Hitachi 7K500 Travelstar 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" drive 9.5mm height

Guys/Gals, I'm sorry, but benchmarks without knowing what system it's running on is almost useless to compare against?

I don't know, but benchmarks on an original XP RTM (no SP1 or any other update) or on a bare, non-system drive will put anything else to shame - but that doesn't mean that the HD with those 'best' scores will perform better on a working installation of Win 7, right?

Not arguing about to not compare benchmarks or not, just saying stating the benchmarking conditions is very important - at least to me.

Also, how is HD Tune set up? Too many possibilities of comparing apples to oranges.

 

HD Tune is not influenced too much by system specs, as long as the system doesn't have too many background processes disturbing the benchmark.

So please if any owner can post the HD Tune Pro IOPS benchmark that would be very interesting.

 

Thanks Phil, good to know!

 

Here's an HD Tune Pro IOPS benchmark of my 7K500, I ran it a few times, and it seems to give me the same results each time:

 

Why doesn't the temp show?

 

No clue, incompatibility with the motherboard possibly? I've got an Nvidia nForce 730i (MCP79MX).

 

There you go, better than tiller's result and better than Seagate 7200.4, as it should be.

Thanks for posting.

I'm still a bit surprised that the 160GB Scorpio Black is faster (only with small files) but that probably has to do with the fact that it only uses one platter and only 160GB.

 

Hmmm... better? Sure, number-wise. But this tells us nothing about performance of the drive.


DemonicHawk,

I would be really interested to know what system was used and the conditions while running the benchmark.

Maybe you can also grab a few folders of random small/med/large/iso files and copy and time that for us? I used a 43GB test folder size.

I know on my VAIO, the Hitachi made a 40%+ difference over the similarly configured Toshiba GSX HD and subjectively, about the same difference should be felt on the Scorpio Blue I was last using in this system. Where do the benchmarks posted above (and in my benchmark thread) reflect that?

Benchmark thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5608617#post5608617

 

Still disappointing in my opinion, I will wait to see what WD come's up with.

A notebook voltage velociraptor would be good

 

I believe that the numbers/scores the smaller drives can post are not to be seen again on these newer, larger and more dense per platter mechanical drives.

The very fact that they're denser make it that much harder to have the head(s) settle into the track/sector they're trying to read/write from. This shows up in longer access times.

 

So so far what is the consensus on this drive? A winner? Average? Seagate and/or WD better?

 

imo a winner. i have the seagate's the wd's and the hitachi's and honestly i wish i would have these instead of my wd 500's the seagates suck

 

Actually the IOPS benchmark in HD Tune is one of the best synthetic benchmarks I know of. Best meaning best indicator of real life performance.

It's good. We still haven't seen any real life benchmarks comparing 7200.4, WD5000bevt and 7K500.

Going by the synthetic benchmarks: Hitachi 7K500 is a little faster than WD5000bevt and Seagate 7200.4.

If you don't need a lot of space and are into heavy multi tasking, WD Scorpio Black 160GB is the best choice.

You'll be hard pressed to notice these differences in real life though.

When WD releases the 500GB Scorpio Black, it's very likely it will be the fastest.

 

Hmm well this is bad... My laptop's HDD mount covers the "do ont cover this hole' hole

According to the service manual, covering the so-called "breathing hole" will result in loss of data :/

Am I supposed to drill through my HDD frame or something? It's not touching the hole exactly(there's maybe a 1mm space between the frame and the hole), but it is covering it in the general sense of the word. Anyone else have this "incompatibility"?

 

Forever_Melody,

As long as there is some room for the air pressure to escape (it needs to equalize with the altitude you're operating it at), you should be fine.

Either that, or don't try computing in a high altitude balloon!

 

Darn it, and here I wanted to benchmark on Mt Everest... >_<

Oh well, we'll settle for sea level testing then :/ I'll try and post my benchmarks later when I get my Windows 7 installed.

 

Phil,

Not arguing, just trying to understand...

As you state the IOPS score should indicate what the drive 'should' do in real life - yet in my benchmarks these 'scores' do not correspond to anything in real life:

Random Access Read IOPS:
...................Scorpio..........7K500............7200.4.........Tosh
512 bytes:.......44................54.................57...............54
4KB:...............44.................53................59................52
64KB:..............44................51.................57...............50
1MB:...............24................32.................32...............22
Random:..........32................40.................40...............31


According to the above, the 7200.4 should be 'the' drive to have - yet it took Vista over 90 minutes to install onto the same VAIO I'm doing these tests on and on the 'lowly' scored (IOPS) Scorpio, the install was in the 15 minute range.

