Travelstar Vs. Toshiba: Which Is Better?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I need to replace my current harddrive, a travelstar. I find travelstars to be quiet and relatively fast. However, the last three travelstars I have owned have all failed on me. The first took almost three years, and was replaced under warranty. The replacement, a refurbished unit, then took about a year to fail. This refurbished unit (my current one) is also failing, in under a year's time.



I figure three years of service is marginally acceptable, but the swift decline in the refurbished units concerns me to make me second guess yet another Travelstar purchase. I found a link from 2003 concerning some class action lawsuit concerning travelstars. One of the complainants referred to them as "deathstars" due to their early failures.



Which laptop hard drives are better in your experience? Travelstars or Toshiba? Which are quieter, faster, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, reliable and long lasting?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by macsarecool View Post


    I need to replace my current harddrive, a travelstar. I find travelstars to be quiet and relatively fast. However, the last three travelstars I have owned have all failed on me. The first took almost three years, and was replaced under warranty. The replacement, a refurbished unit, then took about a year to fail. This refurbished unit (my current one) is also failing, in under a year's time.



    I figure three years of service is marginally acceptable, but the swift decline in the refurbished units concerns me to make me second guess yet another Travelstar purchase. I found a link from 2003 concerning some class action lawsuit concerning travelstars. One of the complainants referred to them as "deathstars" due to their early failures.



    Which laptop hard drives are better in your experience? Travelstars or Toshiba? Which are quieter, faster, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, reliable and long lasting?



    Yup, there is a reason why Travelstar is known as Deathstar in Tech circles. It's shit. Total bollocks of a hard disk.



    I strongly suggest you look at 5-year-warrantied Seagate Momentus 7200rpm or 5400rpm notebook drives.



    Western Digital Scorpio series is not bad. But for price, performance, warranty, you can't go wrong with a Seagate 2.5".
  • Reply 2 of 6
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by macsarecool View Post


    I figure three years of service is marginally acceptable,





    That's not acceptable.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    Thanks for the feedback. I am interested in a 120 gb drive. Seagate has two listed:



    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822146231



    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148130





    The latter has "perpendicular recording technology" and is marginally more expensive. The first drive listed has something called "softsonic quietstep" technology.



    Which of these two drives is better in terms of speed and noise level, asssuming the reliability is there?
  • Reply 4 of 6
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Go for the 5400.3, it's a very small price different. It will still have "QuietStep" to keep sound levels down. I recommend this perpendicular recording stuff. Worth it, from what I currently know.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    I opted for a hitachi travelstar 120 gb (formats to just under 112 gb). Wow. This sucker is SO quiet. It is also half as thick and apparently half the weight of the old hitachi travelstar 60 gb. I replaced. The drive is also much faster in opening apps. Obviously, since my old hard drive was failing and files were corrupted, it's not a fair comparison, but the specs are different as the new drive is a 8 mb cache.



    Overall, I am happy with the drive although I've only used it for less than a day. I can only hope this drive is more reliable then the old. The fact that there are few complaints circulating about drive failures from any manufacturer couldl be a good sign.



    I also replaced a combo drive that also failed in my pismo. That new drive is also significantly quieter and smoother than the one it replaced. I can't imagine what a new computer would be like! Smooth as butter probably. For now, I am happy.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Yup, there is a reason why Travelstar is known as Deathstar in Tech circles.



    It's not. You're thinking of a certain DeskStar model. The TravelStar models never had such problems.
Sign In or Register to comment.