Phoenix has risen from the dead, Zombie SR is alive!
Guess I spoke to soon about the inscrutable, ephemeral Eugene. He always keeps a tight lip, never communicating with his own audience (freaky if you ask me). While everyone else was using other sites to get an ideal of which newer laptop drives to buy, Eugene gave *no* indication whatsoever that he would *ever* put up a new review of laptop drives, ever. You think he could have at least communicated that some new laptop drive reviews where in the que? But no. Not communicationally dysfunctional Eugene.
A whole 4 laptop drive round up, and only a few months to 1/2 a year behind everyone else (still relegating SR as mostly useless, and people who needed larger capacity or faster 7.2k laptop drives have already bought those which have been reviewed, lol...thanks Eugene
.
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr
http://www.storagereview.com/2005notebook.sr?page=0,0
Speed- Smaller buffers, lower spindle speeds, lighter actuator magnets, lesser transfer rates, and electronics/caching strategies tuned for power-efficient operation rather than raw speed result in notebook devices that yield a noticeably sluggish experience when contrasted with their desktop counterparts. In addition, the aforementioned lower capacities produce volumes that tend to span a 2.5" platter's distance, further slowing things down with physically longer seeks.
yeah, so now with higher density, all of a sudden they are OK with Eugene; his logic is flawed? Guess, he'll be short stroking those 200GB and larger capacity laptops in a futile attempt to get even shorter 'physical seeks' which contradicts his biased "mantra" contention here:
To quote from the initial somewhat useless SR laptop review of Nov. 2005
mantra repeated on every SR review of the last few years)
Some Perspective
It is important to remember that seek time and transfer rate measurements are mostly diagnostic in nature and not really measurements of "performance" per se. Assessing these two specs is quite similar to running a
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]processor[/FONT][/FONT][/color][/color] "benchmark" that confirms "yes, this processor really runs at 2.4 GHz and really does feature a 400 MHz FSB." Many additional factors combine to yield aggregate high-level hard disk performance above and beyond these two easily measured yet largely irrelevant metrics. In the end, drives, like all other
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]PC [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]components[/FONT][/color][/FONT][/color][/color], should be evaluated via application-level performance. Over the next few pages, this is exactly what we will do
[in a biased way of course, those implied to represent a majority's experience in everyday use, while not really doing so, as it hardly accurately represents how many will use and actually notice or even perceive such performance differences ]. Read on!
http://www.storagereview.com/2005notebook.sr?page=0,5
Planning to deploy a server running a 2.5" notebook drive? While
we can think of only a few things more masochistic, if you must incorporate a 2.5" device and it can not be a Seagate
Savvio (a 10K RPM
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]Ultra320 [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]SCSI[/FONT][/color][/FONT][/color][/color] drive that also features a 2.5" form factor, ableit thicker than that of a notebook-oriented device), turn to the Momentus 7200.1.
Compare now on SR in June 2007:
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr?page=0,4
While one would not expect notebook-oriented drives in a server environment, these 2.5" drives do serve a role in space-confined applications such as blade servers where SAS-based options such as Seagate's Savvio line remain prohibitively priced. For such applications, the SATA interface not only provides seamless interoperability with the enterprise-oriented
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]SAS[/FONT][/FONT][/color][/color] interface, but also Native Command Queuing (NCQ), a features that permits the drives to better scale in IO/s per second delivered as queue depths rise.
Under such a scenario, the 7200 RPM SATA-based Momentus drives offer performance in another league when contrasted with PATA offerings, whether 5400 or 7200 RPM. By virtue of its own NCQ capability, the 5400 RPM SATA-based WD Scorpio also manages to hang with the Momentus units.
Huh, but Eugene, didn't you forget to trash these newer laptop drives as being so incredibly slow compared to not desktop drives, but enterprise class 15k rpm drives? Never mind that in the next year or two 'real enterprise' larger budget power users will be making the 'paradigm' shift (sorry, I couldn't resist
) to SSD's which even in laptop NAND flash drives, just blow away 15k rpm 'enterprise class', even as we know 'access times' of 1/10th that of hard drives shouldn't be used as a metric according to Eugene, lol.
Last but not the least, a silly apples & oranges comparison of futility of usefullness as far as the major target markets, a parody of WR's spurious biased logic from the PnS digicam thread yesterday.
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr?page=0,3
Most significant here is the Momentus 7200.2's tumble to the bottom of the chart. Even the Scorpio WD1600BEVS, thus far hardly a stellar performer in its own right, tops Seagate's 7200 RPM offering. The news is not great for the Scorpio either, as the newer 160 GB model places significantly behind its 80 GB predecessor.
OMFG, to quote WR, don't bother reading the review, these 'weird' new laptop drives are just "horrible" check out the WOW I/O times (like that's all you'd ever want to use a laptop for, right?). Hmm, maybe SR's test suite doesn't really take into account real world user experiences, but only gives a narrowed view of what to expect???
http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showpost.php?p=96613&postcount=145
Canon Powershot S5 IS press release Canon's Page Samples
New review from dpreview.com of
Canon TX1 that weird vertical digicam/camcorder gadget. I'll save you the read - they thought the controls were horrible and it is a nice gadget but nothing more.
