What have we got in the end? The Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 looks obviously inferior to its opponents in most of our tests. Its very low write speed is the main reason for that. Notwithstanding the interesting technologies implemented in this drive, you should not buy it if you want to have the highest performance possible. We should make allowances for the drive's firmware, however. Perhaps it is going to perform faster with newer firmware versions.

The other two HDDs, both supporting the SATA interface, delivered predictable results. The Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI and the Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS have PATA-interfaced counterparts we had tested earlier, but there is no great difference between the results of the related HDD models. These two HDD models are both much faster than the Hitachi and are roughly equal to each other, perhaps with a minor advantage on the part of the Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI. Each of these drives will surely make a good buy.