Hard drive recommendations and benchmarks: 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm.

NO... hehe it depends on the situation. I think the review will be published soon on Storagereview.

 

Thanks for the input. I don't understand what makes the 250GB better than the 320GB. What about the 500GB?

 

The 250GB has one platter. The 320 and 500GB have two platters.

One platter is slightly better, at least theoretically, for noise, heat, speed and power consmuption.

How big the differences are in reality remains to be seen.

My 7K500 is quiet. It's not totally silent though. If I pay attention I hear a soft breeze.

 

Hi Phil,

Just a quick question, I am getting a UL80VT from the States with a 320GB 5400RPM drive inside.

I am looking for a bit more speed, but don't want to sacrifice too much battery life, what do you recommend? the 7K500 in 250GB or a Seagate Momentus or any other Brand?

Thanks for your help!

 

Hitachi 7K500 250GB would be good. Last time I checked it wasn't available though.

I would guess you won't loose more than 10 minutes battery life or so...

There's no point in buying Seagate 7200.4.

 

Hi Phil,

Cheers for your help!

One more stupid question - for general use, a bit of gaming and a bit of office work, would you suggest an SSD if the budget permits? And if so which one?

Probably 128GB would be all that is necessary as I will carry around a HDD

 

If you have the budget, a good SSD will be much faster than a fast HDD. You'll notice the difference with booting, starting programs and loading games. And the whole Windows UI reacts quicker.

This review gives a good idea how big the difference is between a fast SSD and a fast HDD: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m-g2.aspx?page=4

I'm not fully aware of the SSD market but Intel G2 80GB is one of the most recommended. Or an Indilinx based drive like OCZ Vertex 120GB is good too.

 

Cheers for the info Phil, Unfortunately I need a bit more than 60GB and that would be in my price point at the moment!

Aww wells SSD maybe in the future!

 

Anyone know if 2 5400 rpm drives in software raid would beat a 7k500?

 

moral hazard,

not in anything important.

The specific 5400 RPM drive(s) would make a difference, but the only noticeable gain would be in something like video editing/encoding where the minimum sustained write speed is the key metric.

I would guess in everything else (including reliability) it would be a waste of time to even setup - unless you happen to already have two identical 5400 RPM drives handy.

 

Hi guys, I've been following this thread since I got the "No bootable device... insert recovery disc and press any key" (or something like that) alert on my HP dv7. One son said I have a corrupt mbr (whatever da hell dat is), and the other son says the HDD is shot. They will both be intown this weekend and promised to look at it,... but I ain't waitin'. I'm buying a new drive. Few quick quetions.

When you guys say 7k500 are you talking about this drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145275 ? If so, I'm assuming from all the good advice Phil has been dishing out, I would not be making a mistake. I'm also assuming that these 2.5 drives all have standard physical attributes and will fit into just about any laptop. I opened up my HP and the drive that's being replaced is the WD3200bevt,... a good drive according to you guys.

However, after reading post #193-195, I'm now thinking maybe I should purchase the WD3200BEKT, and in the event the original drive and be recovered, I'd end up with 640 GB of HDD space. As far as reliability, is the Hitachi a step backwards? Are all 500GB drives characteristically a step backward when it comes to reliability? I'm hoping a whole lot that all the good stuff Phil's been saying about the 7k5000 is in reference to the Hitachi drive. I think I'll wait until tomorrow for some replies before checking out at Neweggs.com.

Thanks for your patience with the long post and any advice. Thanks Phil for what I've learned so far from your posts.

 

hi ericpd, the discussion we had was comparing WD3200BEKT (7200rpm) with WD5000BEVT (5400rpm)
and only that two bcause I don't have option to get 7k500 in my place.
If I can get 7k500 I'd get it for sure.

and yes, the link on newegg is 7K500 500GB 7200rpm

Hope it helps

 

hi crayonyes, yeah I saw. Hope I didn't look like I was trying to hijack the thread,... it was just the closets thread to some of the Q's I was hoping to get answers to.

