Conclusions
If our test results make one thing abundantly clear, it's that anyone with a 4,200-RPM laptop hard drive with 2 MB of cache could use an upgrade. Even 5,400-RPM mobile drives offer significantly better performance than the 4,200-RPM Fujitsu MHV2040AT with little to no noise or power consumption penalty. To be fair, the MHV2040AT sells for around $60, making it the cheapest drive in the round-up. But you get what you pay for, and spending a little extra can go a long way toward improving performance and increasing storage capacity.

With the MHV2040AT eliminated from contention, we have six other drives to consider. Fortunately, some are easier to dismiss than others. Take the Travelstar 5K100, for example. The drive scores points for a $120 street price that makes it the most affordable 5,400-RPM drive of the lot, but that'll only get you 100 GB; the rest of the 5,400-RPM field is packing 120 GB or more. Poor performance is really what hurts the 5K100, though. It's the slowest 5,400-RPM drive overall, in some cases trailing the rest of the field by almost as big a margin as the Fujitsu.

Next in line for consideration is Western Digital's Scorpio WD1200VE, a drive that matches up pretty well with Seagate's Momentus 5400.2. The Scorpio's performance is particularly strong in FC-Test, and its seek noise levels are nice and low. However, the drive's warranty terms are a little short when compared with the Seagates. To Western Digital's credit, the WD1200VE is roughly $20 cheaper than the Momentus 5400.2, making it the most affordable 120 GB drive in this comparison.

The Momentus 5400.2's five-year warranty gives it a slight edge over the Scorpio, but the 5400.2 is ultimately upstaged by its perpendicular successor, the Momentus 5400.3. The 5400.3 delivers better performance nearly across the board, and boasts a higher storage capacity than any laptop drive available on the market. It's also the first commercially-available perpendicular laptop drive, so there's some additional cachet—and some additional cost. The Momentus 5400.3's 160 GB total capacity is 33% higher than that of its closest competitors, yet the drive's $240 price tag is closer to 50% higher. That's a hefty premium to pay, especially considering 7,200-RPM drives still retain the laptop performance crown. Still, for those who crave storage capacity above all else, the 5400.3 is the best mobile option out there.

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100 GB ATA April 2006

Fortunately, the obvious performance advantages we've seen from the 7,200-RPM mobile hard drives don't come at too great a cost. The 7,200-RPM ATA drives from both Hitachi and Seagate are available for less than $180, and their noise levels and power consumption aren't all that much higher than the 5,400-RPM drives. Capacity doesn't suffer much, either, with both available at 100 GB. Unfortunately, choosing between the two 7,200-RPM drives is a difficult task. The Momentus 7200.1 and Travelstar 7K100 are both very capable, and while the Momentus scores better in WorldBench, IOMeter, and HDTach's random access time test, the Travelstar is faster in HD Tach's sustained transfer rate tests, iPEAK multitasking, and our boot and load time tests.

Were price and warranty equal between the Travelstar 7K100 and Momentus 7200.1, we'd call it a dead heat. But they're not. The Travelstar has a slight edge in price, selling for $10 less than the $180 Momentus. That swings the momentum in Hitachi's favor, but Seagate's five-year warranty is a heckuva rebound, offering two more years of coverage than Hitachi's three-year coverage. Two years for $10 sounds good to us, making the Momentus 7200.1 our Editor's Choice for mobile ATA drives in a photo finish.