2.5-inch Hard Drive Roundup

One of the most common questions new notebook users have is "Which hard drive should I get?" There are of course a variety of answers depending on budget and uses, but quantitative answers are hard to come by. With this review, we look to comprehensively test the majority of 2.5" hard drives available today.


We have all of the current models from Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Western Digital, and Toshiba. Unfortunately we did not have time to sample any Samsung drives, but it appears their drives are limited to older 5400RPM models as it is. As new drives come out, we will add individual reviews that compare results with the ones obtained in this roundup.

Full review: Laptop Logic

Errr & what good is this Techz ? It gives a big fat table about more specs than you ever wanted (& even 'ubernerd' over here thinks you'd never ever want to know most of this) about a range of drives that are gonna be out of date soon & not even any conclusions as they ain't written 'em yet ... :confused:

I happenned to come across it when looking at prospective drives for my laptop :)

Most I've known about them (laptop HD's) were Toshiba made alot of them :P And my current 40GB was getting a tad full, so I wanted to get a 60/80GB and put this 40GB in a 2.5" caddy for portable use.

Ahh ok then .. I just read what there is of it & thought- where the hell is the rest of it ?

But I will point out to you that you are perhaps 'arse about tit' with your intended purchase ? :eek2: :devil: Wouldn't you have been better spending some dosh on a 'huge' 3.5 drive to put into this here enclosure & just moving some files off the laptop onto that ? 40gb is plenty of space for a 'system partition' on any machine .. then you'd benefit from the cheaper cost of 3.5" drives over 2.5" :)

I'd say if you already have a 7200 rpm drive (the only reason I'd be changing any laptp drive, unless it was 'small' {10gb or less & windows was getting tricky to fit}) then you'd be better off in VFM terms with what I'm suggesting over what you propose/may already have done ?

I already have the dedicated space I need on the Desktop PC + my 3.5" External Caddy :)

The laptop goes about with me and I tend to carry my music+tv shows that I watch when I'm not at home.

Also it tends to be used as a quick drop off for files on the network (thereby getting filled/emptied alot), as my current mini-server is extremely short on space (20GB HD)

And I really want a 2.5" portable caddy :P