Need help with hard drive spec differences

[jere01]

I recently bought an ECS barebones laptop and put all of the components in myself. I just realized tonight that they sent me the wrong hard drive though. The one I wanted was the Toshiba MK4019GAX and they sent me the MK4026GAX. I looked on toshiba's website and all of the specs are the same except the 4026 has 1 disk and 2 heads and the 4019 has 2 disks and 4 heads. Can someone please tell me which of these two is better? The drive I have (MK4026) makes a fair bit of accessing noise and a friend of mine has a 4019 and it doesn't make that noise. Which drive is better? Is 2 disks and 4 heads better than 1 disk and 2 heads?

EDIT: Also, the MK4026 says it supports ATA-2/3/4/5/6 but the 4019 only supports ATA-2/3/4/5. What's ATA-6? Is it a good feature for a laptop HD to have?

Thanks!

 

[techfuzz]

1 disk (or platter) and 2 heads is better than 2 disks (platters) and 4 heads. The single platter can stored more data per square inch than the 2 platter version. Less platters cut down on heat, vibration, and energy. All important factors in a laptop. The 1 platter/2 head drive is going to be marginally better than a 2 platter/4 head drive although you probably couldn't detect the difference.

ATA-6 means ATA/133 (I think) and is capable of sending data at burst speeds up to 133 mb/sec. Unfortunately, hard drives rarely even reach ATA/66 speeds and this is especially true of most laptop hard drives. You won't notice any difference between a drive that has only ATA-5 and one with ATA-6.

techfuzz