Image processing

Adobe Photoshop

ACDSee PowerPack

Photoshop doesn't provide much opportunity for the drives to stretch their legs, but ACDSee proves problematic for some. Again, the Travelstars are a little behind the other ATA drives, with the exception of the MHV2040AT, of course. The 4,200-RPM drive is really slow here, turning in a time over three minutes longer than its closest competitor.

Multitasking and office applications

Microsoft Office

Mozilla

Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder

Although WorldBench's Office XP test spreads the field ever so slightly, there isn't much variation through the suite's office and multitasking tests.

Other applications

Winzip

Nero

Winzip and Nero are much more demanding of the disk subsystem, however. In Winzip, the Travelstar 7K100 scores its first win over the 2.5" ATA drives, followed closely by the Scorpio. Seagate bounces back in Nero, with the Momentus 7200.1 and 5400.3 taking the top two spots. The Travelstar 5K100 looks particularly weak in Nero, as its performance lags behind all but the MHV2040AT by a significant margin.