Hitachi 5K500.B finally available

I hope this is not old news, but this is the first time I have seen the Hitachi 5K500.B available for sale. This is the two platter 500gb drive which should perform like the WD5000BEVT/Seagate momentus 5400.6

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10010134

I hope someone picks this up and benchmarks it. I wonder how it performs in real life to the WD or the seagate

K-TRON

 

Still 5400RPM? Nothing interesting at all...

It is also too late. WD5000BEVT was available for purchase for almost 6 months.


--

 

I know its late, but the 5K500.B is supposed to use less than 2 watts at maximum power usage, which is about 0.8 watts less than the WD5000BEVT
The WD5000BEVT uses 2.75watts at peak

This should make for much better battery life

K-TRON

 

Don't you know K-TRON if there will be a single platter 250GB version of this drive?

 

Yes there is,
There are three single platter versions
250GB:
HTS545025B9A300
160GB:
HTS545016B9A300
120GB:
HTS545012B9A300

You can get the 250gb model here: (Around $65-70)
http://www.google.com/products?q=HTS545025B9A300&hl=en&scoring=p

K-TRON

 

I don't think a 0.8 W difference will make any difference at all. Let's do some math to prove that:

My laptop's battery has 53Wh capacity and in the power-saver mode it consumes around 25W power. So the battery life after a full recharge is:

53Wh / 25W = 2 hours 7 minutes.

Now let's save some power from the new HDD (as you said the advantage is only 0.8W). I will optimistically assume that the savings is 1 W and further assume that you run your HDD at full power for several hours (This **never** happens in real life.) The new battery life becomes:

53Wh / 24W = 2 hours 12 minutes.

So even in the very worst case (which never happens in real life) we will save 5 minutes.


Have you ever attended a math class before?

--

 

25W power consumption in power saver mode is quite high. I look for less than half that so the potential increase in run time is doubled, and starts to look significant. However, if the HDD is not being used much then the difference becomes smaller unless the 5K500.B also has significantly lower idle power consumption.

I will also take this opportunity to note that Samsung now list their 2-platter 500GB HM500JI which is part of the Spinpoint M7 family. Other members are: HM400JI, HM320II, HM250HI, HM161HI HM120GI. This seems to include 250GB one-platter and 120GB-one head members.

John

 

I have measured the power consumption from the battery life. To be precise, my laptop battery runs for 2 hours 15 minutes in the power saver mode (WLAN, bluetooth are all running). And the battery specs are: 11.1Volts, 4800mAh.

So the capacity is (assuming there is no wear): 11.1V x 4.8Ah = 53Wh.

53Wh / 2.25h = 23.55W is the average power consumption.

If, as you said, the power consumption was around 12W, that would give me around 4 hours of battery life which is impossible...


--

 

But on ultraportables/small laptops which use 2.5" drives and say have a 12 watt power on battery, dropping to 11 watts will be a bigger difference.

Its new technology, so their is always an edge. Still I find it amazing how they are getting so much efficiency out of a 5400rpm motor. Think back maybe a year or so when 5400rpm drives used 3.5-4 watts or so, cutting down to less than 2 watts is pretty outstanding.

K-TRON

 

Seek is not that good like WD. Already see some HD Tune banchmarks. Temps are really good.....

 

Looking at John's benchmark of the WD5000BEVT, the Hitachi seems to have higher bandwidth and slower seek times. (Image courtesy of John Ratsey's WD5000BEVT thread)


I wonder how it performs in real life applications though. It looks like its going to be slower than the WD because of those high seek times. Or possibly that run was abnormally high on seek times, and maybe it is closer to the same speed. Than again the difference is basically a whole 2ms, which is quite alot

More benchies

K-TRON

 

In terms of noise, in the Hitachi's 5K500.B spec sheet it states:
Accoustics (A-weighted sound power) What does that mean?
Idle (Bels, typical) 2.4
Seek (Bels, typical) 2.6
but does not state the single platter sound bels, I suppose those are lower.
In any case, I'm mostly concerned with idle noise when the HDD is doing nothing, that is the #1 fact deciding whether a HDD is silent/quiet or not.
Seems tempting to buy.