And dpreview.com review of
Nikon D40 for reference.
Yeah, these new 'horribly' performing on games, laptop drives are 'nice' gadgets and "
nothing more"...you know, from my most learned informed, objective opinion
While some can say SR represents a more rigourously standardized testing methodology than other sites, the unfortunate part is that, most readers of SR are stuck with the emperor's clothes scenario of being ignorant of Eugene's biases, and the lack of accurarcy in SR's analysis/reporting.
Caveat emptor.
However, there is no explanation whatsoever, for why it took 18+ months for the 2nd round of laptop drive reviews. No explanation why it took the same amount of time to enter the 1st round of drives into the database comparison (in his most current notation on the front page, it's almost like Eugene wants you to believe it was just a minor/trival oversight that because 'real life' got in the way, neither he or anyone else really noticed that ommission??? This is supposed to represent the premier storage review site...oh my, pretty sad if you ask me.
What an Effin joke:
SR's front page listed the 250GB 5.4k drives from various manufactureres---with Fujitsu @300Gb in nearly extinct 4.2k rpm speed; yet as always Eugene is gameboy/psuedo 'enterprise class' hard drive biased, so you wouldn't expect him to have any respect for laptop drives, the guy doesn use them, and as such will keep the perceived bias of 'hugely' smaller capacity exaggerated-just because he only tested 160GB drives, doesn't mean he needs to intentionally minimize maximum capacity to 200GB, while he could have stated 250GB and more- to further promote his objectives. Who cares if the "paradigm" shift is going to laptop drives (and btw, I'd like to see a ban from the over use of
paridigm...I much prefer Reality Distortion Steve-O Jobs "Insanely great" aphrorism
).
ROFLMFAO, Eugene and everyone else derides laptop drives in 2005 as being so slow compared to PATA/SATA desktop drives (even if they only lag top of the line, what everyone used to/was peeing their pants over as being plenty fast, 2-3yr old desktop drives) and here Eugene has contradicted himself, the hypocrite. While sure 7.2k laptop drives are faster (and SSD's soon to be available by the end of the year surpass hard drive performance in laptops and equal of exceed desktop/enterprise class 15k rpm drives in some benchmarks), they aren't
that much faster than their predecessors, and still lag the current gen of desktop drives (the highest performing 200GB 7.2k Hitachi 2.5in laptop drive is now shipping in volume according to Hitachi, and available in Dell's right now).
So what's up with this, what amounts to a tacit redaction of his former statements? Credibility, impartiality are not Eugene's/SR's strong points, apparently.
http://www.storagereview.com/2005notebook.sr?page=0,8
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr?page=0,7
Seagate Momentus 7200.2: At almost double the cost per
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]gigabyte[/FONT][/FONT][/color][/color] of the other drives featured in this roundup, the 7200.2 is a solid, next-generation choice for road warriors
looking to desktop-style responsiveness and capacity.
No Eugene, that would be Hitachi's just now shipping 200GB 7.2k drive, the Seagate and other lower density 160GB drives are like desktop drives prior to your 2005 laptop review...please try to be consistent!!! Is there even a current gen (as Seagate has just released a single plater 250GB) 160GB 3.5in SATA still being manufacturered and being shipped in any desktop from a major PC manufacturer, other than the lowest priced bargain bin, stripped down model? Eugene forever whining about the cost of smaller laptop drives, yet he gleefully extolls the virtues of the Cheetah 15.5 while not directly comparing it's $500+ cost as a negative.
Manufacturers and users alike also watch in anticipation as this
final sector of drive-based storage continues to evolve and consolidate from its older legacy paradigm of a 2x22 pin grid power/data connector to the increasingly consistent 22-contact paradigm enjoyed by the SATA and
[COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif][COLOR=blue ! important][FONT=Verdana,sans-serif]SAS[/FONT][/FONT][/color][/color] standards.
Say Eugene, you have heard of the iPod? It started out using (still does until a complete..."paradigm shift" to SSD's in the next year or so lol, using
1.8in hard drives...whoa, pull your head out of the sand Eugene!!!)
In conclusion, you only get what your intelligence or ignorance of not spending requisite time doing research, gets you by reading SR's reviews like they give you an accurate indication of what to expect in hard drive performance. Thumbs down to Eugene's latest tardy review of laptop hard drives, and complete failure to mention the emerging SSD market of PATA & SATA drives in both 2.5 & 1.8in sizes which are now spec'd at 7000 IOPS (for 512btye size using IOMeter, not exactly the same test suite SR uses with IOMeter), well beyond 15k drives, 64-67MB/s read performance, 45MB's write performance (in the case of the
1.8in 64GB Samsung drive annouced to begin quantity vaporware? production in late spring 2007, but yet to ship or show up at retail level...Sandisk is "later in 2007" for it's SATA 64GB model currently in available 'engineering samples' stage) that for the most part matches current desktop SATA drives....cost and limited capacity the only real weakness now.