So you're saying the 7k500 everyone is talking about is the HITACHI Travelstar HD20500 IDK/7K 500GB 7200 I posted that link to? And you're saying it's a good bet? Good,... 'cause I might not be able to wait until tomorrow. I might cave and starting poundin on any and every 'submit' button I see on egg's check out screen,... now. I did notice that TigerDirect has it a little cheaper,... $15 cheaper after all is said and done. Both sites were sporting a $15 rebate if purchased by 2/28. uhmmm! I hope Phil is up late and lookin at this. LOL!

 

I think everyone will say it's a great hdd!

 

Thanks crayonyes,... I'm gonna do it. More than likely, by the time you check back to read this reply, I would have completed the purchase. Only question now is,... the egg or TigerDirect. I've always had good buying experiences with the egg, but 15 bucks is 15 bucks. Important these days!

Thanks again friend.

 

Yeah get the 7K500 at TigerDirect. You can't go wrong with that.

A detailed comparison between WD3200BEKT and Hitachi 7K500 should be up later today on Storagereview.com

It's interesting how the two (?) year old WD3200BEKT still manages to outperform the 7K500 in some areas. But overall the 7K500 is the drive to get.

PS. happy to help.

 

Thanks for chiming in Phil. Ok you two,... I was just about to checkout at TigerDirect and noticed something a bit un-nerving: are these two drives the same? The one in my checkout cart at Tiger is labeled: Hitachi 0S00157 Travelstar Laptop Hard Drive - 2.5", 7200, SATA 3G, 500GB, 16MB Cache, and the drive at the egg is labeled: HITACHI Travelstar HD20500 IDK/7K 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive. Note that both are 500GB @7200rpm, but TD's is nomenclatured 0S00157, and egg's is nomenclatured HD20500 IDK. the egg's also sports the 7K500 spec you and crayonyes have been talking about. I've been spending the last hour or so trying to determine if these are different and if so how. Could such a difference be the reasoning behind TD's much lower price, or are they the same, and TD is just beating the snot out of the egg on this item? Think I'll play it safe and wait 'til morning (wait,... it is morning. Son las tres y veinte de la mañana. Geez!) and/or after I get some feedback on this from you guys. Plus, Phil is saying more info on these two drives will be available tomorrow at his link,... nothing like buying stuff armed with good-n-plenty info! I mean it's not like some guy named Earl is standing around at this hour waiting to put my drive on a truck. Nothing would happen until tomorrow regardless what I do at this setting,... Right?

Almost forgot,... here are the links! Sorry if it seems like I'm a bit anal about this. Just wanna be certain about how I navigate my way through this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145275
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5509442&sku=H450-9100

 

I suspect that part of the difference is that Newegg is selling retail drives, while Tiger is probably selling OEM drives. As far as I've been able to tell it's the same drive, although the warranty on the drives sold through Tiger seems to be less (which is part of the reason why I suspect it's an OEM as opposed to a retail drive). And no, even if you put the order in now, probably nothing would happen until tomorrow, except maybe that your order would go into the top of the queue and get processed first/earlier tomorrow.

 

I think they are the same drive. I expect the difference in model names is caused by the difference in packaging. HD20500 at Newegg is the fancier retail box, the other the bare drive. So just a piece of paper.

Edit: posted before I saw Judicator's reply.

But you won't go wrong by just ordering that 7K500 at TigerDirect. At that price you can't beat it. And who knows how long the offer will last. $109 is the regular price.