We may have to wait for more benchs to come on this drive, Windows background processes may have something to do with the last 5K500.B bench

P.S. Do anyone knows a site where I can pay with Paypal non-cc?

 

Crystalmark shows interesting results, the Hitachi 5K500.B is actually faster:

100MB test:
Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300:


Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000BEVT:


Seagate 5400.6 ST9500325AS:


Samsung HM500LI (older tech 3 platters, thus lower speed. I am still looking for HM500JI for more comparisons)





And now 1GB test:

Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300:


Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000BEVT:


Seagate 5400.6 ST9500325AS:


Samsung HM500LI (older tech 3 platters, thus lower speed. I am still looking for HM500JI for more comparisons)


So in synthetic benchmarks the Hitachi has a higher seek rate, but it is actually faster in real life tests.
Interesting...

So it seems the 5K500.B may in fact be better than the WD5000BEVT, making it not only the fastest 500gb 5400rpm drive but also the most power efficient as well.
Now I just need to find HM500JI benchies to compare.
Still I must give props to WD for having some of the best small file read/writes.

For more, read here: (Its Chinese I think)
http://www.it0411.com/hd/2009/0304/3_468_1.html

K-TRON

 

I should recieve my 5K500.B today, will post some benches.

 

I just hope it has higher rpm as well as its higher volume, that is one huge capacity after all, we wouldn't want to lagging when it gets filled with heavy media files..

 

The 5K500.B is a 500gb 5400rpm drive, it does not have a higher rpm or volume than other 5400rpm drives
It is the way in which the manufacturer codes the heads to read/write to the platter, which makes the difference.

Kaltmond, did you get your 5K500.B yet?
What capacity did you buy?

K-TRON

 

Already in hand, the 500GB one, installings windows.....

 

Hearing isn't linear (we are more sensitive to certain frequencies), therefore not as much sound pressure aka loudness (in absolute terms) is needed to perceive different frequencies to be at the same sound level. The standard IEC standard for calculating sound is using A-weighting. Typically, these numbers are useless (refer to www.silentpcreview.com) to see actual numbers on quiet hard drives and you will see lots of variation between what is reported and what is heard.

 

Some pics and HDTune bench.



Left is 5K500.B, right is 5K500.

 

I didnt know you had the 5K500 as well.

By chance can you run crystal mark on both drives for the sake of comparison. It doesnt take long at all.

You can download Crystal DiscMark here:
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

K-TRON

 

Crystalmark done. Both disks are filled with data, so results may not be that good looking.

 

Thank you + rep

For those who havent followed harddrives, the Hitachi 5K500 is a 3 platter 12.5mm thick drive. The 5K500.B is a 2 platter 9.5mm thick drive. Both are 500gb 5400rpm, however the 5K500 is based on three 166gb platters, while the 5K500.B is based on two 250gb platters.
The difference in performance is clear in kaltmond's post. The two platter version has a higher data density, and thus a higher data bandwidth than a lower density drive.

The two platter model is also supposed to be the most power efficient drive in its class, which is a good reason to buy it over the competition

K-TRON

 

I want two! Why can eBay merchants be faster?

 

kaltmond, can you describe noise of your 5K500.B? I have Samsung HM160HI which is for me dead silent and I'm considering this Hitachi for upgrade. Silent is the most important for me, I know that WD is pretty silent but I'm worried about reliability. I had originally Hitachi 5K100 80 GB and got rid of it because was noisy like old diesel engine (No offence K-TRON )

 

but the access times are just slightly slower than the Caviar Blue, right?

just want to be clear I'm reading this information correctly.

 

The access times are a bit different, but you need to always take hdtune with a grain of salt. HDTUNE is a synthetic benchmark. Crystalmark is the real deal. If one drive performs better in crystalmark, than it will perform better in real life.

They are very similar in performance in crystalmark, but the Hitachi is more power efficient and should run cooler.
I cant critique it on sound because I do not own one. Send a PM to Kaltmond

K-TRON

 

I bought one, should be here tomorrow

 

thanks for the insight.

 

I've done power drain measurements for both the WD5000BEVT and the 500GB Hitachi 5K500.B. The Hitachi's maximum power drain is about 2.3W compared to the WD's 2.5W.

