HDTune Benchmark: Hitachi 7k100 (100GB) vs 7k200 (200GB)

Ok here's an apple to apple comparison of the Hitachi 7k100 100GB version against the 7k200 200GB version. Same system used to test both hard drives, so no variation.

I also have on order the Samsung 250GB 5400rpm HM250JI coming soon, so I'll add a HDtune benchmark of that soon. See how well it fairs in comparison to the Hitachi series, especially since its a 5400RPM drive.

First image is of the older Hitachi 7k100 80GB.


Second image is of the older Hitachi 7k100 100GB.


Third one is of the new Hitachi 7k200 200GB.


Last one is of the Samsung HM250JI 250GB 5400RPM.


Update:
Added 80GB Hitachi 7k100 drive and the Samsung 250GB 5400RPM drive.

And for fun, added the WD Raptor 150GB Drive (10k rpm).

 

nice boost. but please post the 250 asap. i am getting the 1330 with the base model but will be buying a 160 7200 rpm or the 250 5400 because there about the same in price. Whats the ETA on the 250gb drive?

 

Heh the Samsung 250GB drive should be here by the end of the week.

Its actually a replacement, the first one I got had a really loud clicking sound, basically DOA. So getting an exchange on it.

 

Wow, thanks Lyshen! I was waiting for those test results to show up. I can't wait till next week when I get my laptop! I'll post the results in HDTune for the Raid 5 array in my laptop. I'll have 3 of the 7k200's in it.

 

Oh I realized after rumaging around in my spare parts box. I have the Hitachi 7k100 80GB version too.

I'll try running HD Tune on that and add the screenshot later.

 

Oh goodness.

*drool*

 

Awesome performance for a 2.5" HDD. Impressive!

 

I have my teeny tiny 250gb WD just sitting it its box waiting for a laptop to put it in. I will merge my data in on this so we can see how the 5400rpm's stack up against the 7200rpm stuff and see if the price gap is worth it.

Sound good?

If anybody knows a cheap way to hook it to my desktop (less than 10$ for an adapter of sorts) I'll get right on it because it will be awhile before I have my c90 all put together.

 

That 7K200 has awesome performance, thanks for posting. I got a 120GB 5400RPM drive in my ThinkPad and I'm debating whether I should upgrade it or not. If I do the 7K200 will probably be it.

 

Were your models the 1.5 or 3.0 interface? I.e the Sata 300 HTS722020K9 A300 or the Sata 150 HTS722020K9 SA00?

Just wondering.

 

Rep points for you.

Gah i so hate my laptop's hard drive so much it hit 57*c the other day. How can one be 20 degrees cooler even with no cooling help!

 

For good measure here is my 120gb 7200.2 Seagate HDTune for you guys to compare against.

 

you can buy it bulk at NEWegg

 

Took a quick look and the 7k200 I have is the Sata 1.5 interface model.

Wow the burst rate of the Seagate is much higher. But in regards to the transfer rates, the Hitachi is better. Also did you have something else running in the background? That CPU usage seems a bit high. But still nice performance numbers, much better then 7k100 series.

Newegg is $6 bucks more expensive than Mwave.

Currently waiting on the UPS guy to deliver the Samsung 250GB drive. Maybe I'll also try hooking up the WD Raptor drive and bench it for kicks.

 

Hrm, I wonder how the 3.0Gb/Sec interface will improve the numbers? Probably not to a noticable degree. Thanks again Lyshen!

 

Yea, I was doing other things while that benchmark was going.

 

That 120gb 7200rpm seems to get very good scores.

 

Ok I have updated the original post with benchmarks from the 80 GB Hitachi 7k100 and 250GB Samsung 5400RPM drive. Oh and for fun, WD Raptor 150GB 10k RPM.

Looks like the Samsung equals the older Hitachi 7k100 in performance, nice!

 

Whats up with the samsung benchmark? Was that the primary drive in the computer being tested, or was it secondary not in use?

 

Yeah thats really strange.

I have all the parts for my notebook on order so i will have the 5400rpm 250gb wd scores soon to put it against.

 

I don't know why the Samsung benchmark did that. I did 2-3 more benchmarks on the Samsung to make sure it was not a fluke. Anyone have an idea why it does that?

All drives were tested as secondaries. Figured the best way to keep the testing equal was to attach all drives as a secondary.

 

The Samsung benchmark looks weird. I was thinking about getting one of this model since I couldn't find any retailers selling the new Hitachi 5k250, but after look at this benchmark, I guess I will have to wait.

 

The Samsung benchmark definitely looks weird.

I ran the Samsung HD Tools and had it run through diagnostics, drive checks out fine, including surface scan. AAM is disabled and the drive is set in SATA mode. Copying files and what not, drive seems fine.

Anyone have a guess why it benches like that?

 

Did you try running the benchmark more then once? Happens everytime? It looks like one of the disks is screwed up.

 

Do other benchmark softwares (like HD Tach) report the same result on the Samsung?

 

I would say she did.