As for a glimpse at real life comparisons:
I had the chance to sell/install the Scorpio to a (very) similar system as my VAIO, here are some real life benchmarks for us using the identical install I used on the 7K500 (I then had to reformat it and set it up like the buyer wanted! ):

Install Win 7 x64 Ultimate via Lexar Lightning 4GB USB stick:

Toshiba MK3252GSX = Tosh
Hitachi 7K500 = 7K500
Scorpio 500GB BEVT= SB

All times in seconds...........Tosh...............7K500..............SB

'Starting Win 7 screen'.........45...................45................45
'Done Copying+Expanding'...360..................240..............405
'1st Reboot after above'.....120...................30................45
'2nd Reboot after above'.....240.................300...............285
'Show Desktop 1st time'.....180..................150...............210

Overall time Install Win7.....19 minutes........12 minutes......20 minutes



Install CS4 (full install):

....................................Tosh...............7K500................SB

'Initialize' CS4 install...........120 secs...........90 secs..........120 secs

Overall time Install CS4.......22 minutes........14 minutes.......24 minutes

Update CS4 ([email protected]).....18 minutes........14 minutes........19 minutes


The 7K500 is miles ahead of the Toshiba and Scorpio Blue and this is not reflected accurately in any benchmark I have seen so far.

The 7200.4 is not even represented here as it simply performed as if the drive was 'broken' on four different units I tried (Vista x64 + VAIO). On the one I got Vista to actually install on - I could see glimpses of the performance it might offer, but the stalls, stuttering and 'file not found' errors forced me to return that one also.

The SB, while slower (by a little) than the Toshiba original drive included with the VAIO, did offer a significant capacity increase that I depended on for almost 9 months of its use.

The 7K500 feels like I'm running eBoostr on the SB - but I'm not (yet).


Mr.KL,

In my opinion, backed up with the facts above (and not the 'benchmarks'), the 7K500 is the fastest and highest capacity HD I've yet used in my VAIO.

If speed, response and capacity are also equally important to you - then yes, the Hitachi 7K500 is a winner and worthy of upgrading to from any other 500GB drive I know of.

 

Tillerofhteearth, couple of notes:
Synthetic benchmarks aren't very good indicators of real life performance. But for synthetic benchmarks the IOPS is one of the better ones.

If you performed those real life benchmarks in an accurate way, they should be valid. However, for real accuracy each test should be repeated three times.

Keep in mind that installation benchmarks mainly reflect writing speed, not reading speed.

As I thought before, your IOPS benchmark in HDTP showed too low scores. I don't why. DemonicHawk results are more inline with what I expected. It's faster than the 7200.4.

I hadn't seen your CS4 install results before. Assuming they are are accurate, the 7K500 seems to be very fast.

 

Thanks Phil,

If these 'scores' did indicate what the drive could do, I would want to increase them so I could have a faster system as they seem so low on my installs.

As for the accuracy, yes, they are accurate - not repeated 3 times on each machine of course, but accurate in the sense that the exact procedure was used with each of the different machines and these numbers are the result.

If you haven't seen those before, you may have missed this too (which I did especially for you, btw):

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5609040#post5609040

Quote:

"What is important to remember is that there are no 'tweaks' done to both systems and also, this is the first time both programs and 'cmd' prompt utilities are run on each system - at exactly the same point in time of their clean Win 7 life.

This is for Phil (mod):

43GB File folder of pictures, music, program files, various install files, ISO's, documents, etc. copied from one partition to another:
Tosh: 63 minutes; 7K500: 44 minutes. Over 40% improvement.

Another disk intensive program I timed was PerfectDisk 10. Although I ran it after all the results in this post were timed, it is very interesting to note how long PD10 took with each HD:

All times in seconds...........Tosh...............7K500
Analyze C:........................80....................61
1st Offline Defrag:.............317.................337
Analyze C:........................90....................79
1st Online Defrag:..............46 Minutes.........23 Minutes"


Yes, the 7K500 finished the online defrag in half the time. Keep in mind the offline defrag was completed faster by the Toshiba, but it was also defragging a 4GB hibernation file vs. the Hitachi's 8GB hibernation file.

Quote:
"If you needed convincing about the 7K500 - the only two things you need to know are the above results."


This following link is an 'index' of my 7K500 tests, setup and conditions:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=441674

 

yeah I lost track of all your posts and threads

The file copy test is especially interesting because it combines everything. But being 40% faster than the 5400rpm Tosh is no surprise.

And I have no doubt the 7K500 is faster than the Seagate 7200.4 or WD 500GB.