John

 

John,

Do you also have the low and average power drain numbers too? I wonder how efficient the WD is also.

Thanks,
Gnimble

 

Interesting, the real life results are different from what Hitachi states, but it still shows that the Hitachi is more power efficient.

How did you run the tests?
Rightmark?, KILL-A-VOLT?

K-TRON

 

Power measurements as described here, by measuring the current used by an external eSATA enclosure and subtracting the current used the enclosure without an HDD inside. Tom's Hardware has similar power measurements for the WD5000BEVT.

The results should be comparable between different HDDs and this places the 5K500.B as lowest on maximum power (during the HDTune benchmarking). Next in line is the Seagate 5400.6.

Idle power for both the 5K500.B and the 5400.6 is about 0.45W while the WD5000BEVT is 0.5W.

Something I noticed with the 5K500.B is that power requirement during sequential read testing is lower (~1.5W) than with the other HDDs which stayed close to their maximum power.

I also noticed, while sitting in an airport a few days back, that my E6400 was predicting longer battery time than I had seen before. I think this is also evidence that the 5K500.B is giving excellent power efficiency.

John

 

Very interesting indeed. I'm not surprised because Hitachi is usually the best in power consumption.

 

AJ's Benchmarking data! (for your consideration).


Table of Contents

1. Intro
2. Test Setup
3. Benchmarks
4. 5K500.B vs WD5000BEVT vs 5400.6
5. Raid 0 numbers
6. Real-world performance boost? (compared to original raid 0 config)

=========================
INTRO
=========================

Greetings, all. As promised, here is the benchmarking data I compiled off of my 2 new 5k500.b drives. Apologies on the delay in posting these; I had a really hard time getting my HDD image to work.

=========================
TEST SETUP
=========================

I went through 3 different imaging programs (and about 16 hours) before I found one (Norton Ghost), which finally worked for me. The following data features mostly synthetic benchmarks measured over an eSATA connection. The drives were completely empty at the time. One of the tests (SpinRite: a program that runs below the OS) was not a synthetic test, and features direct communication with the HDD as follows:

taken from the creator of SpinRite:

http://www.grc.com/files/sr5_manual.pdf

For the rest of the tests, you're all familiar with. HDTune, SciSoft Sandra Pro, Crystalmark). Unfortunately, I don't have any other of our favorite 5400rpm hard drives, so I'll be relying on others results later on.

On to the tests...


=========================
BENCHMARKS
=========================

===========
SpinRite 6
===========

Random sector access (milliseconds) - 18.074
Sector access velocity (bytes/ses) - 9,049,036
Burst transfer rate (bytes/sec) - 72,005,912
Sustained transfer rate (bytes/sec) - 92,393,196
Smart polling speed (seconds) - 0.0055


===========
HDTune 2.55
===========



=============
CrystalMark 2.2
=============



===========
Sandra Pro
===========





(my drive is the red line)


=========================
5K500.B vs WD5000BEVT vs 5400.6
=========================

Here is my 5K500.B benchmark juxtaposed over John Ratesy's Scorpio Blue and 5400.6 findings.


Left to right, 5K500.B., WD5000BEVT, 5400.6.

I submit to you all that these 3 benches represent an equitable comparison between the 3 drives, as none of these 3 drives were the C drive at the time of testing. 5K500.B doesn't lag very far behind in anything, and wins most comparisons going away.


==================
Raid 0 numbers (FYI)
==================

Crystal Mark




My original Raid 0 configuration was of 2 Fujitsu 4200rpm HDDs. Their results in HDTune and SciSoft Sandra Pro are below:


HDTune 2.55

Fujitsu MHZ2500b (4200rpm)


Hitachi 5K500.B (5400rpm)




This set of numbers represent the read performance only. Sandra doesn't allow write performance on any drive with any content to be bench-marked in that way.

That being said, the difference is pretty clear on HDTune & Sandra But how about real life feel?


==========================================
"REAL WORLD" PERFORMANCE BOOST? (compared to original raid 0 configuration)
==========================================

Boot-up speeds
measured from power button press to the final startup app loaded.

Average, original 4200rpm raid 0 (seconds)* - 127
Average, 5K500.B 5400rpm raid 0 (seconds)* - 98

Conclusion: Hitach drives provide ~30% faster boot time.


