Side by side comparsion of 2.5" PATA hard disk specifications (Current models)

Note: The "best" aspects of different drives are highlighted in yellow as well as bold and the 2nd best is highlighted in bold. All specifications above are extracted directly from manufacturer's specifications sheet without modification.

Power Consumption

The hard disk inside the mp3/mp4/pmp player consumes a significant amount of the battery power available. Hence, it is important that the most power efficient hard disk is chosen. Recently, most major hard disk manufacturers have released hard disk based on Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) Technology and claimed that it is more power efficient than Longitudinal Magnetic Recording (LMR). However, our internal testing indicates that it is not exactly true. Our hard disk based mp3/pmp players managed to achieve similar playback time using PMR or LMR based 2.5" hard disks. If one tries to compare power consumption of 2.5" hard disk based on the manufacturer's specifications, you would notice that the numbers are rather similar and it is a big headache to work out which one is better. Furthermore, there is hardly any benchmark performed which gives comprehensive comparison between different 2.5" hard disk, except the charts from Tom's hardware. Tom's Hardware has a constantly updated chart showing the idle and maximum power consumptions of various hard drives, as well as other parameters such as drive performance.

Although Seagate's 5400.3 hard disk is among the top performing hard disk, it is the worst hard disk among various brands in terms of power consumption. Despite Seagate's irresistible 5 year warranty and reliability, its power consumption is also unbeatable as well (at least for the time being). Making it not too suitable for applications in portable electronics devices. This is evident in Tom's hardware's charts mentioned above as well as battery life test we have performed in our hard disk based mp3/pmp players. As a result, it is recommended to avoid Seagate if you plan to use it in portable players.

Based on our internal testing, current 5400rpm Western Digital, Fujitsu and Hitachi 2.5" IDE hard disk models consume similar amount of power and are more suitable for portable players where the small reduction in power drain equals to longer battery life. Surprisingly, despite the Western Digital's relatively high stated value of the power consumption, in our internal test (here), it actually gave the longest battery life, i.e. lowest power conumption. For the absolute lowest hard disk power consumption, it is better to choose 4200rpm over 5400rpm drives (except Toshiba's 200GB MK2035GSS). If you compares Fujitsu's MHV2xxxAT series and Hitachi's 4k120 series 4200rpm drives to other 5400rpm hard disks, you can see these 4200rpm drives offers significantly lower power consumption. As the higher performance delivered by 5400rpm is not apparent when using it as a USB 2.0 hard disks (as depicted in our HD tune benchmarks), performance sacrifice is not noticeable. However, 4200rpm hard drives are starting to disappear in the market as manufacturer switches to 5400rpm drives, hence, you probably don't have much choice anyway.

Nevertheless, on 12 December 2006, Fujitsu announced the world's first 300GB 2.5" Hard Disk Drive, available from late Febrary 2007. YES, no typo mistake, it is MHX2300BT 300GB in 2.5" form factor. And it is a 4200rpm drive!!! ie designed for large capacity and low power consumption. Looks like the perfect hard disk for mobile storage devices like mp3/mp4/PMP players. Sadly, it uses 3 platter design, making it 12.5mm height instead of the typical 9.5mm height in 2.5" hard drives, therefore, it probably won't fit in most mp3/mp4/PMP players or 2.5" USB cases.

In terms of battery life (except Toshiba's 200GB MK2035GSS), difference between 4200rpm vs 5400rpm hard disk can be significant in portable players. Everytime the hard disk spins up, it drains significant amount of electricity, obviously, the faster it spins, the more it drains. Although it can be argued that faster drive means faster loading and potentially leads to lower power consumption by reducing load time. This principle do not seems to hold in portable devices as the loading time is short. For players that typically shut down the hard disk most of the time and only spins it up and read for a short while before shutting it down, the shorter load time is insufficient to compensate for higher power consumption. Consequently, while video playback on CEC's mp4 player using 4200rpm hard disk is only about 20-40 minutes longer than 5400rpm hard disk, mp3 playback can yield 2-3 hours longer!!! More battery life test can be found here.

For who want want to decide for themselves, Check out StorageReview.com's, The Tech report's, Techarp's and SilentpcReview's article for real world power consumption comparison between 2.5" hard drives.

Shock and Reliability

Vibrations and shocks have the potential to cause hard disk damage and result in data loss. Hence, the shock rating of the hard disk can be very important. Typical 2.5" hard disk have an operating shock rating of 300G (G stands for acceleration due to gravity,9.8m/s² ie how many times against gravitational acceleration). Seagate's 5400.3 on the other hand, boast an operating shock rating of 350G which is the highest in the industry. The next highest is Hitachi's PMR drive 5k160, Fujitsu's MHY2 BH and Toshiba's 200GB MK2035GSS PMR drive which are rated at 325G.

In addition, Seagate's hard disk is also apparently more reliable when compared to other manufacturer's because Seagate is the only manufacturer that offers 5 years warranty whereas everyone else is offering only 3 years warranty. (This is in agreement with comments from some data recovery specialist) And even if Seagate's hard disk is not reliable and becomes faulty, you can still make a warranty claim within its 5 year warranty period and get a new hard drive, isn't it? On the other hand, Hitachi's 5k160 which is announced in May 2006 was also claimed to be an extremely reliable hard disk by Hitachi. Their press release boast the incorporation of various techniques to improve reliability as well as extensive internal testing with impressive results. Therefore, in terms of shock and reliability, Seagate is probably a better choice than the rest, followed by Hitachi.

