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

Thanks crayonyes. I think I got it. It asked me to initialize the disk. I did so as a MBR,... right. Now I'm guessing I have to reformat. The little red arrow has gone away and it now reads on line. What's confusing me now is the drive in bay 1 is call Disk 0 and the drive in bay 2 is called Disk 1. The optical is still D:!!!!

 

you can reassign drive letters in disk management after you format the new drive. So how did u make windows recognize it?

 

Done,... thanks everyone. The 7K500 is now my secondary drive and is working perfectly as such. Tonight when I get home, I'm doing a complete clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate making the 7K500 the primary drive. What's strange is the system did not move the CD up a notch, so as it is now C: is the primary, D: remains the optical drive, and E: is now the 7K500. Hopefully, when I get home from work, my second 7K500 will be waiting for me on my front porch,... the one CDW sent. Again thanks!

I read in one of Window's Tech Help windows that pops up when you pound on the "?" while in Disk Manager, that in order for the drive to be recognized, it must first be initialized. I did that and choose NTFS, or something like that, and the red arrow that had been on it's icon suddenly disappeared. Once I did this, other options started popping up, but still no clear avenue or instructions for formatting and partition strategies. Then I remembered some advice given to me on one of these threads when I experienced the MBR corruption problem with the original drive, which is what motivated me to buy the 7K500 in the first place. That advice was to DL the Ubuntu iso and boot the system with a DVD with the iso burned to it. I used this method to format the disk. I didn't partition the drive though,... still not clear on when and why to do that. I mean I've searched and read some threads on 'short stroking' and stuff like that, but none of it makes any sense to me at this point. So I just made the whole drive one partition.

 

If you still want to know how to rearrange the drive letters or partition let us know. It is not difficult to do.

 

Thanks mfractal. Yeah, I'm really interested in optimizing the performance of these new drives as much as possible. Based on what I've read so far on the topic, how I set things up will play a big part in that. Like this 'short stroke' thing I mentioned, where you can through careful partitioning, apparently force the drive to do most of it's work out on the outer edges where read and write is supposedly faster. I think I got the concept of NTSF vs FAT,... that's fairly easy to grasp, because no one uses FAT anymore apparently. I've also read some pros and cons of making these two drives (since they are identical in speed and capacity) appear as one 1TB drive vs two 500GB drives. Not sure on this,... not even sure if my laptop will support the 'one big drive' option. So if the other drive has arrived by the time I get home, it's a fair chance I'll be back with more Q's. I guess I could swap the drives physical locations and do the clean install even if the other drive is another day in come, then all I'd have to do is to swap 7K500 #2 with the WD 320 that will then be in drive bay 2. Yeah, that oughtta work smoothly and without drama.

 

Hey, in your case i would strongly suggest against the RAID 0 option (making the drives appear as one big 1tb drive). I don't know what kind of laptop you are using so i can't tell you if it supports it. But i wouldn't suggest it, as the chance of loosing all your data doubles AND you are not gaining a lot by doing that. (maybe 5-10 percent performance gain).
Never heard of this short stoke method, i'll take a look, but i wouldn't bother with that too, just partition the drive as you see fit, and use
I usually leave about 150 gigs for system and applications. And the rest goes for music, pictures etc.

Good luck

 

Yeah,... RAID, that's what it's called. OK, nuff with that! I just re-read some of the posts on the short stroke thing. Basically as I understand it, the first partition you make starts at the outter rim of the platter(s), the next partition is confined a little further in. Apparently, these drives are at their fastest when reading and writing out on the outer rim, and slowest when doing their thing in close and near the center. Now if I understand you, making a 150GB partition to house the OS and apps would make that C: which would be out on the rim of the platter. Making a second partition would make that D: which would be for 'stuff'. Now hear this one and tell me I understand or no! Doing the above will make the 7K500 in bay #2 E:, and if I partition that drive, say in half, each of the two drives will have two drive icons in Windows 7,.... drive #1: C: (boot drive) & D:, drive #2 E: & F:. Lastly, the optical would be addressed as G:. Right?

You come back with a "Right" and I think I got it!

 

Right. But you can control those drive letters easily. Don't let that concern you.

 

LOL! Ok! Thanks again.

 

Right! They have to be called somethings. So it you don't specify what's what, you get the defaults.

 

ericpd, if you want to change the drive letter,
go to Disk Management, and right click the drive you want to change
ie. right click CD drive first > "change drive letter" > to F: (because E: is your 2nd hdd), then change E: to D:, after that change back the CD drive to E:

 

Tried installing my hitachi 7k500 into my new alienware m11x, I cloned the hard drive, but when i Inserted the hard drive it gave me:
bootmgr is missing
Cntrl Alt Delete to restart

I used driveimage.xml to clone the hard drive

 

Try Acronis True Image. Free trial version.

 

Just in case anyone is interested. I just finished resurrecting my laptop,... it be Easter in here. All apps have been re-installed, my data has been retrieved intact from their backup hibernation, emails have rematerialized with no missing molecules, my photographic work, music, e-books, Best of all, the twin 7K500's are running smooth and quiet. To my surprise, these drives do have a noticeable impact on performance, an impact beyond what I thought it would be.

The clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate cleared up the wondering drive letters quite nicely and automatically. Decided not to partition any of the drives and run with what I knew. So the primary drive is C: the secondary drive is D:, and the optical drive is E: When I fired up MagicDisk to mount my Rosetta Stone Language Packs, it fell inline and named them F: & G: without complaining. The only thing that had me baffled was the Windows installer's insistence to take a 100MB portion of my new drives and label them "unallocated", not that 100MB tax on these monsters would make or break my day. I just couldn't figure out why it was doing that. Finally I gave up and just accepted Window's left of 100MB from each drive,... and moved on.

Man it felt good screwing down those drive caddies to the laptop's chassis for the last time,... tightening the screws of HP's bay cover felt even better. Now it's someone else's turn, and it looks like Desertf0x9 is next in queue.

Muchas gracias a Phil, Crayonyes, mfractal, and Krane.

Good luck Desertf0x9 with figuring stuff out. These guys will help!

 

The 100 MB partition is a windows recovery and boot partition that Windows 7 automatically installs. They say you can get rid of it if you pre-format and partition the drive before installing windows 7, but as you say, it's not really a huge portion of your drive.

 

You know what,... you're right. I used Ubuntu to open up the first drive because I didn't know what I was doing in Windows. And I did notice that the 100MB left didn't happen until I click 'Delete', then 'New' on the disk selection screen during the clean install. And I only did that because at the time, my intentions were to create 2 partitions on the primary drive. But in order to get the 'expand' option to un-gray itself, I had to first delete the format Ubuntu laid on the drive and ask Windows to create a new partition. After that the 100MB un-allocated section showed up.

 

Hey guys,... just an quick update. The 7k500's are spinning just nicely. Who ever said that a faster HDD makes a difference is absolutely right. You can tell the difference,... at least I can. A very much improved experience with the two Hitachi 7200 rpm drives over the single WD 5400 drive I had in my laptop.

Thanks again guys!

 

My post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5992751#post5992751
Hitachi selling for $78 at Frys.

 

I'm really thinkin about gettin one of those 7K500's for my incoming dm3t...
I like everything I'm reading about em.

 

Do it! You won't regret the purchase. One thing I did notice after recently visiting TD's website to purchase the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX, is that the rebate on these drives have dropped from $15 to $10,... soon any rebate will vanish all together I suspect. Still, this capacity and speed at under $100 remains a good deal I guess.

 

WD has acronis true image wd version for free.

seagate has diskwizard, which is a renamed acronis true image.

both can be found in their website for free download.

 

Does anybody have any feedback about those Solid state hybrid drive? like the Seagate Momentus XT?

 

Only about 1100 posts worth:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...e-momentus-xt-hybrid-hdd-w-built-4gb-ssd.html

 

Speaking of which, here is a comparison that I just posted:
Seagate Momentus XT vs. 5400 rpm Startup
Enjoy,
~Aaron

 

Never had W7 create the 100MB partition on installs but I do create my own partitioning before hand and typically with my Windows not all 4 are used. I do also get Windows to format the partition it's being installed on. Now if you know of a way to stop it overwriting my custom MBR...

 

I am building a combined HTPC / NAS machine. It is a tight case so I will use 2 x 2.5" drives, mirrored against each other.

Any suggestions? I want 750 - 1000 gb, and quiet.

I have been checking this thread a few pages back but it seems the posts are rather old.

 

5400rpm? Samsung M8 1 TB
7200rpm? Hitachi 7K750 750GB

 

I can vouch for the 7K750, the fastest quiet mechanical 750GB you can get right now. The scorpio black is a tad faster, but makes more noise. Will you be using your NAS exclusively through wireless or will you connect to it wired as well. If it is the former, the network will bottleneck before the drive so the 5400RPM will do just fine, through gigabit ethernet though, the drive will bottleneck first so you might want to get the 7200RPM.

 

That's exactly the kind of answer I wanted. Thanks. I think I'll go with 1tb.

I will be using it through wireless 802.11n most of the times, but cabled sometimes if I need the speed. Is the difference very big? I read here that the difference is negligible?

 

Make sure to get the Spinpoint M8 and not the older model. The M8 has two platters instead of three and is therefor faster, quieter and uses less power.

 

I'm thinking of buying 5k750 as a second drive. Is it much slower than 7k750?
Cant't find any tests

 

As an OS drive? yes it's significantly slower. Booting and application loading is about 25-40% slower in general.

 

For OS I've crucial M4 64gb. I'm looking for a second HDD.
Are there any tests of 5k750?

BTW my laptop came with Seagate 320gb ST320LT007. It's 7mm. Do you know it has one or two plates?

 

One. All 7mm drives have one platter as far as I know.

 

What HDD would be the best choice as a second HDD ?
500gb min.

 

If it is just storage, i'd go for the Samsung M8 1TB...

Now for my question...
I'm currently running a SSD/HDD setup in my laptop, the hard drive is in the optical bay caddy and is solely used for games. Given it's just for games (only folder on there is 'steamapps') I imagine it'll benefit from a 7200rpm drive however not so much from a momentus XT...

Given that, would a Hitachi 7k750 750GB drive be my best bet? I'm after something that won't vibrate too much, and is fairly quiet. Needs to be 750GB+ and can be up to 12.7mm.

Thanks!