Hitachi 7k200

Sorry if this has been asked before, I haven't seen a thread on it and I can't seem to google a straight answer but...

About the 7k200 hard drives, do they only come in 200GB?

Also, I know a lot of time has passed since its release, are they still the fastest hard drives on the market right now?

Exclude SSD's.

 

No, they come in other sizes and flavors too. This came up on google.

 

They come in 100gb, 120gb 160gb and 200gb models. The 100gb and the 200gb are the fastest 7K200 models, the 120 and 160gb are slower because the harddrive heads have a limited stroke, thus decreasing the area on the disk which the heads touch, and thus decrease harddrive size.

ALL the 7K 200 drives have the same disks, only the 200gb has two disks and the 100gb has one disk, and the others have two disks and limited head movement.

K-TRON

 

Well, the 80, 120 and 160 gb modell has lower data density not limited stroke areas (having a narrower area for the strokes to move on proably even speed up the disk) while the 200 and 100 GB version has higher density and are thus faster.

They limit the space by ether data density, number of discs and how many heads there is. eg. the 120 GB model har only 3 heads but two disks meaning it only uses 3 sides and not four like the 160 GB does.

edit: having higher number in the end of the serial means newer and proably fast but only refers to the largest disk in the series capacity.

 

I have seen the inside of a broken 7K200 120gb drive, the heads do not cover the full area of the disk. About 1/2 of an inch from the outer edge of the platter, is the farthest point the heads will go. If you look at hitachi's website, you will be able to understand better. When the heads stay closer in on the drive, the drive is slower, becuase of centrifugal motion. The speed on the outer edge of the platter is nearly 80mph difference from the speed of the disk closest to the motor.

K-TRON

 

Thats was a bit losy of them :/

I based my post on the data sheet of the harddrives (was reading them yeasterday btw) and from what it says it is only a ,6% differense in data area betwene 200GB and 160 GB which is identical exept for the data density.

 

Are you kidding that is genius what they do. Laptop harddrives would be extremely expensive if different platters had to be made for different capacity drives. By simply limiting the head movement, Hitachi is able to use the same platters in all five of their 7K200 drives. Because of this, only one type of platter is made because the platter stays uniform. This cuts machining costs, and thus helps reduce the price of the drives. Yes you are still getting 200gb of data on a 120gb drive, but this is still cheaper and saves hitachi money, even though it looks as if they are making a loss with the 120gb drive. Literally it is the smartest thing notebook harddrive manufacturers do. Sure, if you had a clean room, you could open a 120gb drive and make ot 200gb, but one would most likely damage the drive and the warramty would be void by opening the drive.

K-TRON

 

Acording to hitachi they only uses the same plates for the 200 and 100gb models, and a diffrent on for 80, 120 and 160. I suppose its possible they lies about it but i doubt that.

The thing i thought was lousy was limiting the outer edge of the data and not the inner.