Toshiba MK1651GSY (160 GB - 7200 RPM)

The last drive in this little roundup is Toshiba's current 7,200 RPM product, the 51GSY family. We received the 160 GB model, although there are other capacity points between 200 GB and 80 GB.

The faster spindle speed provides the MK1651GSY with a significant advantage when it comes to access time and I/O performance. Although it doesn't beat the results of Seagate's Momentus 7200.2 or the Hitachi TravelStar 7K200, 14.6 ms still is a good result for a 7,200 RPM drive. Most 5,400 RPM models access data in an average of approximately 17 ms. In the I/O performance benchmarks, the Toshiba MK1651GSY is even faster than the Momentus 7200.2 in most of the runs, especially at large command queue depths.

Although Toshiba had been quick with deploying more cache memory onto hard drives, this model is based on a standard 8 MB cache and it also utilizes a SATA/150 interface. The power requirements of 1.1 W in idle and 3.4 W maximum are average, as is the transfer performance: 61 MB/s can be reached by some 5,400 RPM drives today. Application benchmarks still attest high performance, thanks to the drive's quick access time and I/O performance.