Capacity

In terms of hard disk capacity, of course, the bigger the better. This is also one of the reasons why mp3/mp4/pmp sold by us are using 2.5" hard disk, not 1.8" hard disk used by most of manufacturers. At the moment, the largest available capacity you can buy in the market for 1.8" hard disk is 100GB from Toshiba, 2.5" hard disk is 250GB (announced by various manufacturers) and 3.5" hard disk is 1TB (1000GB) from Hitachi's 7k1000

Although 2.5' 250GB HDD is announced and detailed specifications of these hard disk can be found in various manufacturer's web site, seems like they are only available in SATA (Samsung's 250GB HM250JI, Hitachi's 5k250, Fujitsu's MHY2250BH). Fortunately, Western Digital probably saw this gap in the market and released a 250GB PATA drive (WD2500BEVE). Hence, for those looking for the largest 2.5" PATA hard disk using 2 platter design, i.e. 9.5mm height (not those 3 platter 12.5mm height drives like Fujitsu's MHX2300BT 300GB), you can consider getting yourself a 250GB Western Digital WD2500BEVE. This drive is currently widely available worldwide, as it was released on September 2007.

However, for 4200rpm hard drives, the maximum capacity is 120GB (with the exception of Toshiba's MK2035GSS and Fujitsu's MHX2300BT) because it is still running on LMR technology. As the industry had been upgrading all 4200rpm hard drives to 5400rpm hard drives lately when new models are released, it is possible there won't be any 4200rpm hard drives larger than 120GB in the future.

Conclusion

We always try to optimize the price, performance, capacity, battery-life and reliability of the hard disk we use for the mp4 player. To do that, we simplify our inventory and only stock the hard disk model that we consider as the best. Right now, the best price/capacity ratio is best for 160GB hard drives, therefore, we sell our mp4 players with minimium of 160GB space.

As you can see, the discussion above might be a little messy and it is really not easy to choose the ideal hard disk. As far as we are concern, we will source Western Digital, Hitachi or Fujitsu hard disk depending on availability/price. However, we will try to use the models that will give our customers the best balance in price, performance, capacity, battery-life and reliability.

To conclude, at the moment, for hard drives that are in supply, ie not discontinued, Hitachi's 5k160/5k120 seems to be the best in price/performance/power consumption. For your interest, most hard drive based mp3/mp4/pmp player in the market uses Hitachi hard drives, including Archos and Ipod.

Nevertheless, you are welcomed to use hard disk from other brands or models. In these cases, it is best that you purchase and bring in the HDD to prevent delay. However, on request, we should be able to supply any hard drives from Seagate, Hitachi and Fujitsu, if they are available. We will install the hard disk for you at no charge.

Note: It seems that hard disk manufacturers are not releasing any new PATA 2.5" hard disk and it might be a sign that PATA 2.5" hard disk is near end of life and might disappear from the market in the not too distant future.......

Upcoming Hard disk Model

Seagate have recently announced the 5400 PSD hard disk which will be industy's first hybrid drive to appear on the market. In layman's terms, this drive will basically be a 5400.3 with 256MB NAND flash memory stuck to it. The use of flash memory as cache will allow the drive to spin less and hence use less power. However, we doubt it result in a lot better battery life in our mp4s, since Seagate 5400.3 hard drives already uses more power than the rest. And Techworld.com has also indicated that Seagate hinted an extra cost of ~10% for these hydrid drives drives, which probably make it less attractive for mp3/mp4/pmp players since there are other ways (such as having larger cache) manufacturers can use at the hardware/software level to boost the battery life of the mp3/mp4/pmp player.

Use of such drives are only useful to Windows Vista, though, as OS support is necessary. Other manufacturers have released similar news as well. Samsung in particular, have already released specifications of their hybrid drives and according to news, they are already shipping them to OEM customers!!!

Anyway, enquires had been made to Seagate and this is their reply.

Comments: Seems like it can't be used in most mp3/mp4/pmp players are they are still running on PATA, not SATA. However, it might be possible that manufacturers will decide, eventually to release PATA version of hybrid drives to allow existing PATA notebooks to be upgraded to run hybrid hard disk with Windows Vista.

Update: "Seagate said it expects to begin volume production its 2.5-inch hybrid hard disk drives (HDD) in March 2007" - Source
As soon as this drive debuts, we will consider real-world advantage of this hard disk inside our mp3/mp4/pmp players. So, stay tuned for updates.

26th Spetember 2007 - Windows Vista have been released for about 6 months now (more or less), and these hybrid hard disk still do not seems to be available in any retailer or distributors...............and they are only available in SATA...............we wondering if they will actually be available to the mass market or only to OEM manufacturers......

Update: Tom's Hardware says that the Hybrid hard disk is not that great.....actually consumes more power than standard drives, probably not very useful for mp3, mp4 or PMPs.