Toshiba 200GB 4200RPM 2.5" Hard Drive

[Rob Williams]

It has been a while since we've seen a capture of the top spot in the mobile storage market, but Toshiba has come along and delivered a 200GB 2.5" drive. What the drive adds in extra storage though, it takes away in speed.

You can read the full review here and discuss it here.

Last friday I ordered a Seagate 160GB 5400.3 (SATA version) for my Macbook. Today I looked on Apple's site and noticed the new Macbook Pro's are using the new 200GB Drive. At first I choked as I was proud to own the largest drive on the market. Then I saw the 4200rpm rating and laughed my ass off, remembering the days of my old P3 based Dell laptop with a 4200rpm. Reading your review assured me even more that I had made the right purchase. Note that I stayed away from 7200rpm drives due to battery life concerns -- I have read that the 160GB with PMR actually conserves battery which is an added bonus.

Not to nitpick but 150MB/sec is actually the standard for SATA and not SATA II. SATA II is 3Gb/sec (or 300MB/sec). Laptop drives have not yet been graced with SATA 2 interfaces (which have the same pin-out but offer higher speeds and native support for e.SATA).

Thanks for the great and re-assuring review!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Last friday I ordered a Seagate 160GB 5400.3 (SATA version) for my Macbook. Today I looked on Apple's site and noticed the new Macbook Pro's are using the new 200GB Drive. At first I choked as I was proud to own the largest drive on the market. Then I saw the 4200rpm rating and laughed my ass off, remembering the days of my old P3 based Dell laptop with a 4200rpm. Reading your review assured me even more that I had made the right purchase. Note that I stayed away from 7200rpm drives due to battery life concerns -- I have read that the 160GB with PMR actually conserves battery which is an added bonus.

Not to nitpick but 150MB/sec is actually the standard for SATA and not SATA II. SATA II is 3Gb/sec (or 300MB/sec). Laptop drives have not yet been graced with SATA 2 interfaces (which have the same pin-out but offer higher speeds and native support for e.SATA).

Thanks for the great and re-assuring review!

Well, I managed to get a hold of a 200GB drive, and installed it in my macbook. I do photo and video editing, and based on my experience so far, the 200GB drive run pretty well on the macbook. I have experienced little or no slowdown in the apps that I use, so guess coming from a real-world user, the 200GB drive acquits itself quite handily.

I did an import of 1 hour of mini-DV video at full res before and after I got the Toshiba drive. It looked fine to me. 4200rpm seemed no different from a "faster" 5400 RPM drive, if my macbook's stock 5400 RPM drive is any comparison.

So my alternate real-world review conclusion: buy it if you need the storage. I don't see any real-world difference between the 4200 toshiba and the 5400 seagates that apple uses.