 

I think there might be something wrong with the Samsung drive itself. When I tried doing a surface scan for errors, the Samsung only scans at a speed of roughly 5-9 MB/sec, rather slow. In comparison I picked the older 7k100 80GB to do a surface scan and it scanned at roughly 38-45 MB/sec.

I think I will be returning the Samsung for a refund. The drive I have may be a bad one but considering the first one I got was DOA and this second one doesn't seem to be perform that great (strange benchmark) I'd rather just return it.

 

Wow, sounds like the Samsung quality control has some serious problem. Two bad HDs in a roll? I am glad that I didn't place my order last night for the Samsung drive.
Damn it, why I can't find the Hitachi 5k250 anywhere ? I will go abroad in a few weeks and would really like to replace the 100GB HD with the Hitachi 5k250 before I leave.

 

Weird that you got such odd marks for the samsung. And i am genuinely surprised that you got a DOA on the first try too.

I had the original OEM in my HP die, and HP replaced it with a Samsung 80 gb 5400 rpm drive and it worked awesome. i liked it enough i went out and bought a 160 gb 5400 rpm drive and it is still working awesome. benchmarks were really nice. i remember they were almost the same as my dell desktop which had a stock from dell 7200 rpm drive in it.

Program i was using wasnt the most advanced, but it was ok. i was using HD Tune for readings. i used it to monitor both drives after drive no 1 failed and i lost all my stuff. when i switched to Vista though it didnt like the program so i cant really tell ya what numbers id have. i dont remember em off the top of my head. but im really surprised you had such bad luck with samsung. theyve kinda been my saving grace, and based on how theyve run for me, id use em again.

ev

 

I don't think ill of Samsung. Its just really bad luck to get two bad HDs in a row.

I was planning to use the Samsung as a portable storage unit but since I'm returning it, I'll make do with my 80GB Hitachi. I'll just wait a while, if anything price will drop with time since its a new product.

 

as promised!

Western Digital 250gb 1.5" Scorpio 5400rpm drive



Now everybody can see for themselves if the $$$ is worth it for 7200rpm.

Im working on another image ill update in abit.

 

I was going to do an overlay with all the diffrent graphs and change the line colors... but the graphs size change so it wont fit over correctly so a side by side is the best I can do.



Now lets break into the math.

Hitachi Travelstar 200gb 7200rpm 255$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145160

Western Digital Scorpio 250gb 5400rpm 190$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136123

So first things first: Cost per gigabyte of storage.

Hitachi: 255/200 = 1.28$ per gigabyte
Western Digital 189/250 = 0.76$ per gigabyte

Difference ratio: not quite 2:1 in cost per storage but 2:3 is almost spot on.

Now look at the performance charts.

Is 8MB/s worth the loss of 50gb of space, probably some battery life, and the extra cost???

In my opinion no, to others especially those with no budget it might be.

So I hope this is an eye opener for some and can help people understand what there money is buying them.

 

Don't forget the 2.8ms access time also and the 5.1% CPU usage that looks to be evident. I don't want a HDD that uses that much CPU.

I have a DTR performance matters to me, not battery life and as to the cost difference to each their own. I have 388GB of usable storage in my laptop. That should be enough for a few years.

P.s. I'll try to download HDTune so you can see how 3 of these do in a RAID 5.

 

It doesnt. Thats because I have a single core cpu, on vista with an active background and like 6 gagets going along with some other stuff.

The other person was testing on XP you can tell from his windows.

 

So, basically unless someone can test these different drives on the same system under the same conditions we can only guess as to what actual performance, cpu usage will be.

 

performance should be very similar on any platform unless you have horrible sata drivers. it may be better on a new system tho since chipsets have matured my machine is kind of old now.

cpu usuase will defintily be the same tho. One hdd isnt just gonna magically use 5% more cpu than the other, thats my computers total cpu usage not the hdd.

anybody runing vista will tell you that with all the extra stuff on it uses cpu power up.

 

For a lot of people I think 5400 rpm 250GB is sufficient, since most would not do data intensive stuff on their laptop. The speedier 7200 rpm while noticeable, will not be put to use often.

Of course, some people who don't mind sparing the extra cash, also do not mind a little decrease in battery time and hard drive space.

Me, I originally got the Samsung 250GB drive first which I was expecting to keep and use to replace my dying 7k100. But as my luck would have it... DOA on arrival so I sent it back for an exchange. While waiting for the exchange I saw the 7k200 so I ordered that as well. Got that and put it to use, works rather well. Two days later my Samsung exchange came, and as you all saw, exhibited rather strange benchmark testing which I could only say, somehow defective hard drive.

So I've returned the Samsung, again... and just sticking with the 7k200. In the brief time I used the 2nd Samsung drive and comparing the Samsung to the Hitachi 7k200, the Samsung is cooler. In regards to noise, not much of a noticeable difference. Both are rather quiet with AAM disabled, which is a nice surprise for the 7k200 because the 7k100 was easy to hear when doing full read/write.

In the end, I'm still happy to stick with the 7k200. I still get easily about 2-3 hours on my Sony SZ without putting it in full battery mode.

