Conclusion

The Western Digital WD2500BEVS seems to be the overall leader among 2.5” HDDs with a storage capacity of 250GB. It never failed in any test but won many of them, delivering high sequential read and write speeds and showing good firmware algorithms. On the downside is the high power consumption of this model. It is actually the most voracious model in its class and we don’t recommend using it in an external enclosure without additional power (or you should switch the HDD into quiet seek mode).

The Samsung HM250JI and Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00 are worthy of your attention, too. The former proved to be suitable for a workstation or notebook. The latter has high performance with small files, copes well with copying tasks, and has the lowest power draw among the tested HDDs.

Fujitsu has got some work to do on the firmware of the MHY2250BH, which has been the slowest in the 5400rpm category in many tests.

The Fujitsu MHX2250BT with its spindle rotation speed of 4200rpm could not be expected to set any records. Its results are 15% lower than those of the worst of the 5400rpm drives throughout most of the tests. So, if you need a high-performance disk subsystem, you should not buy a low-speed model.