Introduction

Notebooks have been going from strength to stength over the last couple of years providing us with useful performance on our desks and while on travel. This speed has been mainly due to the ever increasing processor and RAM speeds but one crucial often overlooked deciding element is none other than the hard drive. From booting up your system to saving your database files it is a key player in determining how optimal your system runs. This time here at tweak3d.net labs we take a look at two of these hard drives, namely the GAX series from Toshiba and Travelstar GNX series from IBM.

Installation

Being mobile devices our samples were small enough to hold in the palm of our hand but this does not change the way one needs to install them as a contrast to larger 3.5 inch desktop drives. For our test machine we used a Sony VAIO GRX316MP notebook equipped with a pull out caddy in which we seated the drives using four small screws. Once in place the caddy goes back into the notebook chassis and the installation task is completed. With the computer being notebook there is no need to connect any power or IDE cables to the drive, the unit plugs into an internal connector with these already combined at the rear of the caddy area within the chassis.

First Impressions

Physical drive appearence tends to not vary from drive to drive and both IBM and Toshiba have packed their units within similar casing. Both drives are 9.5mm devices thus are thinner than older 5400rpm units of capacities 40GB and over, this also permits better air flow within the tight space found within most of today'snotebooks. The review samples we received share 80GB of storage space between them which formats down to 37.4GB for each drive respectively. The IBM Travelstar range is currently available up to 40GB but the Toshiba GAX series beats this with versions up to 60GB. Noise levels while in operation somewhat differ and the GNX series from IBM proves to be quieter with less of a sound impact on seek, read or write commands. The Toshiba is by far no loud device but one tends to notice it more and one or two may be put off by the very occasional "click sound" it produces. Heat production is widely under control thanks to the thiner 9.5mm casing leaving room for air flow when installed, during testing tempretures were only slightly higher than 4200rpm units which in effect will most possibly yield longer a life span.

A look into the technology

While Toshiba and IBM may not want to distinguish their drives by physical looks they certainly jump on the performance bandwagon in a different manner. What we find on the Toshiba is a massive 16MB buffer, IBM on the other hand prefers to stay with a now commonly IDE drive standard of 8MB. Solely doubling the buffer will not yield a substancial speed gain by itself, however it is applaudable to see such large buffers even if it is not guaranteed to improve performance. aerial density per platter is 34Gbits/sq.inch for the Travelstar GNX and 34.7Gbits/sq.inch for the GAX. These calculate to precisely 20GB of storage space on each platter, a step higher than previous generations and a reason why we can now squeeze 40GB into a drive only 9.5mm high. As a recap the higher the density the faster the operational speeds are as a result, this in effect closes the gap in bringing fast mobile storage solutions that much nearer to desktop hard drives. The common ATA/100 inteface is present on both devices as is FDB also know as Fluid Dynamic Bearings that aim to deliver richer acoustic levels set to stress our ears that little bit less. So far we have addressed these eaxct hard drives in particular, moving away slightly from technical speech it is worth noting that the Toshiba GAX series will be shipping in 60GB capacities, something that IBM denies happening to the GNX series, at least for now.