CONCLUSION

   Toshiba has been amongst the few industry names i trust ever since i tried their first CD-ROM drive almost 15 years ago not because it offered something really new in terms of performance (back then performance was non-existent) but because it's tray and overall build quality were a lot sturdier than what all the other CD-ROM drives at the time offered and also because it could read pretty much anything you threw at it (no matter how many scratches it had). That's also why i only trust Toshiba Qosmio notebooks (own two of them) and never had a problem with either one, to date at least. In any case up until this day Toshiba wasn't much into manufacturing hard disk drives (although i have tested some of their enterprise SAS 2.5" solutions in the past) but obviously since they own a large portion (if not all) of Hitachi this will change and if the DT01ABA100/DT01ACA100 are an indication of what's to come then I’m pretty certain they will soon hold a large percentage/share of the total HDD market. The 7200RPM DT01ACA100 proved to be faster than many of the enterprise class HDDs we've tested in the past (even all of them in some tests) while also keeping noise and temperatures below most of the competition. On the other hand the 5700RPM DT01ABA100 may fall a bit short in the performance area but its real strong point is that you can hardly hear it even if you are just 10cm away something which HTPC and NAS users will certainly enjoy.

   Both the Toshiba DT01ABA100 and the DT01ACA100 are relatively brand new HDD models so naturally they are not available in very large quantities right now (especially the DT01ABA100), however if you search really good you should find the DT01ABA100 at around USD74 inside the USA and at around 55Euros inside the EU. On the other hand however the DT01ACA100 is widely available and currently retails for USD79.99 inside the USA (TigerDirect) and for 62.90Euros inside the EU (Caseking). Other than not much really much to say, you've seen the numbers and the numbers are what counts with such reviews. For us both Toshiba models are excellent at what they were designed and manufactured to do and that's why they walk away with our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- AF Technology
- Performance (Especially The DT01ACA100)
- Low Power Consumption/Temperatures/Noise Levels (Especially The DT01ABA100)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Availability