 

Can't really test the the time but personally coming from a 250GB Seagate 7200.3 I didn't feel much performance increase (but that might just be me), anyhow my specs are below:

Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz)
4GB DDR3 RAM
Nvidia 9400M G
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Hitachi 7K500 (Of course)

I didn't have much open when I was running the benchmark, just Firefox, Windows Media Player and WLM.. came to about 50 processes or so. (Almost forgot and NOD32 in the background)

Let me know if I'm missing anything, but either way, at $80 a piece I'm happy with my purchase.

 

Thanks for coming back with that info.

Our platforms are very similar except for the DDR2 8GB vs. the DDR3 4GB RAM we have (I'm running Win 7 x64 Ultimate and a P8400).

Just one more question though; is this a very basic install (O/S, Office, browsers) or is it setup for a specific purpose?

Yeah, my processes are in the low 70's with the system just idling. Killing the processes for Phil has done some funny things to my system. I'm ready to re-install it (not that anything is really wrong - just 'not right'), yes I'm very picky how my systems run.

 

I guess you could say it's a basic install. Though I also use it for coding (java and flash) and the occasional work on images (photoshop).

Not too sure what you meant by it though. And since you're into the partitioning thing (saw your thread, its fantastic ), I've only got 2 partitions, OS (162GB) and Data (302GB).

Hope that helps, and it is quite odd that you're getting the same real world performance, but not the same benchmark results.

 

dont even worry about it you will be fine. they mean dont plug the hole with something or run it with your finger over the hole etc in the notebook it will be fine

 

can u get the 7K500 in the UK?

 

bump

that's a good question ,did anyone manage to get one in UK...?

 

I emailed Hitachi GST regarding this particular question. Having been released in US for some time, I too was wondering when Hitachi would eventually get round to rolling this drive out in the UK.

Anyway, their response was that the drive had already been released and was available via their "authorised distributors". However, after a quick search nothing turned up.

I guess what they actually meant by this was the drive has been released to OEM's, but I'm not sure of this. Overall, I think Hitachi has had some issues with getting some Travelstar drives to resellers. For example, the 7K320 has been unavailable at quite a few computer shops here in the UK. Perhaps this is in anticipation for the 7K500, however.

The only good news is that I did a different search today and found lambda-tek listing the drive;
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase7.4&prodID=B274307

Unfortunately, they don't have it in stock.

EDIT: Just searched again today, and it seems a few other resellers have it listed. As usual, they don't actually have the item in stock. However, one particular reseller has a stock due date of the 15th of this month. I wonder if they push it back.

 

Here's a list of European stores. No one has them in stock:
http://geizhals.at/eu/a460663.html

 

Tomshardware has included the 7K500 in their benchmarks and published an article.

While the 7K500 gets good scores, it's surprising to see how small the difference with the old 7K200 is.

 

Kind of biased. Being as he Used a Dell D630 with as he said a masive 9 cell for 6 hour battery life. Newer systems with lower power draw to begin with will benefit more by the minimal power savings. Also a newer system better able to be fed by the HDD will take better advantage too. It does show though with older hardware there is little benefit other than storage.

I do understand though this is specific to the benefit of upgrading older hardware that would originally have a 200GB 7200. you can't really read into it as what the HDD is capable of with newer hardware.

Myself, Asus U81a, I see a good real life 20 minutes battery life improvement over the Seagate 500 GB 7200 from 6 hours flat to 6:20 and 5 seconds less as a minimum on boot from 39 to 34 seconds......

 

This HD runs cooler than Scorpio Black abt 3 deg average. The access time isn't as fast as the scorpio though.

 

Didn't bother looking, but here's two travelstars in Raid 0 on my laptop.

Picked them up in person at Fry's in Atlanta, GA.

 

Phil,

Thanks for posting that link. The 7K200 was my 'reference' drive for a couple of years and using the 7K500 for the last few months now has left me with a feeling of achieving the same level of performance as with the 7K200, but with much more capacity.

This article confirms my feeling exactly. On situations where the high sequential speeds make a difference I can feel the newer 7K500 eclipsing the older 7K200 model.

However, no matter how much faster the 7K500 is (and it is...), it doesn't 'feel' faster (in most usage scenarios) because the 'snap' of the 7K200 is simply not there.

This just highlights the fact that how fast a HD/system 'feels' ('snappiness') and how fast it really is just do not correlate to each other very well.

This is why I test new HD's as part of my 'total' usage scenario and do not concentrate on specific and very narrow benchmarks to guide me.

Looking forward to your comparison of the 7K500 vs. the Scorpio Black over at StorageReview.com - keep us informed when it is published.

 

Yeah 7K200 was a great drive with very good acces times.

Review should be up tomorrow.

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

Would love a link here when it's 'live'.

 

HD Tune pro tests on 7k500 raid 0.

