Toshiba MK6465GSX 640GB 2.5in hard drive review

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Verdict:

Toshiba's 640GB internal laptop hard disk is slow at copying files and a touch too expensive.

Review Date: 30 Jan 2010

Price when reviewed: £109

Buy it now for: £170
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.span.com

Reviewed By: Alan Lu

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Toshiba's MK6465GSX is a 640GB internal laptop hard disk. This puts it amongst the largest disks which fit in a standard 9.5mm drive bay; bigger disk are available but they won't fit every laptop. As with all modern 2.5in hard disks, you'll need an internal SATA connector.

Disappointingly, our laptop's battery lasted 20 minutes less when fitted with the MK6465GSX instead of its original disk. It didn't excel in our file copying tests to compensate up for this, being very sluggish at writing both large and small files, managing just 48.9MB/s and 30.1MB/s respectively. It was quicker at reading files, reading large files at 67.3MB/s and small files at 56.7MB/s, but it still lags behind other disks we've seen.

The MK6465GSX is reasonably affordable at 17p per gigabyte, but Western Digital's 640GB Scorpio is a better choice. It's a little cheaper at 15p per gigabyte, it didn't reduce our laptop's battery life and it's much quicker at copying files.

The 500GB Scorpio is even better value though at just 11p per gigabyte and, unless the extra capacity is essential, it remains our internal laptop disk of choice.

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