No, we’re not turning into a review site for notebook hard drives, but a couple of products have launched that deserve a look after we visited the topic a few weeks ago. We then introduced Samsung’s Spinpoint M6, which was the world’s first 320-GB notebook hard drive. The hard drive still is one of the bottleneck components in every system, as it still takes a noticeable amount of time to launch complex applications, to store huge files or to start or shutdown Windows. The faster your hard drive, the quicker the entire system will run. Samsung, Toshiba and Western Digital were among the first OEMs to offer laptops with 320-GB hard drives, but it was the Samsung Spinpoint M6 that made it to our test lab first. But since the publication of our review on the Spinpoint M6, we received two other contenders: the Toshiba MK3252GSX and Western Digital’s Scorpio WD3200BEVT.
(Full article ‘WD and Toshiba Join the 320 GB 2.5″ HDD Club’)

Tom’s Hardware has had interactive performance charts for many years. They include test results of as many products as possible, using a plethora of industry standard benchmarks and real-life application benchmarks. We’re proud to say that the charts have been a valuable resource for comparing the performance of processors, graphics, storage and networking products. The latest ones deal with desktop processors, single desktop graphics, dual and quad graphics, workstation graphics, 3.5″ desktop hard drives, 2.5″ notebook hard drives and enterprise-class hard drives. While we’ve had Notebook Processor Charts for a while, these were obtained with outdated benchmarks, and no longer include the latest processors.

(Full article ‘Update: New Notebook CPU Charts’)

250 GB notebook hard drives have been around since June of this year, when Western Digital launched its latest WD2500BEVS Scorpio drive. But others followed quickly: Samsung also has a 250 GB model, the Spinpoint M5S HM250JI, and Fujitsu has the MHY2 that we haven’t reviewed yet. The same applies to Toshiba’s 46GSX series, and Seagate is ramping up its fourth generation Momentus, the 5400.4. But for now, it is Hitachi that wants to take the 2.5″ notebook drive crown. The Travelstar 7K200 is aimed at outperforming its competitors, while the 5K250 is positioned to deliver both high performance and maximum capacity. The performance differences in the 3.5″ desktop hard drive segment have been less significant than advances made in the 2.5″ notebook drive space.
(Full article ‘TravelStar 7K200 and 5K250 Beat the Band’)