Toshiba 60.0GB 5400RPM NoteBook Hard Drive, MK6022GAX

barnacle · Post by **barnacle** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 12:54 pm

I just ordered this hard drive from newegg along with a Zalman 7000A-Cu heatsink and fan. Has anyone used this drive and is it quiet/ a decent performer?

Newegg says the connection for it is "IDE ULTRA ATA-5" but I assume I need some sort of adapter and mounting brackets to put this in my desktop? Where can I get these?

Thanks for your help.

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:28 pm

I just installed my Toshiba MK4025GAS 2.5" laptop hard drive and was amazed at how quite it ISN'T. I have the drive attached to the drive cage with thin strips of sticky foam and the seek noises are still easily heard from 3 feet even with the case closed, and audible from up to about 8-10 feet away before being lost to background noise.

This is mounted in a case with very low fan noise, but still, after all the hype about how 2.5" laptop drives are the second coming, I had expected more. Or maybe I should say less. Like actual totally silent operation, but I guess that was too optimistic on my part. I honestly don't think it's worth the more than 2.5x price permium per GB over my Samsung 80GB FDB drive.

EDIT: Update as of June 16th. Ok, since this thread is back from the dead, I may as well mention that about two days after I posted this, I went out and got some 1mm Stretch Magic from Michaels and suspended my hard drive. I know it probably sounds silly to suspend a 2.5" HD, but I did, and it really did help. All I can hear now is occasional seek noise.

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 3:56 pm

barnacle: you'll probably need something like this http://www.cablesnmor.com/hard-drive-converter.html

AZBradndon: thanks for sharing info on your toshiba. i have a feeling laptop drives vary almost as widely as desktop ones, so don't discount that other laptop drives could be even quieter. according to the review of the Mappit A4, MikeC found the Fujitsu MHT2040AT to be really quiet.

i would love to see more reviews of 2.5" drives here so we can weed out the 2.5" western-digital-equivalents from the seagate-and-samsung equivalents.

Justin_R · Post by **Justin_R** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 9:18 pm

I got a Toshiba MK4025GAS for my laptop, which is otherwise silent, and, frankly, it's pretty damn quiet. Quieter than a Barracuda IV would be if installed similarly, and quieter than other notebook drives I've heard, which I'm too lazy to name now. You can rather easily hear the seeks on it, though. I'm not sure if I can set AAM on the drive; the laptop's a Mac, and I'd have to dig it out and plug it into a PC to find out. I'll probably get fed up with the seek noise soon and go ahead and do this.

In the 2.5" HD roundup, MikeC writes that this Toshiba is "identical in both idle and seek noise to the Fujitsu [MHT2040AT]." So if the Toshiba doesn't suit AZBrandon, the Fujitsu probably won't either.

One thing I found with this and other laptop drives is that you can reduce the vibrational noise by pressing firmly in the center of the drive, where the platter bearings are. I'm using a fat rubber washer that just sits on top of the hard drive to do this; pressure comes from the keyboard pressing against the washer. This may not be safe, but it didn't affect my old drive, and hasn't yet affected this one.

I've never tried this with a desktop drive. It might work for them, too. I think what's happening is that the metal shield over the platters vibrate, especially with the thin metal used in notebook drives, and applying pressure dampens that vibration. You can test this on your own drives with just your finger.

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:24 am

Justin_R wrote:I got a Toshiba MK4025GAS for my laptop, which is otherwise silent, and, frankly, it's pretty damn quiet... In the 2.5" HD roundup, MikeC writes that this Toshiba is "identical in both idle and seek noise to the Fujitsu [MHT2040AT]." So if the Toshiba doesn't suit AZBrandon, the Fujitsu probably won't either.

You're getting your drives mixed up.

The Fujitsu MHT2xxxAT series (MHT2040AT = 40 Gb) runs at 4200 rpm, and is extremely quiet. The figure given in Mike C's article was 16 db.

Your drive, the Toshiba MK4025GAS also runs at 4200 rpm, but has an 8 Mb cache, and is also very silent (similar to the Fujitsu above).

The drive that AZBrandon has bought, is a Toshiba MK6022GAX -- this runs at ** 5400 rpm ** with a 16 Mb cache. It's faster than the above two drives, but it makes more noise.

--
Aidan

kingler · Post by **kingler** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 8:18 pm

my laptop has a Toshiba MK 6021GAS drive, and it is producing a clicking noise all the time, even when I am only surfing the web. This is TOTALLY annoying. I checked a few websites, and it seems for some specific Intel Chipset, you can see Intel Application Accelerator to reduce this sort of hard drive noise, and for IBM mobile drives, they have a Powerbooster program to do the same thing. However, I haven't found anything for Toshiba hard drive yet.
Anyone knows where to find a similar software that will work on the damn Toshiba drive? thanks.

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 11:46 pm

aidanjm2004 wrote:You're getting your drives mixed up.

Oops. I got my drives mixed up.

aidanjm2004 wrote:Your drive, the Toshiba MK4025GAS also runs at 4200 rpm, but has an 8 Mb cache, and is also very silent (similar to the Fujitsu above). The drive that AZBrandon has bought, is a Toshiba MK6022GAX -- this runs at ** 5400 rpm ** with a 16 Mb cache. It's faster than the above two drives, but it makes more noise.

I just re-read AZBrandon's post, and realized he's got the Toshiba MK4025GAS, which is only 4200 rpm, and is supposed to be very quiet (as quiet as the Fujitsu). So the fact that AZBrandon's drive is noisy, is a bit of a worry...

As for Barnacle, he did order the 5,400 rpm drive, which should make a bit more noise. I wonder how he went with that drive? Any news, Barnacle?

nrh1703 · Post by **nrh1703** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 5:55 pm

Justin_R and AZBrandon; I'm thinking of getting the same HDD (Toshiba MK4025GAS) as you guys have. I want it mainly to be quiet and I'll assume it's quicker than my current HDD (fujitsu mhh2064at) but was wondering how much the 4200 rpm will make it a bottleneck compared to a 5400rpm drive.

Presently my dell inspiron 7500 is a dog (p3-450, 64mb ram). I'm upgrading the ram with another 256mb but don't want the new HD to limit the performance too much in my effort to keep the machine quiet.

If anyone with the toshiba drive i'm looking at could post a pic of their hdtach results or give some indication of throughput speeds i'd appreciate it

Thanks

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 7:55 pm

According to the Sisandra 2004 filesystem benchmark, my Toshiba scores about 21mb/sec. That's roughly equal to whatever hard drive is in my Dell P3, 1Ghz system. I think it's safe to say the 4200rpm Toshiba is no rocketship, but it's certainly plenty fast for my purposes. I've never felt like I'm waiting for stuff to load from disk very often.

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 8:11 pm

AZBrandon wrote:I've never felt like I'm waiting for stuff to load from disk very often.

That's good to know.

Is the noise from that drive still irritating you, BTW?

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 8:24 pm

aidanjm2004 wrote:Is the noise from that drive still irritating you, BTW?

Not really, although on a really quiet night if there's no other sound in the room, I do have thoughts of buying enough foam or sorbothane to line the whole interior of the case to see if it can go from really quiet to completely lost in the background noise. Keep in mind, I have it mounted in a Biostar iDEQ, which is a small, thin-walled aluminum case. If mounted in a thick steel case, you probably won't be able to hear it at all.