Toshiba HDDs

[schen]

I recently can into some information that other forum users might find interesting. My brother who works in the computer industry for a large Silicon Valley firm (he also rebuilds ThinkPads as a hobby), says that he found out that newer Toshiba drives have a flaw that causes a "bit-rate parity loss" or some such engineering term. Anyway, the problem over time causes these drives to have to be reformatted after about a year of use. He says the he's had 2 fail so far and have completely switched to Hitachis and Fujitsus.

Of course, that it for what it worth to you, but he is a high level managment/engineer.

[AlphaKilo470]

Oddly enough, I actually had some troubles with the Toshiba 40gb GAX series hard drive in my 600E about a month ago but I actually think that was heat related since I accidently left my 600E on in a closed in space overnight before the incident. Still, thanks for the heads up, my Toshiba drive is running extremely well right now and without trouble but if I ever see any issues, I have a spare 40gb Hitachi 5K80 sitting at my desk. I'll see how things are in a year with the Toshiba drive in my 600E but I really do hope it's an exception to the statistic because this drive is just fast as hell and really nice to work with right now.

So far, the 600E's hard drive is the only experience with a new Toshiba hard drive so far but I have plenty of experience with their older hard drives and I have to say that their 2gb and 3gb drives are solid as a rock. The 3.2gb Toshiba in my 760ED has been in at least 5 different laptops (6 if you count converting an SVGA 760E into an XGA 760ED as two laptops), in a USB enclosure a few times and has been tossed around qquite a bit and it works without flaw.

[schen]

I have an older "tall" Toshiba 3.2Gb that's also been in multiple machines as well and it's been a rock too. I regularly use it in an Ultrabay adapter to move large quantities of data so it gets abused and keeps right on ticking. I must say that it's loud as hell though.

[AlphaKilo470]

Well, the 40gb Toshiba hard drive in my 600E coughed up some more bad sectors today; this is the second time I've had troubles with the drive, the first time was about a week after recieving the drive back in February. As a result, I'm now using my desktop to build an image of the drive and as soon as that's done I'm transferring all of my data to the 40gb Hitachi 5k80 I have here at my desk.

I'm really thinking that my issues are from a combination of data transfer and heat because my 600E did get pretty warm with that Toshiba drive in there. I'm thinking that once I've moved my 600E over to the Hitachi drive, if I can get the Toshiba running reliably again, I'll try it out in my 560X since that computer seems to generate almost no heat at all and I don't normally work with large amounts of important data on that machine.

[schen]

A 5K80 should be pretty fast on the 600x. I'm getting a 5K100 in the next day or 2 and putting it in my T23. The faster rpm should be an improvement on that machine. I think a 40Gb HDD in a 560 is larger than anything I've heard about. I've played with one of those, but really have never liked the plastics, but the size and weight is just great.

[AlphaKilo470]

I'm actually typing this post on my 560X while I wait for Windows to set up on the 600E because the drive image didn't work. Already, I have to say that the 40gb Hitachi 5k80 runs much cooler and quieter than the 40gb Toshiba 4026GAX I previously had installed. Despite the difference in cache sizes (16mb on the Toshiba and 8mb on the Hitachi), I am yet to notice a major diference in speed. Both drives perform very fast.

I have the same general opinion about this machine, the plastics overal aren't the best, this computer is much flimsier than my 600E. The screen is also nothing to phone home about though it is very easy on the eyes. However, the keyboard is very nice to type on (can type for hours on this thing without having to worry about sore fingers), the battery holds a very good charge and the weight and formfactor is nice.

As for a 40gb hard drive, I actually hooked my 5k80 up to this machine when I got the drive and the BIOS recognized it for every gigabyte. However, the lack of CD rom meant I couldn't do much more on this machine.

EDIT: After having my 600E up and running with the new drive and a second attempt on my drive image after the Windows install failed, everything is back to normal. Turns out I jumped the gun on my Toshiba drive though as the same files on the Hitachi drive had the same problem after the disk image restore. Turns out some of my documents were bad files; they must have got corrupted when copying from the CD-rom they were originally on. Still, the Hitachi is alot quiter and generates alot less heat than did the Toshiba drive I have so I'm going to keep the 5k80 in my 600E and when I finally get around to it I'm going to try putting the Toshiba drive in my 560X.

[gunston]

A 5K80 should be pretty fast on the 600x. I'm getting a 5K100 in the next day or 2 and putting it in my T23. The faster rpm should be an improvement on that machine. I think a 40Gb HDD in a 560 is larger than anything I've heard about. I've played with one of those, but really have never liked the plastics, but the size and weight is just great.

you are using Toshiba 80GB Hard disk 5400rpm?
did you realize that the spinning noise of this hard disk is actually louder than Hitachi 40GB 5400rpm?

[schen]

"5K100" That's a Hitachi 5400rpm drive. The one I'm running now is the 80Gb version. I'll have to say that it's dead quiet, actually noticeably quieter than the Hitachi 4200rpm 60Gb drive it replaced.

Suzhou, China... my mother is from there. Actually I think she might be there right now. She's coming here to Texas for a visit this summer.

[gunston]

oh really?
it would be great that if we have to got chance to meet up next time.

[schen]

[quote="AlphaKilo470"]
I have the same general opinion about this machine, the plastics overal aren't the best, this computer is much flimsier than my 600E. The screen is also nothing to phone home about though it is very easy on the eyes. However, the keyboard is very nice to type on (can type for hours on this thing without having to worry about sore fingers), the battery holds a very good charge and the weight and formfactor is nice.

I really like the form-factor for a "type and surf" machine, but not a general use notebook like my T23 (which I feel like is amost perfect with the addition of the new HDD). I'd really like to get an older X2x for a backup/surfing notebook. I see them as a modern 560 with better build quality and interchangebilty with T/A devices... not to mention an XGA screen!