Conclusions
Are solid-state flash drives really ready to take the reigns from traditional mechanical storage? There are two components to this question, the first of which is whether solid-state storage is fast enough to take on the speediest mechanical drives on the market. For the Samsung FlashSSD and OCZ SATA II, the answer is an emphatic yes. These identical drives delivered great application and multitasking performance, quick transfer rates, instantaneous access times, and a jaw-dropping multi-user IOMeter performance. And they did so while consuming very little power and not making a sound.

There's more to the equation than just performance, though, which brings us to the all-important value component. Samsung offers better value here, with the FlashSSD selling for $100 less than the otherwise identical OCZ. But at $800 online, the FlashSSD 64GB is far from affordable; it's more than four times the cost of the cheapest mechanical drive in this round-up for just one-fifth of the capacity. That works out to an atrocious $12.50/gigabyte.

If you want to get into solid-state storage on the cheap, the MasterDrive MX offers a much more attractive $6.58/gigabyte. The drive still only packs 60GB, though, and while it's quick to read, slow write speeds have a detrimental impact on its overall performance. The MX's power consumption isn't as low as we'd hoped, either.

I can see using the MasterDrive in read-only environments where shock tolerance and silence are important, but we'll have to see what Super Talent's updated firmware can do before passing final judgment on this drive. The Samsung FlashSSD has more appeal, or at least the same sort of appeal as an exotic sports car. It's very fast, no doubt, but not by enough of a margin in day-to-day use to justify the huge price premium. Still, one can't deny the FlashSSD's performance, and if price is no object, we'd recommend the drive over the OCZ SATA II if only because it costs $100 less. OCZ really needs to rectify that price discrepancy, and with more than just a mail-in rebate.

Despite all the hype surrounding solid-state storage, we've seen today that traditional mechanical hard drives are still the way to go for most folks. Of the four we tested, the Momentus 5400.4 is our least favorite. With relatively low-density platters, the drive didn't have much of a chance, even with its five-year warranty. If you're looking for an affordable notebook drive, the Scorpio Blue is a much better bet. The Blue is a good all-around performer and it's occasionally faster than the Momentus 7200.3, which is quite a feat. And with a street price of just $110, you get 320GB for just $0.34/gigabyte.

The Scorpio Blue should be fast enough for most users, but if you want to give your laptop's storage subsystem a little extra oomph, the Momentus 7200.3 and Scorpio Black are both good options. Unfortunately, the Momentus has a bit of a split personality. The drive's performance with large files and sequential transfers is excellent, and if all we used to test hard drives was HD Tach, it'd easily be the winner. However, despite scoring well in our multitasking tests, the 7200.3 really drags its feet when moving around smaller files—something we do often. Given the drive's IOMeter results, we suspect Seagate is fiddling with command queuing in order to improve performance with sequential transfers—a strategy that appears to be costing them in more than just multi-user server benchmarks.

While the Scorpio Black can't quite match the Momentus' prowess with sequential transfers, it doesn't slow down with smaller files. The Black is quicker in WorldBench, too, and it was faster in our game level load time tests while remaining competitive under multitasking workloads. Where Seagate has specialized, Western Digital has created a better all-around performer—and one that costs $5 less that the same 320GB capacity point. We'd rather have a drive that offers good overall performance than one that oscillates between fast and slow depending on the workload, which is why we're giving the Scorpio Black our coveted Editor's Choice award.