Almost same HDD, different results?

[john8000]

Hello,

Sorry for my English - its not my first language, but I try
I need to buy HDD for old notebook. Right now I have:

ST9808210A

This HDD is

4,200 RPM-Class Performance (Actual spin speed 5,400 RPM) - according to manual

Here you can find some statistics -

http://www.manualslib.com/products/Seagate-St9808210a-Momentus-4200-2-80-Gb-Hard-Drive-2721667.html

I can buy ST96812A, which again, according to manual, have the same performance (read, write, latency, transfe etc), statistics here - http://www.manualslib.com/manual/524061/Seagate-Momentus-5400-2.html#product-ST96812A


So here is the question - why on PassMark test - http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/low_end_drives.html

first hdd have only 176 points, but second have 257?

I need new disk, because notebook read and write everything so slowly I bought allready more RAM, but I thought that new hdd can help a lot. Notebook is for my parents, just for reading mails, skype or google searching, nothing more, so I want to give this hardware second life, instead of buying new one. Am I thinking correct? More RAM and better (if those PassMark test is correct) HDD will help?

[David (PassMark)]

These are ancient Parallel ATA drives. I had a quick look at the specs you linked to. The specifications are not identical. While close, none of the key specs appear to be exactly the same. So there is no reason to expect identical performance. What you can expect from all Parallel ATA drives however is appallingly slow performance.

If you really want to continue to struggle on with this dinosaur of a machine then have a look around for a Parallel ATA solid state drive. They do exist even though the range is very limited. Performance will be up to an order of magnitude better than a spindle drive.