Storage

Review: Toshiba 750GB 2.5-inch HDD

Toshiba has launched a huge 750GB capacity 2.5-inch drive in the shape of the MK7559GSXP which you can snap up for around £80. To put the £ per Gigabyte argument into some sort of perspective, for the same amount of money you might just be able to buy an 80GB SSD if you shop around. Even just a couple of years ago a 750GB 2.5-inch drive would have been nudging the £200+ mark.With this tiny 750GB drive, Toshiba has a drive that should help address the data capacity needs of today's multimedia notebook aficionados.It's interesting to see how the MK7559GSXP with its latest mechanical drive technologies outperforms the previous generation MK5055GSX.The MK7559GSXP loses out to WD Scorpio Black in the random access results due to its slower 5,400rpm spin speed, WD's drive spins at a much faster 7,200rpm and has a massive16MB buffer.Perhaps the most interesting thing about the MK7559GSXP is the technologies Toshiba has used in the platter (disc) design. While many people see SSD's as the future, traditional hard disk companies haven't been hiding their collective heads in the sand, but rather have been looking at ways of increasing capacity in the traditional formats by introducing new disc technologies.In the MK7559GSXP Toshiba uses something called Advanced Sector Formatting (ASF). Traditionally, hard drives have used the legacy 512 byte per sector format which uses Sync/DAM (lead in) blocks, Error Correcting Code (ECC) blocks and also more importantly leaves gaps between sectors which wastes storage capacity. ASF is a technology that uses 4K bytes per sector and removes the Sync/DAM blocks and closes the gaps between sectors. The larger sector size also brings improved ECC, leading to better formatting efficiency and data integrity. The closing of the gaps also allows for increased areal density which is the key in getter larger capacities per platter (disc).Toshiba are not alone in using ASF, but with an areal density of 541.4G bit/in^2 (which Toshiba claim is the industry's highest) it's the reason they only needed two platters to give the MK7559GSXP its impressive storage capacity.Unfortunately Toshiba has matched all the good stuff with a relatively slow spindle speed, 5,400rpm and a small buffer with 8MB cache. Still, that's pretty standard for a standard notebook drive but it would have been nice to see them push the envelope a little more.The MK7559GSXP is also pretty quiet in operation thanks to Toshiba's Silent Seek technology which aims to make every seek operation as quiet as the drive is when in idle mode.We likedHuge capacity combined, with a seriously low price tag, makes the MK7559GSXP almost a no brainer for anyone that uses a multimedia notebook to download normal and HD content. It will also appeal to mobile workstation uses that need capacity over performance.We dislikedA conventional hard drive is never going to be as fast as a SSD but it would have been good to see Toshiba raise the anti in the standard disk market by giving the MK7559GSXP a faster 7,200rpm spindle speed.Related LinksTechRadar Reviews GuaranteeRead more storage reviewsRelated StoriesReview: Adata S596 Turbo SSDReview: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 3Gb/sReview: G.Skill Phoenix Pro 40GB SSD

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