Secondary disk performance on laptop (for virtual machine working)

Note: this entry has moved.

I was trying to determine the best setup for a secondary disk to use to work with a virtual machine (VM), which is a must in order to have the development experience inside the VM be almost on a pair with developing on the host machine (without the risks of screwing your machine with betas, etc.).

I have the usual Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 (7200rpm, 60gb), pretty much the only 7200rpm option about a year ago. And lately I bought a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (5400rpm, 120gb) with the idea that even if it’s slower, I may use it to keep backups of VMs, music, etc.

I had some doubts regarding my Thinkpad T43p UltraBay performance for the disk. At some point, I felt putting the disk in the UltraBay was slower than using it with the external USB enclosure. So I run some tests with the two disks in USB and UltraBay configuration, using the PerformanceTest 6.0 software from PassMark, which is supposedly pretty good at testing various performance indicators.

Results were surprising:

In a nutshell

• A secondary disk in the UltraBay outperforms USB2 consistently.
• Hitachi Travestar 7k60 is showing its age, and even the “slower” Seagate Momentus 5400rpm outperforms it consistently by a substantial margin.

So disks switched roles now: 5400rpm for VMs, older 7200rpm for music/backups :o)