7200rpm Hard Drive Upgrade: Hitachi or Seagate?

Im currently looking into buying a customized w3j and was wondering if it would make any difference if i picked the 7200 rpm seagate over the hitachi drive or vice versa? Im primarily concerned with heat/noise issues. Any performance discrepancies would also be interesting to note. I would much appreciate some help on this matter.

 

This guide should answer your questions.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2884

 

seagate's are generally quieter and cooler whereas the hitachi is faster

 

Hitachi all the way...

Read this article:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/notebook_1.html

The Hitachi:
Better access time
Better transfer rates
Better Drivemark 2006 scores
Better gaming
Is quieter
Lower operating power

The only thing the Seagate has going for it is lower startup (peak) power dissipation.

 

on a 5400rpm level I was surprised that my hitachi in my A8jm ran quieter and cooler than my seagate!!! This is due to the fact that hitachi hard drive consumes a bit less power. Hopefully this would be the same at the 7200rpm level.

 

I've always used Seagate in my PC, but if you don't mind the 3 year warranty then it doesn't look like a bad deal. However, I haven't heard much about Hitachi.

 

I chose Seagate because more sources said it ran cooler than the Hitachi (although slightly slower too).

I saw the Storage Review article that FlipTwisteR mentioned, but I wasn't sure how relevant that was because it compares the Momentus 7200.1, and Seagate currently has the 7200.2 available for SATA. Most reviews I could find of the 7200.2 seemed to indicate it was cooler than the Hitachi.

Also, I ran into a lot of conflicting information about the heat output of the SATA vs. PATA versions of drives. Some reviews seemed to show that the SATA Seagate runs much hotter, which is strange. I'm not sure how that effects the comparison.

Anyway, I'm personally looking forward to Seagate releasing an SATA 5400.3 perpendicular recording drive. All the reviews say that the ATA version is nearly as fast as a 7200rpm, runs very cool, and uses very little battery.

 

"Perpendicular Recording"

What special things does that do? And compared to Hitachi's technology is it all nearly the same?

 

I'm not up on all the tech details, but this article seems to be a pretty good explanation of perpendicular recording:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/seagate-momentus-54003.html

 

Please note that the only benefit of perpendicular recording is that it breaks the 120gb limit. There are no performance gains.

 

Seagate => five year warranty.

Hitachi => three year warranty.

After the DeskStar/DeathStar issue with Hitachi, and how IBM royally dumped on everyone with the 75GXP fiasco until they got hit by a class-action lawsuit, then dumped the hard disk division, I'm sorta biased against Hitachi.

I also have a 60GXP which is flaky, but they wouldn't take back because it was bought OEM, yet the company I bought it from went out of business.

 

You are wrong, there are performance gains. Read this article.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/mobile-ata/index.x?pg=1

 

Although I understand that sentiment completely, the new Hitachi drives are night and day different from the "DeathStar" era. I've had very, very good luck with their modern drives, which I've found to be cool, fast, relatively quiet and reliable. My only complaint is that I find the SATA connectors are a bit fragile--the drives are not ideal for installations where they are repeatedly moved. Shouldn't be an issue for notebook installation.

 

Thanks for everyone's input, I really appreciate it. I finally decided to go with the hitachi because of the positive feedback i got from users but it seems like differences are minimal between the two drives, hence there really was no "bad" choice. Thanks again.

 

i would go with seagate because of the 5 year warranty. but both is fine.

 

In the real world, its too small to notice. Performance is only slightly due to the fact that the distance between bits a shorter. You wont really notice it.

 

I believe I pointed out in my review that you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between the Hitachi and the Seagate, and that the Hitachi actually ran marginally cooler.

I'd actually go with Hitachi over Seagate on this one. But in my desktop, Seagate all the way.