I'm not sure about the durability. but if you are looking for 5400rpm hd and the performance and nosie level are among your concers, Hitachi probably would be a better choice. The performance of Hitachi's HDs are much better than toshibas', even though Toshiba MK4019GAX has a 16MB cache. Hitachi 5k80> Hitachi 40GNX>Toshiba MK4019GAX. and Hitchi's drives are a lot quieter than toshibas'.