[Ti] Toshiba MK-6022GAX 60 GB and Tibooks

[Roger Snyder]

On 6/9/03 7:37, "wp" wrote:

> please comment

    Info below from XLRX your Mac Drive data base.

<http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso>

    There is a link there to help in replacing a Ti's hard drive.

    I ran across this drive while looking to replace my dead original, but
put a Toshiba MK4019GAX 40GB drive in by 550 Ti because it was only $120.
That would be your drives baby brother. It works fine for me. I notice no
difference except twice as much space.

-Roger

Date Submitted: 5/3/2003
Drive Type: Hard Drive
Drive Interface: IDE
Drive Brand: Toshiba
Drive Model Number: MK6022GAX
Drive Size: 60GB 
Driver Used: Apple Standard
Mac Model: PowerBook G4
Mac OS Version: OS X
Reader Comments: I have a two year old PB G4/400.  I swapped out the factory
10GB Toshiba for the 60GB 5400/16mb cache Toshiba.  Paid about $280 at
Transintl.  I followed the same steps as Matt Cohen (3/16/03) with zero
flaws.  Drive booted perfectly.

Two things to mention:  One, the drive is significantly quieter.  Several
orders of magnitude.  Second, the 2.5" housing i am using from CompGeeks
seems to be a little unstable.  Only mounts sometimes (usually when the
cable is connected prior to booting the comp).  But i guess i get what i
paid for ($30) and it worked so that I could clone the drive without
problem. 

Thanks for a great resource!

Date Submitted: 3/16/2003
Drive Type: Hard Drive
Drive Interface: IDE
Drive Brand: Toshiba
Drive Model Number: MK6022GAX (5400 rpm/16MB cache)
Drive Size: 60GB 
Driver Used: Apple Standard
Mac Model: PowerBook G4
Mac OS Version: OS X
Reader Comments: I have the PBG4 667 with combo drive introduced in the fall
of 2001 which had the stock IBM travelstar 30GB 4200rpm drive, which wasn't
too bad. But I wanted more capacity and more speed, so having a brother in
Tokyo who was visiting me, I asked him to order a Toshiba MK6022GAX, which
is not available here yet. This is a 5400rpm, 16MB cache drive. Bought it
for  32000, which is about $275, cheaper than the IBM/Hitachi version.
Apparently this drive and its Hitachi competition will soon be available
here. 

Installation was easy, following this site's guide and Apple's own handy pdf
instructions found on their site. I installed the stock drive into a cheap
SoHo 1394 2.5" dual-port firewire box which seems to work fine.

Performance-wise, my OSX 10.2.4 experience is a lot more responsive. My
machine is dramatically sped up and even quieter. Starts up in about half
the time. All Finder activities are more responsive. From what I understand,
OSX does enormous amounts of caching of small files and having a fast drive
helps speed writing and reading to all of those files.

Here are scores from XBench 1.0:

Stock 30G IBM          60GB Toshiba
SysTotal  54.0               58.93
DiskTest  32.1              49.7

Sequential   33.18                                     51.82
   UW   27.59   12.04 MB/sec [4K]      UW   43.82   19.12 MB/sec [4K]
   UW   29.44   11.98 MB/sec [256K]  UW   44.65   18.17 MB/sec [256K]
   UR   70.96   11.18 MB/sec [4K]       UR  107.81   16.98 MB/sec [4K]
   UR   27.57   11.90 MB/sec [256K]   UR   44.04   19.00 MB/sec [256K]

Random   31.10                                        47.79
   UW   19.77   0.30 MB/sec [4K]       UW   39.45    0.60 MB/sec [4K]
   UW   32.02   7.35 MB/sec [256K]   UW   40.88    9.38 MB/sec [256K]
   UR   47.93   0.31 MB/sec [4K]        UR    62.00    0.40 MB/sec [4K]
   UR   38.51   7.55 MB/sec [256K]    UR    56.31   11.04 MB/sec [256K]

UW means uncached write/ UR means uncached read

So you can see that this drive is quite fast compared to the stock drive.
With FWB Disk test which is more comprehensive, the Toshiba again beat the
IBM, though not always. I don't have time to post all the numbers here, but
generally speaking, the larger the file size, the faster the difference.
Writing random or sustained was always much faster, reading was a toss up,
about a third the same, a third faster, a third slower (less than 10%
though). From all the 2.5" drive research I did, they all have pretty much
the same seek time of about 12 milliseconds; it's the rpm and cache that
make the difference.

I bet prices of 60gig drives will drop once Hitachi releases the 80gig
travelstar. If you're a road warrior and do big file work, you might
consider this effective but expensive upgrade to approach desktop
performance in a portable.

Mike Comments :I have been waiting for this drive to appear at USA dealers.
Thanks for the report.
Another factor that matters in performance is areal density - I've seen
higher density 4200 rpm drives outperform older 5400 RPM less-dense platter
drives (in all but random access). The later drives (esp. 60GB/9.5mm drives)
have very high density platters which helps (more data passing over the head
per second). 


-- Roger

" One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we
seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue
peaceful ends through peaceful means."
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.