Don't know which 7K rpm hardrive to get. Help!

I have been reading as many hardrive threads on this board as I can, especially the ones that PhilFlow/K-Tron/Forte etc have participated/created.

I am in the market for a new hardrive for my laptop, since the one I have is too small and slow. It is really the bottleneck in my system. My main requirements are cost, performance, noise, heat and battery life, like most people, but I would like the drive to be as fast as possible even if it means sacrificing the other factors a bit.

I know about SSDs and have read the various thread on them by Les and others. I would love to go for them but they are way out of my budget right now and are too small for my use. So I would like to get a regular hardrive that is 7200rpm and is fast. I can get the 200GB 7K Hitachi for a really great price right now. 200GB is the lowest amount of space I can handle right now since I am going to be dual booting Linux and Vista. So here are my choices that I am looking at....

1.) Hitachi 7K 200GB
2.) WD 7K 320GB
3.) WD 7K 250GB


My questions are:

1.) Are 250GB drives noticeably faster than 200GB drives?
2.) Space aside, how much faster is the WD 7K 320GB drive than the Hitachi 200GB drive and 250GB drive? I have looked at the seagate 320GB 7K but it seems a little pricy and the Hitachi seems to have complaints about vibration.
3.) If I am going for a 200GB 7K drive, hitachi is the fastest, correct?
4.) If I decide to go with a 250GB 7K drive, which one is the fastest

 

1) Depends on what drives you are comparing. Better not to make generalizations in my opinion. I'm expecting the Hitachi 7K200 and WD2500BEKT are very similar in performance. WD2500BEKT will have the higher transferrates, but 7K200 has faster acces times.

2) This review by Storagereview answers your question. The Seagate 7200.3 does not seem to perform as good as the WD3200BEKT according to this review. Keep in mind though that most of these differences will be hard to notice unless you are benchmarking or using a stopwatch.

3) Correct.

4) I would not consider the 250GB due to the lower data density than the 320GB. Unless you're saving a lot of money that way of course.

I think your choice is between the cheap and fast 7K200/200GB or the little bit faster 3200BEKT with a lot more storage, at a higher price.

Interestingly enough the 3200BEKT seems to be a bit more powerefficient than the 7K200.

PS. I'm still looking for the PC Mark Vantage results of the 7K320. If we have those we will know more about how it compares to the 3200BEKT. I'm guessing it won't be a big difference in performance.

 

Hi Philflow! Thanks for responding. I have been reading your various hardrive threads in this forum, very helpful.

The only 3 companies I want to deal with are Hitachi, Seagate and WD.
So, if I go for a 200GB 7K drive I will go for the Hitachi then. As far as the 320GB 7K drives, WD has so far proven to be the fastest? Have there been any realworld benchmarks of the Hitachi 320GB 7K? Also it seems that the WD is the least expensive?

As far as the 250GB 7K drives, which one would you reccomend? Which one is the fastest from the benchmarks/realworld performance scores?

 

Get the WD 320 gig HDD. I have it and love it.

 

There was a thread on here that compared a few 7200 RPM hard drives, but I can't find it... I have the WD Scorpio Black (320/7200), and it's a killer drive.

 

hitachi and WD are both great brands. Seagate is changing into maxtor so stay away from them.

 

Thanks, glad it was helpful.

Yes, faster than the Seagate. In the link I posted above you can see several real world benchmarks.

For the 7K320 I've only seen synthetic benchmarks and PC Mark 05 (which could be called synthetic as well).

I don't know, I'm not up to date with american prices. Google shopping is usually good for prices.

Based on the excellent benchmarks for the 3200BEKT I'd go for the Western Digital. But, since the 3200BEKT has 160GB per platter it will be faster than the 2500BEKT that has 125GB per platter.

I have not seen any benchmarks of the 250GB/7200rpm drives.

 

Ok, thanks so much. This helps to narrow it down a bit for me. So, now it becomes a price game, how much am I willing to spend. My first choice would be to get the WD 320GB 7K drive, but it is a lot more than the 200GB Hitachi, not sure if it is worth it. From the review that PhilFlow posted there doesn't seem to be much of a difference performance wise between these 2 drives, or am I reading it wrong? So here is what i would get...

