Perfect Notebook Storage: Seven 2.5” 500 GB Drives

Toshiba MK5055GSX

Although hard drive reviews are often dominated by other brands, Toshiba is still around, and continues to develop nice notebook storage products. The 55GSX-series is the latest product family, also reaching up to 500 GB on two storage platters and running at 5,400 RPM. The MK5055GSX offers 8 MB of cache memory and a SATA 2.6 300 Mbit/s interface with NCQ support.

This drive reached an average access time of 18.4 ms and average I/O performance results. Throughput maxed out at 77.9 MB/s, just missing the 80 MB/s mark. Toshiba’s drive achieved average scores in the PCMark Vantage HDD benchmark, but it consumed little power during our testing: 0.7 W idle power is the lowest result, which it shares with the Fujitsu drive. A figure of 2.2 W power for streaming reads is the best result as well; others require 2.3 to 2.6 W for delivering data at peak throughput. Finally, the drive was also very efficient when it comes to power consumption during a defined stream of data: HD video playback could be done at 0.9 W power consumption. As a result of the low power numbers, this drive reached excellent performance per watt results. If you want maximum power efficiency, then this is your product.

Toshiba offers 500, 400, 320, 250, 160, and 120 GB capacity points with an optional free-fall sensor. Find more information on the Toshiba Web site.

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