Hitachi 7200 RPM 500GB HDD compare to SSD?

so its my 1st time looking into SSD's and i want to know how they compare to the Hitachi 7200RPM 500GB HDD? sorry im a newbie to all this right now, so no hate comments. thanks

 

Well it's more expensive and has less capacity, but it will feel a lot faster, be more shock resistant, be quieter and generally will also run cooler/consume less power...

 

SSD's will be faster but they won't last as long as 7K500.. also u get way less capacity for the price...unless u can't wait 1-2s , then get an SSD... it will make the computer feel snapier but the price is still too hgih in comparison to hard drives.. i would wait a few months for prices to fall more..

 

It's not true that it won't last as long as the 7K500...

 

I think he meant "lasting long" as in regards to how quickly it'd fill up in terms of data.

 

regarding 'shock resistance'.....

Any shock strong enough to damage/destroy a current-generation hard drive will ALSO destroy the laptop it is installed into. Putting an SSD into anything other than a mil-spec (Panasonic Toughbook, etc) laptop chassis is going to buy you nothing in terms of shock resistance.

Many/most current generation laptop drives have an operating rating of 100Gs and a powered off rating of 400Gs. Add the belts and suspenders of shock sensors and auto head-retract and you've got a pretty solid system.

Even the expected life of an SDD isn't all that impressive when compared to the mtbf of a current generation hard drive. One could argue that it is far easier to recover data from a damaged HDD than an SDD.

If your ONLY reason to get an SSD is 'shock resistance' or 'lifespan' (mtbf), then you are probably wasting your $$.

 

I have both an Intel G2 160GB and a Hitachi 7k500 installed internally on my G51vx. Drivers are IRST 9.5.4.1001

Intel 160GB G2 SSD

Sequential Read : 253.126 MB/s
Sequential Write : 105.068 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 192.098 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 106.463 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 18.044 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 32.784 MB/s

Test Size : 1000 MB
-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
Hitachi 7k500 HDD

Sequential Read : 83.326 MB/s
Sequential Write : 81.697 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 24.927 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 27.710 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.280 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.603 MB/s

Test Size : 1000 MB

 

Wow, I never realized that SSD that much faster than the 7k500, or the 7200 RPM's in general.

 

I just installed the Intel 160gb SSD along with the Hitachi 500gb 7200 drive in my dual drive AW VAIO. If interested, see the couple of my posts starting here and a couple of related benchmark results.

The SSD was a *VERY* nice performance upgrade, better than any other I've done in recent years.

I also had the Scrorpio WD 320gb 7200 drive previously, but noticed some SMART health issue developing and replaced it in time.

 

What's with all the Intel/Hitachi setups?

I just bought my Intel this week, waiting to get it. Then I'll ALSO have Intel 160GB SSD + Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM.

Crazy.

 

Well, unless you're going to go for the even more expensive SSDs (C300, Vertex LE, OWC), Intel and Hitachi are the current front runners performance-wise.

 

As of right now, the Intel/Hitachi combo is the best of both worlds. Speed and storage.

Which makes me feel bummed that the new Asus 15-inchers sacrificed a HDD bay for more RAM slots. Weaksauce.

 

I actually meant both.. I meant that SSD's are more likely to fail compared to hard drives and really , SSD's will fill up soon... Its a known fact that SSD's have way less MTBF time compared to mechanical hard drives.

In notebooks , these SSD's are bottlenecked especially the C300 which has SATA 3 support... we just have to wait for Sandy Bridge before we can utilise the full performance.

 

Unlike hard drives, SSD performance degrades over time. It's write cycle is also much lower than hard drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages

I would wait until SSD technology becomes more mature and the price per GB is equal to hard drives.

 

Sorry but the write issue is fear mongering.

Most information on a hard disk is only written once or twice.
Very, very little is re-written constantly. The rule is you only use 50% of the drive, also the drive will move high write items around to low written areas as it needs to prolong the life.

How long do you keep your hard disk? if it last say 8 years, you got more than your moneys worth and probably won't even be using it by them. So do you really give a damn if it lats 35 years?


Seriously the whole write issue is a joke.
I do agree with waiting a little bit longer, by years end they will be available at good prices probably.

