Toshiba laptop hard drives?

[Kaido]

I've been looking into a new laptop and a replacement hard drive. The Toshiba MK5024GAY 2.5" hard drive caught my eye - 50gb, 7200rpm, ata/100, 16mb cache.

Technical information is available here. A few online shops that carry them are InsideComputer,
Bason Computer, and Computer Giants.

Does anyone have experience with Toshiba hard drives? I've only done one laptop hard drive upgrade in the past on my old thinkpad with a 20gb 5400rpm Hitachi, and the performance boost was great. I'm not nearly as familiar with laptop hardware as I am with desktop hardware, so I thought I'd get some opinions before dropping a couple hundred bucks

If it is a junk drive, I'll probably go with the Hitachi 7k60 60gb 7200rpm drive, which seems to have pretty good reviews.

thanks,
Kaido

 

[johnjkr1]

I really like the Toshiba's, better than IBM's in my opinion.

 

[addragyn]

HGST, although with less cache, have scored higher in every benchmark I've seen.

 

[corkyg]

I have both a Toshiba 40 GB 5400 rpm, and a Hitachi/IBM 40 GB 5400 RPM. Both are identical clones as far as OS and program - that is my laptop backup system. Anyway, the Toshiba has a bigger cache and is just slightly faster on real world apps and boot than the Hitachi - benchmarks are - who cares! (It's real world work that counts.)

Both are wholly reliable, but I prefer the Toshiba - it is my "A" squad - the Hitachi is my "B" squad.

I have avoided the 7200 rpm drives so far - more heat in a laptop I do not need.

 

[sharkeeper]

HGST 7,200 RPM drives don't put out that much heat especially compared to 5,400 RPM disks. Wait until 10k's are mainstream!

As for the OP, HGST > TOS

Cheers!

 

[Kaido]

Yeah...I think I'll go with the Hitachi...I think I've managed to find *one* review of the Toshiba. The 16 meg cache is tempting, but the Hitachi 60 gig drives have a good reputation. The cost is about the same and I get an extra 10 gigs with the Hitachi

I've decided to save up for an eMachines m6809 laptop with an Athlon 64 processor...it should kill my old 366mhz celery thinkpad I have a USB enclosure that I can use to put the included 80 gig drive in (I can use it as a storage drive...put my DVD collection on disk for when I go back to college next semester, w00t!). I also did some research on battery life reductions...it turns out upgrading from a 4800 or 5400rpm laptop drive to a 7200rpm drive only cuts battery life by about four minutes...I can certainly live with that! The article is over at Tom's Hardware if you're interested.

Thanks everyone!

cheers,
Kaido

 

[MWink]

I like Toshiba drives much more than IBM/Hitachi drives. I've found them to be faster and more reliable.