320GB 7200RPM Laptop Drive Comparison

Hey guys,

Been frequenting the forums on drive info for a while... figure it was time to post some info back I recently tested the hitachi, wd, and seagate drives in a macbook pro laptop. For what it's worth, here are my subjective findings between the 3:

Attribute: Result (Best-->Worst)

Vibration & Noise: Hitachi, WD, Seagate (most vib. & loudest)
Speed: WD, Seagate, Hitachi (slowest)
Heat: WD, Seagate, Hitachi (hottest)

I'm sticking with the Hitachi since I just could not live with the vibrations produced by the others... despite the fact the laptop has rubber grommets to insulate the vibrations. The heat is definitely hotter with the Hitachi, which was unexpected, but doesn't seem abnormal or problematic. The WD is just a pure speed demon, and I will miss that, but the Hitachi is not far behind it. I'm judging speed off of boot time, app loading, editing music. Vibrations could be felt through the keyboard on all 3, but barely noticeable with the Hitachi.

Hope this helps someone else looking for a drive!

 

Post some benchmark, because there were several threads here already that compared the 3, and the results are a bit different from yours.

 

Just to make sure... you were testing the 7K320 and 7200.3 models... right?

Anyway, it's interesting you say WD was the fastest... since most of the HD Tune graphs I've seen indicate that the Seagate 7200.3 is the fastest.

 

yeah, and several members of NBR already did many benchmarks.

 

Remember I am on OS X, not windows... so I would say my subjective input is less comparable to windows users since OS X is different. I am also not familiar with any benchmarks for mac yet either

 

But what did you use to test those drives?? That's the question.
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