Toshiba MMK7559GSXP 750GB review

The capacity of the average laptop hard disk is usually around 320GB, which can quickly fill up if it’s being used as your main computer. Replacing it with Toshiba’s MK7559GSXP will more than double your storage space, as it packs a sizable 750GB into a single 2½in disk.

As it uses the SATA2 interface, a 5,400RPM spindle and lowly 8MB of cache, we weren’t expecting stellar performance from the disk, but we were still disappointed with how it performed in our file transfer benchmarks. Write speeds were very slow, managing 55MB/s for large files and a very low 13.2MB/s for small files. Surprisingly, large file read speeds were among the fastest for 2½in disks, but the result for smaller files was a disappointing 37.9MB/s.

Although it lacks the speed of other laptop hard disks, the MK7559GSXP has very meagre power requirements. Using just 2 watts of power when idle, it won’t drain your laptop battery any more than your existing hard disk. We still aren’t convinced that changing your hard disk for a low-power alternative is worth the potential drop in performance, but you might be able to increase your battery life a small amount by doing so.

At £60, the MK7559GSXP isn’t particularly expensive for such a high capacity laptop disk. However, the Western Digital Scorpio Black 750GB costs around £20 more and has much better performance. It also includes a five-year warranty for increased peace of mind, so unless the cheapest price per gigabyte is your only concern, the Scorpio is the better choice.