Fujitsu 320GB

2009-06-01 • SEND FEEDBACK •
Related: hard drive, laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Other World Computing, storage

The Fujitsu 320GB 5400rpm hard drive is supplied by Apple in the 2009 MacBook Pro as the base-level option. And it truly is a “dog”.

If your MacBook Pro or MacBook has this drive, you can get an instant performance boost by installing a faster hard drive.

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DiskTester results

Test mule: MacBook Pro 2009 17" 2.93GHz
SATA hardware: internal port
Driver: Apple standard
Drive model: MHZ2320BH FFS G1

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Tests on the 2009 MacBook Pro 17" 2.93GHz (see review), using the internal SATA port (system was booted off an external drive to allow testing of the entire drive).

Sequential sustained transfer with different chunk sizes

Performance is bottom-of-the-barrel for 2009.

# Sequential sustained transfer
--- Averages for "Fujitsu300" (512MB/start, 3 iterations) ---
Chunk Size    Write MB/sec    Read MB/sec
    32K           44.0            45.6   
    64K           57.7            57.9   
   128K           58.0            58.0   
   256K           57.6            58.0   
   512K           57.7            57.9   
    1MB           57.7            57.9   
    2MB           57.9            57.9   
    4MB           57.7            57.8   
    8MB           57.7            57.9   
   16MB           57.8            57.9   
   32MB           58.0            57.8 

Area tests

These across-the-drive tests with 1MB and 32MB transfers are fast approximations of drive performance across the drive. Drive speed is slow, ranging to abysmal as the drive fills up beyond 80%.

See Why you need more space than you need to understand the performance decline across the drive.

--- Averages for "Fujitsu300" (512MB/1MB, 3 iterations) ---
Area (295.9GB)    Write MB/sec    Read MB/sec
       0%             57.6            57.9   
      10%             56.8            56.9   
      20%             55.4            55.0   
      30%             53.0            53.2   
      40%             52.2            52.5   
      50%             49.2            49.5   
      60%             46.0            46.7   
      70%             42.1            42.2   
      80%             38.8            39.1   
      90%             35.2            34.8   
     100%             28.4            28.6   
Average write speed across the volume: 46.8MB/sec
Average read speed across the volume: 46.9MB/sec
--- Averages for "Fujitsu300" (512MB/32MB, 3 iterations) ---
Area (295.9GB)    Write MB/sec    Read MB/sec
       0%             57.4            57.8   
      10%             56.6            56.9   
      20%             55.3            55.2   
      30%             53.0            53.1   
      40%             52.2            52.7   
      50%             49.3            49.4   
      60%             46.3            46.5   
      70%             41.8            42.4   
      80%             39.2            38.8   
      90%             34.8            35.2   
     100%             28.4            28.5   
Average write speed across the volume: 46.8MB/sec
Average read speed across the volume: 47.0MB/sec