 

DONE! It's on it's way. TD offers free UPS ground if your order is over $100. Just as I was checking out, an alert popped up telling me if I spent just $10.01 more, I'd qualify for free shipping. As it were, they hit me with a $6.99 UPS charge. Add that to the $89.99 for the drive and I'm sittin' at $69.98,... $3.02 shy of $100. LSS, I just bought myself an $11 gift card, breaking their $100 threshold by 99 cents. I'd rather give me 11 bucks than to give Brown a penny shy of 7,... they don't need it. I got two boys in college, one likes to eat and the other likes wine-n-dine women, and neither of them got two coins to rub up against the other,... yet. I hope! Weird thing though, right before checkout, TD warned of a 3-7 day delivery for free UPS ground. After checkout, it calculated my delivery for Feb 18,... it's now the 16th. Sounds like two days to me,... I may be wrong with my math though! Been awhile,... lots of buttons n stuff!

Thanks Crayonyes,... Judicator & Phil. Your input was both appreciated and well used on this end!

G'nite all. Gotta a full day when sun arrives.

 

Not normal. Hitachi does not vibrate. I dont even know where the HDD is there is so little vibration. Suggest making sure installed properly.

 

Well that's good to know. Not really interested in a lot of shakin' and rattlelin' goin' on!

Judicator and Phil. Earlier I got off the phone with Hatichi GST support and spoke of my concerns with him. You were right on the money Judicator,... you too Phil. Part# OS00157 is a Hitachi issued number unique to each vendor who sell OEM devices or devices destined as replacement devices. Not sure why Hitachi would push their OEM devices through vendors like Tiger and Newegg, but for some circumstances apparently they do. The HD020500 IDK or 7K500 is a universal Hitachi issued part # that stands static no matter who the resale vendor is,... these are the devices they choose to put in pretty boxes for our amusement. While there are some differences, I've been assured that these differences are cosmetic and in no way alter the performance or reliability of these drives. After voicing my concern over receiving a lesser item, I was told I would receive a call from one of Hitachi's partners,... guess who. CDW! Yeah,... those guys who seem to be quite comfortable with doubling the prices of items like these. But oddly enough, their advertised online prices was the same as Neweggs,... $109.99, however minus the $15 rebate. Anyway, I did receive the CDW call and was offered the opportunity to purchase the HD20500 IDK model at the same price I hours earlier paid Tiger for the OS00157 model. So I did. Now I have two coming and some very interesting options before me. I could refuse delivery or whatever the procedure is for a turn around and refund from Tiger, or I could keep both. My HP does have two bays in it. I'm thinking I should keep the two of them,... 1TB of 7200 rpm space for a little over 150 bucks, simply can't be beat. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. After typing it out, allowing me to clearly see this horizon, sending Tiger's back is nothing short of flirting with stupidity.

One more thing just in case someone reading this thread decides to visit Tiger's site,... as I said before, there are two OS00157 devices, one OEM and one replacement (still can't get my head around the difference between the two roles). One has a BM as a suffix and the other doesn't. Which is which I'm not sure, but the OS00157-BM is now out of stock. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=H450-9100 BM. Note the two reviews for this part#. I think I might purchased the last one of these. The OS00157 sans BM model is still very much in stock,... for the sake of argument, let's call this one the OEM device. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5509442&CatId=2682. Note the 4 user reviews on this part#. Everyone I've talked to, here, at work and over the phone, say that this drive is one of the best performing devices on the market with a GB per $ ratio that's tuff to beat. I'm very satisfied and thankful for all the advice I received here.

I might be back if I run into head-scratching moments with the install(s). Thanks again!

 

The review is up now:
http://www.storagereview.com/ultima...tal_scorpio_black_vs_hitachi_travelstar_7k500

 

Greattt review Phil !
That is the best real life tests and comparison review I've ever read
Two thumbs up! Thankss!

 

Thanks for the compliments Crayonyes.

It would have been nice if I had a Intel G2 SSD at hand to see how much faster it is. Oh well... maybe next time.

 

Makes me wanna own both
(SSDs are still out of my budget lol)
now the post #1 should be changed huh?

edit: +reps after I spread it around

 

Excellent review Phil. Very thorough and meaningful results from the real life benchmarks. Thanks for taking the time to do it .

I just have one question; The HD Tune results for the 7K500 indicate it had an average transfer rate of 69.7 MB/s. Is this not supposed to be nearer 80 MB/s?

