IBM Travelstar drives are among the fastest available 2.5" drives. Of course there are two tiers of high capacity TravelStars.. The ones in my 60GB unit are.. waitasec while I browse to /proc/ide/hda/model.. IBM-DJSA-230 drives. And my older 18GB Mk2 unit has a... IBM-DARA-218000 drive.

Now.. visiting IBM.com to look up the specs.. DJSA-230 = 4200RPM with media transfer rate (the important number) of 108.8 to 202.9Mbits/sec == very fast for 2.5" drives, but not the fastest one they make.

The older DARA-218000 is also 4200rpm, but slower media rates of 85.5 to 161.6 Mbits/sec.

Not shabby. By comparism, their top drive TravelStar 60GH (60GB capacity) bosts 5400rpm and data rates "up to" 262 Mbits/sec.

-ml