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
OS Version: 6.1.7600 Build 7600
System Name: GIMP-PC
System Manufacturer: Gateway
System Model: P-6860FX
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz
BIOS Version/Date: Phoenix Technologies LTD R01-A1R (94.31.00), 04/18/2008

Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager

Intel RAID Controller: Intel(R) ICH8M-E/ICH9M-E/PCHM SATA RAID Controller
Number of Serial ATA ports: 3

RAID Option ROM Version: 7.0.0.1020
Driver Version: 8.9.0.1023
RAID Plug-In Version: 8.9.0.1023

Array_0000
Status: No active migrations
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 931.5 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Hard Drive Member 2: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: TeraRAID

TeraRAID
Status: Normal
System Volume: Yes
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 931.5 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Hard Drive Member 2: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 0
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 0
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Firmware: PC4OC70E
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 465.7 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: TeraRAID
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 1
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 1
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: Hitachi HTS725050A9A364
Firmware: PC4OC70E
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 465.7 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: TeraRAID
Parent Array: Array_0000

 

The 7K200 and 7K500 comparison is very interesting, particularly for myself, as I am in need of a higher capacity drive, and since I already have a single platter 7K200, its all the more interesting.

I know exactly what you mean about the "snapiness" of this drive. When I went from a 5400 rpm drive to this 7200 rpm, the difference for me was very noticeable.

 

One side note on the Tomshardware benchmarks: they don't really mean much.

In my opinion they should have measured tasks in seconds. For example file copying or launching large applications. I'm pretty sure the difference would look a lot bigger.

Laptopmag makes much better hard drive reviews than Tom's in my opinion.

 

Hitachi 7K500 compared with WD3200BEKT:
http://www.storagereview.com/ultima...tal_scorpio_black_vs_hitachi_travelstar_7k500

 

Thanks much for the review, I really had my eyes set on doing dual scorpio blacks but the capacity difference in the end made me hold out for 500gig 7200's to hit the market. FWIW it's a pain getting alot of use out of the raid even when transferring from my eSATA back and forth, I think even a single 7k500 could pretty well keep up with the exception being ~136 gigs of HD video content to and from. I actually cap my external 7200 desktop drive limit then.

 

This thread might be a good place to ask this. My notebook (Vaio F) came with the Hitachi 7K500 and it was showing as using SATA Gen 1. I swapped it with an X25-M ssd which is running in SATA II.

I'm now using the Hitachi with an eSATA external enclosure (HE-2521B). It still shows as SATA I. Anyone knows why this is the case, and if there's a way to change that?

Thanks in advance

 

The 250GB 7K500 is now available. Should be even faster than the 500GB due to lower acces times.

160GB might be even faster due to using only the fastest part of the platter.

Did anyone order these drives yet? Looking forward to see HDTune results.

 

I'm fairly certain just by short stroking an artificially small partition and benching it you could get approx performance.

 

Storagereview posted an interesting review of the 7K500 showing some if it's weaknesses.

I would not draw the same conclusions as they did though. Most of the benchmarks in the review (including IO meter) are synthetic. Seagate 7200.4 does very good in synthetic benchmarks, but when it comes to real life performance it looses, even to WD5000bevt. The reviews of Techreport.com show this very well.

I still believe the 7K500 will outperform the 7200.4 and WD3200bekt in most single user, normal notebook usage scenarios, like my review showed. It doesn't have the fastest I/O though, probably caused by the not so good acces times.

 

I'm still on the Hitachi FTW

 

Tried to get a 500, but very difficult to find it anywhere, opted for the 320, performs very well (HP 6730b std configuration). Fast, low noise, low temp.

 

I don't care what the synthetics say, I have the 7K500 as an upgrade from the 500Gb 7200.4 and I can tell you real world there is a good improvement. It is no SSD by any means but a real nice improvement. Also it just seems sturdier/more reliable.

I always had this feeling of impending doom with the 7200.4. Maybe it was that infamouse clicking, I don't know. This drive just seems quiter and runs a bit cooler.

I have an ICH9M chipset too, so to get the feature tool to work I had to boot in compatibilty mode. I set the power savings so the drive would run in HP mode and set SATA II.

 

Tom's Hardware has also published a lot of benchmarks on all these drives. Unfortunately all synthetic, but PC Mark Vantage can give a nice indication. Hitachi 7K500 comes out top ( link).

 

Ive got one of these to replace my 7200.4ASG... no more crashes .. no more boot issues... no more bad sectors. I will RMA my 7200.4 and use it as an IRRT backup connected to the dock esata.

 

FYI...

Hitachi Travelstar 500GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA/300 (7K500 )
Retail Kit Hard Drive - HD20500IDK/7K on Sale at Fry's today $63.99

http://www.frys.com/product/5966014