 

Thanks Phil. I was not aware you were so highly regarded on this topic and in this community, however, after benefiting first hand from your advice and reading the above review, it is not difficult to understand why. Thanks again.

 

We were glad to have Phil write that detailed user-experience based review. That's a lot different than a standard single drive review, of which we're soon to post Chaz's 7K500.

If you guys like the type of testing Phil did, perhaps we can have him do more reviews like this in the future. We do have a few SSDs in, including both the first and second generation Kingston drives. Might be fun to see how much benefit there is in gen2 using the same metrics Phil used in the 7K500 vs Scorpio Black test.

 

Just picked up a Hitachi 7k500 to replace the 160 gb 5400 rpm drive in my coming alienware m11x. Hopefully it'll tide me over until SSD prices drop down to something more reasonable.

 

That's great,... looks like you got it while the price is cheap and the rebate is still active. I'd be interested in your install experiences. I'm hearing that it's not as straight forward as one would think. Physically getting it into the machine is not my concern, it's all the BIOS and DMA vs IDE settings I keep reading about. I have absolutely zero understanding what all of that means or has in store for me. In one article I was reading, the 7K500 showed up with no more space than the original drive it replaced, and was painfully slow at that.

Congrats! Mine are due here tomorrow,... I hope. It's snowing again.

 

Hmm wow, didn't know that was hoping it'd just be a plug and play but I guess I have more research ahead of me

 

Yes you are right. I did the HDTune benchmarks in Safe Mode to ensure minimal disturbance from background processes. This limits performance somewhat.

Here's in normal mode:

 

Update: These two drives are exactly the same,... they are identical. I just learned that the HD20500 IDK/7K nomenclature is Hitachi's MMN (Manufacturer's Model Number), and the 0S00157 nomenclature is Hitachi's MPN (Manufacturer's Part Number). Sorry for the mis-information,... too eager to pass on what I assumed was accurate. Hitachi only makes one consumer drive spinning @ 7200 with a capacity of 500GB.

 

Hey all, didn't read all the thread so sorry if that was asked before.
Is it safe to assume that the 500gb 7200rpm Seagate Momentus will be faster than the hitachi HTS 200gb 7200 rpm ?

 

It will be hard to notice the difference in normal usage.

Seagate has higher read speeds, Hitachi faster acces times and random writes.

If you can i would recommend getting the Hitachi 7K500 instead of the Seagate. It was $89 at tigerdirect last time i checked.

 

Still is. That price is before a $15 rebate which is scheduled to end in 7 days. That makes it $74 up until the 28th.

 

Thanks all!!

 

Those are some nice 7K500 speeds. Makes my 7K320 seem comparitively slow. Not quite slow enough to convince me to upgrade, though .

If you're interested in 4200 RPM benchmarks, I recently aquired a ThinkPad X41 for a few months that has a 4200 RPM, 60 GB, 1.8 inch Hitachi hard drive. HDTune gave 16.6 MBps average, and 22.4 MBps maximum. Access times were 22 or 23 ms. I can upload the screenshot tomorrow if there's interest, but given the rather slow hard drive speeds I'm using my Inspiron with a 7K320 right now.

Sure made me appreciate 7200 RPM drives, at least.

 

I'm guessing that was a 1.8" PATA, not SATA?

 

Ok folks, my drive arrived. I put the drive in the second drive bay, but Windows 7 isn't recognizing it. When I pull up 'my computer', it's still showing C: as my only HDD and D: as my optical drive. What am I missing?

I'm installing it in the second bay because I want to attempt a format, then a disk copy. Should I be using another approach?

 

Try to see if it appears under disk management. (right click my computer and choose manage). If it is unformated you should create partitions and format before you will see drive letters.