As for a 320GB 7K drive = WD
As for a 200GB 7K drive = Hitachi
As for a 250GB 7K drive = don't know, probably a WD based on benches of the 320GB. Doesn't seem that these drives are too popular.

I can get the Hitachi for $92!!! I can get the WD 320GB for ~$190 and I can get the WD 250GB for ~$150.

What should I do? The 320GB doesn't seem worth it to me for the price difference. How do you guys feel?

I would like to decide tonight. Thanks.

 

Get the 7K200, its a steal - comparing it to the performance it actually offers..!! Are these OEM or retail..??
You could also check out the WD3200BEVT, since it outperforms the 7K200 by a small margin and is cheap..!!

 

actually I would say the 250gb 7200rpm is slower than the 7k200 in almost every test. The 250gb is a standard 320gb drive with limited head movement. Limiting the head movement does decrease teh size of the usable disk, and usually causes the driver to suffer in the performance category. As of now, the 7200rpm 320gb drives are not that much faster than the 200gb 7200rpm drives. Phil gets very excited over this data, but in reality the speed difference is rather small. The 7k200 can do 52mb/sec and the new ones can do about 64mb/sec max. The difference is rather small, and the price difference is nearly 2x, for 1.5x the space.
Their is word going around that the new 7200rpm drives are more power efficient, but I really find that hard to believe. since both use the same exact motor. The only power differnce could be from a more efficient pcb and better cache, but the power savings from that is super small.

I would personally go for a 200gb 7200rpm drive for $92, cause its an excellent deal.
I am in New York, where are you finding them that cheap?
I am looking for one, send me a PM where you are finding it for that little, and I am definitely going to buy one for my dell.

If you are going to get a 320gb 7200 drive for the space, I would go with Hitachi, WD may sound good, but really they are all the same and made from the same harddrive odm. The only difference between a hitachi, wd and seagate is the sticker on top and the pcb on the bottom. They all use the same discs. I am surprised nobody has noticed this, considering every time a new harddrive technology is introduced, within a week the other harddrive manufacturers have them as well. That could only mean that the discs are all made by the same source. Where that is, I am not sure, but its most likely Samsung electronics who makes the platters, cause they make everything, and they have more harddrive clean rooms in Korea than in Japan and China.
I would go for hitachi, cause they sacrifice power efficiency for speed, and usually always they come out on top. It does not really matter too much, based on the previous paragraph, but what brand to get is biased from the user's experience with the manufacturer.

K-TRON

 

Thanks K-TRON and Andy. I will address your comments soon. Could someone tell me what it means when a drive is labeled as "Bulk"? Is that still retail?

 

AFIK, bulk usually designates OEM status.

 

Hmmmm... the site says the Drive is Bulk but says that it comes with a 3 year warranty from Hitachi. Doesn't seem like OEM

 

Indeed. I could be wrong as different companies sometimes use different terminology, but everything Ive always bought that is labeled as bulk has always been OEM packaged.

 

Agreed. Unless you really need more storage of course.

No, the 7K200 will outperform the 3200BEVT in almost every real life situation, except file serving. Benchmarks.

PS. If it says bulk it just means the bare drive. They can come with 3 year warranty too.

That may be true, I don't know. But even then, different brands come with different firmwares. Different firmwares means different tuning. So there are differences in performance.

 

Hi there, I have almost the same problem as the author. I struggling between WD Scorpio 250GB 7200rpm BEKT and Hitachi 7K200. But I need about 250GB of storage, and WD turns very well in benchmarks. Also I'm thinking about getting WD 320GB model or wait for 7K320. Couls someone settle is WD 250GB 7200 realy slower than the 320GB version?

 

For sure it is slower. The question is how much. That we don't know since we don't have benchmarks.

160GB per platter vs. 125GB per platter on the same hdd will deliver faster transfer rates.

By the way the Hitachi 7K320 will perform close to the WD3200BEKT, so it may be an interesting alternative.

 

Hmm I don't know wich to buy, I'm thinking if I really need 320GB Mayby 200GB will be all I need. Hitachi 7k200 cost in my country about 100$ the WD 320GB will cost me about 160$. Is there any performence chart between WD Scorpio black and Hitachi 7K200?

