Toshiba 200GB 4200RPM 2.5" Hard Drive

Throughout all of our benchmarks regardless of what we are reviewing, testing is done in a clean and stand-alone version of Windows XP Professional with SP2. Prior to testing, these conditions are met:

• Desktop and scrap files are cleaned up, including emptying of recycle bin.
• No virus scanner or firewall is installed in the stand-alone installation.
• The stand-alone installation drive is completely defragged using Diskeeper 10 Pro Premier.
• All unnecessary programs are closed, so that Windows should have no more than 15 active processes running.
• Computer has proper airflow.

If you are interested in using the same benchmarks as us, feel free to visit the developers website:

• HD Tach RW 3
• HD Tune 2.52
• PC Mark 2005
• Sandra 2007

The testing rig used for today’s benchmarking is as follows:

• CPU: AMD Windsor 4600+ EE @ 2.4GHz
• Motherboard: DFI LanParty NF590 M2R/G
• Memory: Kinston HyperX 2GB PC2-8000
• Video: ASUS 7800GT TOP
• Sound: Onboard HD Audio
• Storage: Seagate 7200.9 320GB
• Etcetera: Windows XP Professional w/ SP2, NVIDIA 81.98 Drivers
• Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500

Before we jump into results, there are a few things to make note of. First off, this is a mobile hard drive… being tested in a desktop system. I am confident, however, that these results will be in line with what you would receive in a new laptop, should it include this drive. The fact that it’s 4200RPM doesn’t really give it much room for improvement. The results we do see, may very well be the max speeds that a 4200RPM S-ATA II drive is capable of. Don’t quote me however, as I don’t have another 4200RPM SATA II drive on hand to test my theory.

Throughout all of the testing, you will notice I am comparing this drive to a Seagate 160GB and Hitachi 60GB… both of those drives were tested in a laptop. Both of those drives were standard ATA.

Laptop Specs: Dell Inspiron 5150, 2.8GHz P4, 256MB * 2 PC2700, GoForce 5200FX 64MB

First up is one of my favorite storage benchmarks… HD Tune. I am actually quite impressed with how the Toshiba drive kept up to the others. It had actually surpassed my Hitachi 7200 60GB drive. It’s minimum readings were quite a bit lower, though.

HD Tach is another favorite, due to it’s intensiveness. The Extended test… takes hours. Here we can see the Toshiba falls way behind the other two drives. Burst speed doesn’t mean that much to me, but compare the Toshiba to the other drives. It has a read speed that’s half of what the Seagate drive could muster. 33MB/s is not bad for a mobile drive per se.. theoretically it’s about 10MB/s faster than what most USB 2.0 thumb drives can do.

Sandra is not one to disagree… we are seeing similar results here. While Sandra claims the Toshiba could keep up to the other drives’ burst speeds, it still lacked seriously in the Read test… half of the others. The Access time is also lacking, proving to be 4ms slower than the Hitachi 7200.