Toshiba MK6465GSX 640GB laptop hard drive

The trouble, of course, is that we’re not comparing apples with apples, so we reached for a Novatech laptop that we happened to have on the shelf. The Novatech uses a 120GB Fujitsu MHW2120BH Sata hard drive that has a specification that is reasonably similar to the Toshiba. The Fujitsu has a spin speed of 5400rpm, packs 8MB cache and has a noise rating of 24dB.

The obvious technical difference between the two drives is the areal density as the Fujitsu offers 80GB of data per platter while the Toshiba leaps to 320GB per platter.

2GB File Dupliction Test

2GB of music files copied on the drive
Time in Seconds (s)
Shorter bars are better

This difference is apparent in our test results as the Toshiba delivers HD Tach average read and average write figures that are twice as fast as the Fujitsu. It’s a similar story when we copied files within the disks as it took the Fujitsu a full minute extra to duplicate 2GB of files.

HDTach 3.0.1

Average read and write speeds in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better

CrystalDiskMark also shows the Toshiba has a significant advantage over the Fujitsu.

CrystalDiskMark

Throughput in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better