UnRAR speeds
Extracting a 4.87GB file

Average, original 4200rpm raid 0 (seconds)* - ~179
Average, 5K500.B 5400rpm raid 0 (seconds)* - ~114

Conclusion: Hitachi drives provide ~57% faster UnRAR time.


Photoshop CS4
Opening Photoshop + 15MB PSD, measured from icon click to the image and all menus opening.

Average of initial opening after reboot, original raid 0 (seconds)* - ~2:59
Average of initial opening after reboot, 5K500.B raid 0 (seconds)* - ~1:54

Conclusion: Hitachi drives provide ~89% faster time. Secondary open (cache'd open) provides equal launch time (~5.8 seconds). Undoubtedly because the app is still in memory, as expected. Certainly excellent gains.


=====================
FINAL THOUGHTS
=====================

I'm impressed with the increased speed and the synthetic benchmarks compared to other well-known 5400rpm drives. Based on the synthetic data, I am inclined to believe that SpinRite is indeed an excellent app for REAL (non-synthetic) benchmarking. Those who enjoy testing these drives might want to consider employing it more often.

The drives are indeed absolutely silent. I have noted, though, that when they've been asleep and wake up, they make an awkward clunking sound. Just once as it's warming up and maybe once every few hours. I assume this is normal, as none of my drive health tests suggested any problems (if it's not, someone please tell me). Otherwise, I couldn't hear them when I had the external enclosure open (even when holding my head to the drive). I also feel no vibration.

I have not done a power drain test yet to see how much longer the battery life might be. I will sooner or later, though.

It took awhile to get the last benchmarks so I could post these, but I'm glad it's done. I hope this information is of value to you guys. I will have a pair of 7200.4's soon, and they'll be tested in the same fashion and numbers directly compared. if the 7200.4's don't provide a meaningful speed gain over these, I'll be returning those and keeping these. And I wish I could have personally compared it to the Scorpio Blue. Oh well.

That being said, the 5K500.B appears to be the best 5400rpm HDD available today. I wouldn't hesitate to pick them up. I got them from for $80/drive. You can't beat the performance for this price.

Verdict: Winner. Solid, inexpensive, silent, fast. Pick one up.

If there are questions, I'll be sure to answer. thanks

 

Excellent post! + Rep to you. I've already got the drive but I have yet to install it. I'll be putting it in tomorrow afternoon. I'm a bit upset because this post makes me wish I could fit two of them into my Vaio FW and take advantage of the RAID0 performance boost. One will have to do. The benchmarks make it look like a solid drive!

Thanks for going into such detail!

 

no problem.

 

Great post, thanks fro spending the time benchmarking the drive. It seems like the Hitachi 5K500.B is overall the best 500gb 5400rpm drive

Thanks for the real life benchmarks as well,

K-TRON

 

no problem.

does anyone have an idea of what that random and odd sound that I'm hearing is? it's not a click or something like that. it's almost like the sound of a drive powering up or down when booting a computer. but the machine is on and actively in use and the HDDs are not set to go to sleep ever on A/C power.

I'd say I hear it 2 or 3 times a day, so it's not a frequency concern; rather a "should this be happening at all?" concern. do any other 5k500.b owners hear this sound? if anyone has insight, I'd love to hear it.

 

Great work ajreynol. Especially the real world tests are very insightful.

If you'd want to expand the real world tests, try running exactly the same tests but then with a virusscan running in the background.

 

Thanks AJ,

Your review mirrored what I see on my X200s system. The original 160GB 5400RPM drive that came with the system is very noisy. The Hitachi runs absolutely quiet and does not heat up as much. It runs very cool.

Cheers,
Gnimble

 

same here. I hear this just few times a day... very rare... it's like BZZZT 0.3s lasting sound like some rapid movement of head or what. HDD is new (6 days old, running 24/7). does anyone know what is it? Im glad I found some info about it, I was afraid I've got failing hdd.

 

Can you tell me whether the sound is like on of those from here.
My HTS541616J9SA00 is doing these sounds every once in a while and I'm afraid it's getting corrupt.
That's why I'm looking for a new one.

Thanks