 

Let me ask a question,... might be obvious to you guys, but to me,... well. Do you have to have a HDD caddy in order for the drive to be recognized? For the time being I just connected the drive without the caddy or tightening the cover (cover is on but not tightly screwed down), just to get through the formating and cloning I was told I had to do first.

mfractal - Thanks for that tip. However, the drive doesn't even show up there. Another reason why I'm asked the Q about the caddy's absence. I noticed there was a metallic flap connected to the caddy, suggesting the caddy might serve as a ground or something similar. So right now my driving is sitting in bay 2 sans caddy. As I write, it's beginning to dawn on me that this might be a bad thing. Maybe I oughta shut down and remove the drive. BRB

 

No need a caddy to recognize it, just need to have it connected to the port.
How about in Bios, does it recognize 2 HDD ?
If it's not recognized in Bios it might be a bad thing.
btw, do you have a setting in Bios to enable/disable 2nd HDD bay?

 

Don't know. Can I check BIOS without rebooting and hitting the esc key?

Ok,... the only thing I've been able to do is to select between the internal hard drive, CD/DVD, a floppy, and the network as boot devices,... and their order. I didn't see anything suggesting an option for turning drive bay 2. Might there be another section of the BIOS?

 

What notebook do you have? I'm just guessing there'll be setting for enable/disable hdd2.
In the Bios page where it lists all the H/w, do you see 2 HDD there?

 

If you mean can you use some duct tape and silly putty to secure the drive, the answers is probably yes--as long as the connections remain stable. But I wouldn't advise it, since by nature a laptop portability makes it very dangerous not to have a secure connection.

Besides, with the shock inherent in any portable device, there is also an issue of heat that will be created by the HD. Not a good idea to use something that could melt and cause irreparable damage to your computer.

 

Hey Crayonyes,

Laptop is an HP dv7-1175nr,... of course you know the HDD in question. I'm not sure I'm getting to this magical page everyone is talking about. As the computer starts up, I hit the esc key, I then get some choices for diag and system info stuff. F9 is the only option for BIOS Set Up. Once there, I only see options for re-arranging the boot order for the internal HD, C: I imagine, and the CD. The other two are floppy drive and something about a network boot. That's it. I don't see anything that resembles a switch to turn bay 2 on or off, or anything about a 2nd drive option. The laptop clearly has two HDD bays, and is marks as so on the chasis.

Now here's the weird part. When I go to 'Computer' from the Start menu, and then click on Device Manage on the left side of the window, both drives show up displaying their device #'s I'm guess. The new drives reads: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364. This doesn't sound like any of the model or part #'s I've dealt with in throughout the buying process, but when I click on Properties for the drive, it's clearly the new drive. Under the general tab, it's location reads as Location 0 (Channel 1. Target 0. Lun 0). Got absolutely no idea what that means. It also reads: "This device is working properly." in the Device status box under this tab. When I click on the Volumes tab, then the Populate button, it reads: Status: Not Initialized, Partition style: Not Applicable. I'm stuck! On one side of the equation, it's there, and on the other side, it's missing!

 

Yeah I hear ya Krane. I think maybe I wasn't clear. I only tried installing it without the caddy temporarily just to do a format and attempt a clone/copy. I have a caddy still in the wrapper,... well at the time it was in it's wrapper. It's all buttoned down now with caddy and all screws. I was just wondering if the caddy played a role in completing some sort of safety circuit or something,... you know, something designed to prevent people like me from doing just what I did. LOL!

Krane, I see your setup is an HP with Windows, using the same 7K500 Hitachi drive as a primary,... and dear God, a second 7K500 as a secondary. What did you do day one, assuming you installed both at the same time? Were you able to immediately see both drives in your explorer window? What were the two drives named,... C: and D:? My optical is now D:. Am I able to, or do I have to re-assign these drive names,... I mean somehow make the optical drive E: to make space for the 2nd drive to become D:?

 

So they're both recognized in windows. thats a good thing.
You need to create partition to the 2nd hdd in Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.
After the drive is partitioned and formated, it'll shows up in Explorer

edit: Tips: look at the bottom part of Disk management, not the Upper part