 

Not really. These drives only saturate a SATA 3 Gb/s (SATA revision 2.0) in a 2 MB sequential read/write scenario, so unless you're working with large files, you won't see the bottleneck. In fact, in the popular 4K random read/write tests, most of these drives wouldn't even saturate a SATA 1.5 Gb/s connection, or not by much.

 

Regarding SSDs, yes they are far faster than hard drives but not practical right now for many due to the high cost (myself included). I have a Hitachi 7K500 in my notebook and love it; I have sub-30s bootup and opening programs is a cinch. It has definitely boosted my notebook's overall performance.

 

If you really need 15 second boots compared to 45 second boot ups then go with the high end SSD's. If it isn't worth the extra money then the 7K500 is the best option. I always love the have the fastest hardware but the price point isn't there for me yet.

My current usage would not bennefit all that much from a SSD. Would it be nice, sure i would, do I have any real need for it? if my browser takes 2 seconds to load up compared to 0.5 seconds I get no real bennefit as then I have it cached to ram and subsequent usage if extreemly fast.

Now if the old HDD at 320 GB 5400 RPM was taking 7 seconds compared to the 2 seconds for the 7K500 at the price point I can justify that. The oold HDD booting at 65 seconds compared to 33 seconds is another justification. The extra 180 GB's yet another. So there were quiet a few justifications for the 7K500 and no real trade off's. Can you say the same of SSD's, no as there are always some trade off's........

 

Hitachi 500gb Clicking Noise Bugging You?

As a side note for the Hitachi 500gb drive, if the constant clicking noise bugs you, you can adjust the power management settings by downloading the hitachi drive 'Feature Tool' version 2.15, burn ISO to cdrom, boot and reconfigure the drive to 'max'. This eliminated the very audible and annoying clicking as the drive repeatedly 'load cycled'. This was very visible in HD Tune Pro in the health tab "(c1) load cycle count" field. After the adjustment, the click was gone and the 'load cycle' calmed down.

If you have a Sony AW with the Intel Raid controller BIOS, you'll need to find another computer to boot and run the tool. In my case, the Thinkpad T61 worked well for the programming of the drive.

The Hitachi 'Feature Tool' is located here: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

 

Well C300 has a read -write speed of 300MB/s +++ when it was used on SATA 3 desktop so being used in a SATA II notebook , it is bottlenecked...

I'm quoting eithegreat below..

I also run the Crucial RealSSD C300 256gb in my desktop - and it blows SataII capacity out of the water, about 360mb/s read; and beats out my intel x25-e in every metric - though the little intel still holds up pretty well - it is SLC afterall. I even had two of the RealSSD's installed in Raid0, and while a little faster (not quite 400mb/s - though that might have been due to the cheapo highpoint raid 6gbs card I was using), it didn't seem worth the extra cost to run two of them and take a reliability ding with the raid0. The Realssd's replaced a Velociraptor Raid0 array which just about saturated sataII capabilities.

 

Judicator has it right, you missed his point sean473. Sequential R/W speeds don't mean much in real life. Access time and random R/W speeds aren't affected since they aren't even near saturation, so in any real life situation, you wouldn't notice a difference unless seeing a benchmark.

 

Or, if you want a simpler, car-based analogy...

The C300 is a high speed Ferrari roadster, it can easily go over 200 mph on a nice flat road with no speed limit (SATA 6 Gb/s).

On the highway, it's limited to 80-100 mph due to speed limits (SATA 3 Gb/s) in light traffic.

For everyday driving to work, it's limited to 30-40 mph due to rush hour traffic (everyday use).

I'm not actually saying that they're not technically bottlenecked; they are, in that they can't reach their highest possible speeds with a SATA 3 Gb/s interface. What I am saying is that apart from benchmarking, and some (very few) people that manipulate large files constantly, you'd never reach those speeds even without the physical bottleneck. So, apart from cost, if you want the high performance SSD, there's no reason not to get them, even if you only have a SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

For numbers, if you want to go that far, here's the popular Anandtech's numbers on 4K random writes, non-aligned and aligned, and 4K random reads ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/2944/10). Note how these numbers barely even cross the 1.5 Gb/s barrier, and that's only with aligned 4K writes.