WorldBench
WorldBench uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications. Only a handful of these applications benefit from even the fastest storage solutions available today, so we've left out the individual results to focus on WorldBench's overall score.

Although it doesn't quite make up for their lesser capacities, the best of the latest crop of SSDs dominates the top end of our WorldBench rankings. Coincidentally, some earlier solid-state drives also register the lowest scores of the bunch. Clearly, flash-based storage has come a long way.

Conversely, the WorldBench performance of 3.5" desktop drives has only improved by about 7%. The 10k-RPM Raptors don't do much to set themselves apart, either. That's perhaps to be expected, given that few WorldBench tests truly tax the storage subsystem.

We see a greater performance spread among the 2.5" mobile drives, but remember we're dealing with three spindle speeds here. The Fujitsu MHV2040AT is our lone 4,200-RPM model, with the rest split between 5,400 and 7,200 RPM.