Notebook Drives At Up To 160 GB Put Under the Microscope

Samsung HM040HI

Samsung's 40 GB drive HM040HI operates at 5,400 RPM, comes with an 8 MB cache and uses Serial ATA/150. Thanks to these specifications, its interface benchmark result looks promising. However, the drive's performance is still determined by its mechanical components, and the maximum transfer rate remains at 34 MB/s. In our opinion, picking the 60 GB model HM060JI seems to be the better option, since the price difference is minor.