In order to test the performance of the Seagate ST9100824A, we used HD Tach RW, PC Mark05 and SiSoftware Sandra.

HD Tach RW provides both reading and writing benchmarking on the entire surface area of the HDD.

According to HD Tach, the HDD started with 35Mb/s throughput and finished with 20Mb/sec where the head is at the out layers of the disc. The random access time was 16.3ms, which can be considered as very good.

Next, we ran FutureMark's PC Mark 05 (v1.1.0). This benchmark suite can test an entire system, but we were only interested in the HDD suite of tests. The results are shown below:

The overall score awarded to the HDD is 2975.

The final benchmark was with Sisoft Sandra 2007. This software can compare the measured performance against other tested devices, so that you can get a rough idea of how well or how badly a device performs compared to other devices. By using the Physical Disk Test, we clocked 33Mb/sec throughput with 14ms Random Access Time. These figures, compared with a Fujitsu 2.5" 100GB SATA, look very good, and confirm our belief that the Seagate Momentus 5400.2 is a fast 2.5" drive.

Most laptop users are also concerned about heat and noise. Seagate claims that the Momentus series, runs cool and noiseless, due to its SoftSonic FDB motor. Our problem when the drive was connected with the USB interface, was that couldn't get any information about the temperature at full load using the various software utilities. For this reason, we used a digital thermometer and measured around 39°C surface temperature under full load. A Fujitsu 100GB 4200rpm drive we measured, was quit a bit hotter, at 59°C under full load, (installed on a laptop). Regarding noise..What noise? This must be one the quietest HDD we've ever heard. Seagate appears to have kept their promise about silent drives.