Toshiba MK6461GSYN (640 GB)
The Toshiba series MKxx61GSYN offers up to 640 GB of storage space, primarily targeting home users. Buyers can choose among five sizes: 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, 500 GB, and our test subject, the flagship MK6461GSYN with 640 GB capacity, which costs approximately $90.
Contrary to the other five hard disks we’re testing, the Toshiba disk does not use Advanced Format, though this doesn’t negatively affect height or capacity. While the 500 GB and 640 GB models use two platters, the smaller models use one. All of them, however, are only 9.5 mm (0.374“) high, which is the standard height of notebook drives. According to Toshiba, the storage density is up to 506.3 Gb per square inch.
The MK6461GSYN is equipped with a SATA 3Gb/s interface, a 16 MB cache, and a 7200 RPM spindle speed. Incidentally, Toshiba’s MK6461GSYN and Western Digital’s Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT are the only two members of the ”7200 RPM club” in this test. A version of the MK6461GSYN with a free-fall sensor is available, too. Should a notebook with this drive in it fall, the hard disk retracts its read-write head to the park position, avoiding a crash.
Performance
It is hardly surprising that 2.5” hard drives with 7200 RPM spindles achieve the highest data rates. Toshiba doesn’t specify its performance specs, so we’ll simply present the benchmark results.
Toshiba’s MK6461GSYN achieves a sequential read rate of 89.5 MB/s and an almost identical write speed of 89.4 MB/s. It loses its match-up to the other 7200 RPM drive, Western Digital’s Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT, which barely misses three-digit data rates.
By the way, the 5400 RPM WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT almost catches up to Toshiba’s solution, too.
We expected this drive’s power consumption to be higher than the 5400 RPM drives. But, according to its data sheet, Toshiba should actually be on par with the slower-rotating drives. The company specifies 2.1 W while active, and a 0.8 W idle power. Our benchmarks confirm the idle figure, but show higher power consumption under load. Depending on the benchmark, it consumes between 1.5 and 3.2 W.