 

I haven't been following this thread for a few days, but I've also got the Samsung 250GB and also saw some strange results which I had posted in another thread.

I first tested the HM250JI on a spare channel in my desktop computer and the results looked OK. I then put it in my notebook and got the abysmal transfer rates over the first ~50GB.

I sent the results to Samsung's UK support and the conclusion was that 250GB is way above what the notebook was designed for. However, if other people are encountering problems with other notebooks then it appears to be a problem with the HDD itself. I will re-raise this issue. I suspect there is a problem with the HDD's interface. My desktop computer's motherboard is a couple of years old and the interface is slower.

John

PS: I went and checked at samsunghdd.com. There are utilities which are have only been posted for a few days. Unfortunately, the FDD version is not in English and the CD-ROM ISO image is absent. However, I wonder if this is a known problem with an undocumented fix. I wanted to try reducing the maximum DTR.

 

Interesting to see that your drive behaved similarly to the one I had.

I tried the Samsung utilities, well HD Tools. Didn't do much, it allows you to set the interface type... Sata, UDMA66/100/etc., turn on/off AAM and a few other options. None to fix the low transfer rate.

Oh well, I gave up and returned mine already.

 

The tool I found wasn't in English.

My current theory is that, at the fast end of the HDD, the HDD is trying to make the notebook's interface run faster than it wants to. It seems that my interface won't go above UDMA 5 but the HDD is capable of UDMA 7 and wants to go faster. So it trips up and ends up slow. I want to lock the HDD down to UDMA 5 and see if that fixes the problem.

I'm sure I have read of another recent notebook drive which needed to be manually set to a slower interface speed under certain circumstances, so the root cause may be the design and implementation of the interface.

John

 

Atleast the 250WD didnt show any issues.

I'll retest in the C90 once I have it in my hands and all put together.

As for the sound... I had the hdd sitting outside of my desktop connected to my psu's sata power cable and using a old sata cord I had that came with my mobo. I had to actually put my ear up to the hdd to hear it run during the test. I thought I picked the wrong hdd to test at first since my primary drive in my PC is also a 250gb WD.

So its VERY quiet.

I tried to test my PC's drive to see how a desktop drive compares to a notebook drive but the readings were very sparatic. I suppose thats to be expected since its my active/primary drive wich all my programs and OS are running off of.

 

Thanks to Lyshen for mailing me the ISO file for the Samsung utility, so I have now been able to test my theory by changing the HDDs interface settings.

Unfortunately, my theory is disproved and setting the interface to UDMA/100 still results in the peculiar data transfer performance.

John

 

This is interesting. Although you got a similar transfer rate curve as Lyshen's, the cpu usage is much higher in your case (10% vs 1% in Lyshen's result). I am wondering if it is a firmware related problem that Samsung need to fix.
I just ordered the HM250JI which should arrive in a couple of days. I'll test it on my Thinkpad T60 and see if I see the same thing.

 

HDTune is not giving just a cpu usage readout of the hdd, its giving a total system readout. So dont let that be something you pay attention too.

 

I have a HM250JI and I have the same performance problem on a dell xps 1210
I tested it on Vista with both Sandra and Hdtune. I get the same extremelly poor performance on the first 20% of the drive.
Also I'm getting some high pitched noise comming from the drive once in a while.(every one or two days)
Interstingly , when I tested it using a extranal usb 2.0 enclosure, the performances were absolutelly normal for this type of interface, 20-22MB/ sec from the begining to the end.
I have the latest bios and updated the intel chipset driver with the lastest available on the dell website.
What else can I do?
I really hope that samsung will come-up with a firmware update solution in the comming days as I don't have enough space to clone it before sending it back and don't want to reinstall all my sofware once again.

Chris

 

Evidently the HM250JI has a compatibility issue with some hardware.

Perhaps it will help if more people post their HD Tune results and also send them to Samsung support. They were trying to convince me that it is my computer (also Samsung) but it very much looks to be a bug in the HDD's firmware. However, Samsung don't normally provide firmware updates.

John

 

After looking at these results it seems 7200rpm is the way to go. Although the advantages of the 160gb 5400rpm beat out having a 100gb 7200rpm...200gb 7200rpm is just much faster than a 250gb 5400rpm to go unnoticed.

Heck even seagate's (awesome) 120gb 7200rpm was somehow as fast as the 250gb 5400rpm.

That 120gb 7200rpm seagate is going to be the new hard drive to have!

 

My HM250JI should arrive in 3-5 days. If I see the same HD tune result, I will contact Samsung. This is a "notebook" hard drive, so Samsung should at least make sure it works fine on notebooks.

FYI: Zipzoomfly.com has the 5k250 in stock for $219.99 /w free shipping. Just placed an order for one, and will post the benchmark after it arrives. I guess I will return the Samsung HM250JI.

 

Good info, good info.

 

How about the Seagate 7200.2 160GB? The performance on Seagate 120 similar to 160?

I was on Hitachi website and there is 2 different models, E7K200 and 7K200. What does the E stand for?

I've been thinking of getting 7200 for a long time but I can't decide which one.. Seagate or Hitachi