the HDD performance when copying a set of files; the General Usage parameter reflects the disk activity in a number of popular applications. These four parameters are used to calculate the overall performance rating.
We ran each test ten times and averaged the results.
Hitachi’s HDDs have always been good in PCMark, and the Hitachi 7K200 proves the point once again.
The Hitachi is better than the others at loading applications, too. Take note of the large difference in speed between Seagate’s two 7200.2 series products: the 200GB model is much faster.
Copying has always been a strong point of Seagate’s products and they prove it again, the 200GB model being ahead of the 160GB one.
The Hitachi wins one more subtest.
According to the overall scores, the Hitachi is first, the 200GB Seagate 7200.2 is second, and the Fujitsu is third. Next go the 160GB Seagate and the old and slow Seagate 7200.1.
PCMark05 is an updated version of the previous benchmark. Instead of File Copying, there is now a File Write trace. A new trace called Virus Scan is added. Its name is self-explanatory.
Again, we performed each test ten times and averaged the results.
Unfortunately, we don’t have test data for the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 in this and next benchmarks.
The benchmark version is different but the results are the same. The Hitachi is still unrivalled when booting the OS up.
The Hitachi is 10% ahead of the others at loading applications.
And the gap is even larger in the General Usage subtest: the Hitachi is nearly 20% ahead!
The 200GB Seagate 7200.2 wins the Virus Scan test whereas the Hitachi is the slowest one here. On the other hand, the difference between them amounts to a mere 4%.
The Hitachi has not been good in terms of writing in the previous tests, so it doesn’t do well in the File Write test, either. The Fujitsu wins here, enjoying a nice lead over the Seagate products which have similar results.
The Hitachi has the highest overall score. The Fujitsu and the 200GB Seagate 7200.2 are equals in this test whereas the 160GB Seagate is slower than the others.
To make this part of our test session complete, we are going to run the latest version of PCMark called Vantage. Compared with the previous versions, the benchmark has become more up-to-date and advanced in its selection of subtests as well as Windows Vista orientation. Each subtest is run ten times and the results of the ten runs are averaged.
Here is a brief description of each subtest:
Basing on these subtests, the drive’s overall performance rating is calculated.
The 200GB Seagate takes first place when scanning files. The Fujitsu unexpectedly falls very far behind its opponents.
200GB drives are the best choice for computer games irrespective of the brand. The leading 200GB Seagate is followed very closely by the Hitachi. The Fujitsu is the slowest model, again.
The 200GB products are also the best when you view photos. The 160GB Seagate is in last place here.
The Fujitsu is on the losing side when booting the OS up. The 200GB Seagate wins by a narrow margin.
This version of PCMark seems to favor the new 200GB drive from Seagate.
Well, the Seagate’s performance is impressive but is only indicative of the speed of its cache buffer rather than platters. In other words, the HDD passed nearly the entire test by using cache memory only. Perhaps you can achieve the same performance from this HDD in some real-life applications, but not when you watch a movie or record a TV program. After all, the cache buffer is only 16 megabytes, not gigabytes, large.
Take note that the Hitachi with 16MB buffer could not perform this trick.
The 200GB products are in the lead again, the 200GB Seagate being somewhat better of the two. The Fujitsu is the slowest drive in this test.
Hitachi is again unrivalled in the Application Loading subtest.
Just as you could expect, the 200GB Seagate 7200.2 has the highest overall score and the Hitachi is second.
You can refer to our article called Hard Disk Drive Power Consumption Measurements: X-bit’s Methodology Indepth for details on this test. We’ll just list the specific modes we measure the power consumption in:
Let’s check out each mode one by one.
The Hitachi consumes the least amount of power when spinning the platters up. The Fujitsu is the most voracious here.
In idle mode, when the drive is doing nothing but rotating its platters, the Fujitsu proves to be the most economical. The Hitachi has low power consumption, too. The Seagate need considerably more power in this mode.
The HDDs all have similar results when doing random-address operations. The 160GB Seagate is just a bit better and the Fujitsu consumes somewhat more than the others.
The HDDs fall into two groups at sequential operations. The Hitachi and Fujitsu are economical whereas the two drives from Seagate are rather voracious. It looks like Seagate’s controller needs more power than the controllers of the competitor products. Why do we suspect it? Besides the controller, the spindle motor is the only component that consumes a substantial amount of power in a HDD and we could estimate its consumption in the two previous tests. As opposed to random-address operations, the controller takes an active part in the HDD’s operation at sequential operations.
By the way, you can also note that reading took more power than writing in the previous test, but now the HDDs consume about the same amount of power for both reading and writing.
The HDDs described in this review all have rather good performance, so it’s hard to name an overall leader among them.
Perhaps the Fujitsu MHW2 BJ was the slowest in most tests, especially in the server tests with random-address load. This must be due to its lower recording density and 8MB buffer (the 200GB opponents are equipped with 16MB of cache). We hope the MHZ2 BJ series will be more competitive.
The Hitachi 7K200 is the best at random writing but its sequential write speed is rather low. This model also did well with small files and in PCMark. Thus, the Hitachi 7K200 is going to be a good choice for the disk subsystem of a compact PC or a writes-oriented server.
The Seagate 7200.2 series is good with its high random read speed and high performance with large files. We guess the most serious problem with this series is the low speed of multithreaded writing, which is actually a common and old problem of all Seagate products. This series also slows down with small files and consumes more power than the competitors. Take note of the difference in firmware, too. The 160GB model is better under server load (random reading) while the 200GB model is ahead at sequential reading and writing and will suit a workstation better.
Summing up this review, we want to note that the performance of all these HDDs makes them competitive to 3.5-inch products, especially if you care about such parameters as compact size, low noise and low power consumption. The 2.5-inch models are far superior to their larger counterparts from these aspects.