 

Here you go:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&numDrives=1&devID_0=365&devID_1=355&devCnt=2

But if you look at these differences, it will be hard to notice them without a stopwatch.

 

Yeah, you're right....The 7K200 is a bit quicker..!!
I actually compared the HD Tune results since my drive gave an average of 54MB/s whereas the the benchmark I found, showed the 7K200 with an average of 48.6MB/s..



[I got my drive to run in native mode ]

 

Cool. So does it make any difference performance wise/how much?

 

Yeah, I did another HD Tune test right now....It didn't give a 54.. (maybe because of the 48 processes still left in the background)



I guess its more than a 3MB/s jump....(and I have the drive at the lowest AAM setting)

 

Based on the benchmarks Andy posted in this thread it shows that the Hitachi 7K320 is a bit faster than the WD3200BEKT.

So if noise and vibration are ok of the 7K320 (which I don't know for sure) it might be the better pick.

 

The race is on.... WD or Hitachi ??

 

I would say go for the WD, the difference isn't much..!!

I didn't even notice the difference b/w my 320GB 5400rpm and the 7200rpms....!!
These are all synthetic benchmarks, and in the real-world, this difference will not be noticeable..!!

 

My conclusion so far:
Hitachi 7K320 the fastest but a bit noisy.
WD 3200BEKT a bit slower but cool & quiet.

True, you'll need a stopwatch to notice these differences

But still, people pay a lot of money for a faster CPU while they hardly need it. And a faster harddrive is a very easy way to boost overall performance.

 

In that case, winner = WD in my book.

 

Looks to be Retail but a bare drive(bulk packaging but says comes with a 3 year warranty from manufacturer).

 

Thanks everybody! I went with the Hitachi 7K200. The price was just insane and the performance is really good. I didn't think that the 320GB was worth it for me. First, I don't think that the performance is much better than the 7K200. Second, it would have cost me $70 to $90 more for the 320GB, which I didn't feel it was worth it. I could always use the extra space I guess, but not with than much of a cost difference. I think I should be ok with 200GB of space, I am hoping. I won't put any movies or music really on the laptop, mostly some pictures and documents. Most of my space usage will be from some PC games, but I am not really a hardcore gamer either(i.e. play games once in a while). Also my space will be taken up by having 2 OSs, Vista and Linux. Looking forward to install this drive! My 80GB 5400rpm Fujitsu is slower than hell , but it works ok.

Not sure if I should have held out for SSDs, but who knows what the future will bring. If I choose a SSD in the future, I won't feel bad getting rid of this drive since i didn't pay insane money for it.

BTW - The drive is a bare drive(looks to be just the drive in an anti-static bag) but seems to come with a 3 year parts and labor manufacturing warranty.

 

Congrats on your choice. i think you made the right one. Great price too.

 

I had the Hitachi 200gig (7200rpm) drive and swapped it out last week in my G1S-B2 for the WD 320gig Black Scorpio. Here are the HD Tune results I ran on both.







Here is SIW (system Info for Windows, neat program, get it) on both too. The first is the Hitachi. I just fired up Mass Effect for about 10 minutes to get my temps up (would have done it longer but I was impatient) then ran SIW. The second picture is after playing STALKER for about 2 hours tonight on the WD. Keep that in mind since the WD was hotter for longer.





I like the Black Scorpio. I needed the space and gained over 100gigs on the OS partition (kept Data partition at around 70gigs) to make my total (OS/gaming) 230GB. The formatted drive was around 298GB. I can now install a lot more games before I have to delete them which is all I wanted without sacrificing much performance.
Some people complain about the "clicking" the Scorpio makes but I rarely notice it. That's probably because I have my notebook cooler on along with a Thermaltake USB fan sucking hot air out of my notebook's HSF slot (also loud when on). I get the impression the WD drive "feels" faster than the Hitachi too. I optimized my Vista install better this time so that may be part of it.

 

I've been Black Scorpio as well.

But is difference in hard drive speed also differenciate the speed?

I just want to get 160GB ones (because I have 250GB external HD already and I don't use a lot of HD on laptops usually)