Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 HDD series - are they better?

Hello

I'm looking to replace my laptop's Hard Disk by a 7200rpm model. I'm interested in the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 or 7K750 series.

The 7K500 seem to have a good reputation for performance and quietness and have very tempting prices.

However, the new 7K750 series are (almost) out. They seem to be slightly more silent when seeking and have better operational temperature range, in addition to the higher storage capacities. Couldn't detect other differences in terms of general specs across the different capacities.

Links to specifications
Travelstar 7K500 - Travelstar 7K500 | Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Travelstar 7K750 - Travelstar 7K750 | Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

The question is, are they really worth it compared to the 7K500 in real world usage? They both have a 500Gb model so there's a point in comparing, besides the obvious capacity range differences.

Do you have a 7K750? If yes, how do they perform in terms of noise, temperature, vibrations and speed compared to the previous generation?

They are not yet available here and I can't find any reviews, so I was wondering if anyone is using/has used one of the 7K750s.

Thanks

 

It is not out yet. No benchmarks therefore.

Technically it should be better than 7K500 tho.


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Dear friends,

I'm looking to upgrade my MacBook Pro's (13" unibody) HDD and want to go from 250Gb 5400rpm to at least 500Gb 7200rpm.

There are a lot of reviews out there but some contradict others in some aspects, so I decided to look for help here for some real world experiences.

My choice is between the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500/7k750, Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (500Gb/750Gb) or Seagate Momentus XT.

This choice is based on what I found to be the most silent drives (correct me if I'm wrong). I have tried a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500Gb but that's a noise animal and won't suit me.

Here's how I prioritize the factors that would form my choice:
1) Noise/Vibration (this is really important)
2) Reliability
2) Speed
3) Power Consumption
4) Capacity (500Gb is a minimum)
5) Price

In a nutshell, the questions are:
- Do you have experience with all these drives?
- Even better, how do they behave in the MacBook's aluminum chassis?
- Is it worth waiting for the Travelstars 7K750?
- Are there any momentus 7200.5 coming out soon?
- Any other comments?

Thanks!

 

How many new topics are you planning to open on the HDD issue?


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Do we even know when the Hitachi 7K750 will be available to purchase?

 

Oh my experience will be very useful to you.

I first had Seagate Momentus 7200.4 - resold the thing 3 weeks later!! Why? Because it was vibrating as a washing machine!!! My laptops was literally dancing on the table!! I couldn't work with it as my hands were shaking! Horrifying!! Of course it was also very noisy! At first I thought - well... that's the price for the good speed I need to pay. But a few days later I realized I don't care - I'm throwing this sh*t away no matter what!!

I then bought Hitachi 7K500 and still using it - great speed, absolutely no vibrations and no noise! Just as silent as my original 5400RPM Toshiba drive!

Now I never owned Momentus XT, some say they are worth, some complain, others just don't see the point...
I've read about heating problems. But I'd better not give you any false information. I can only tell you I'm very happy with the Hitachi and would advise you not to buy Seagate 7200.4.

 

My speculation is that the 7k750 will be a better performer in that the 7k500 has 2x 250GB platters and the 7k750 has 2x 375GB platters. For the same diameter, the 7k750 has more data per rpm.

 

I would stay away from Seagate, lots of vibrations as mentioned. I had a 7k500 and it was silent/no vibrations, I then upgraded to a Western Digital Scorpio Black 750 (WD7500BPKT), which is the best drive I've used so far. No noise/vibrations, no seeking noise (7k500 would have seek noises).

 

The 7K500 seems to be the most silent 7200rpm drive. Maybe the 7K750 will be as silent and a little faster.

 

i was all set to buy the 7k500 500 gb but now waiting in anticipation of the new 7k750 750 gb version.

anyone have any clue or idea when the new hitachi 7k750 750 gb is going to be released....?

 

Interesting! I'm also tempted by the 7K500.

I purchased a Scorpio Black 500Gb last week and installed it but the whirring noise it constantly makes when idle is just too much. The original 5400rpm drive I use now is absolutely silent. The 7200rpm has to be a silent as possible.

I wonder when will the 7K750 be released?!! I have emailed some Hitachi distributors but have no answers yet.

 

Just want to know if the 7K750 will be out or not, since WD already bought the Hitachi GST....

 

Being bought by WD does not mean that Hitachi will stop all its productions immediately. Of course it will be out. Be patient.


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Okay, I got the 7K500.

It's a bit (not a lot more) more silent than the Black Scorpio but still noticeably louder than the stock 250gb single platter Toshiba that came in my Macbook.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the speed and storage gains.

But one thing is for sure: any HDD upgrade I do in the future will be for a single platter HDD or an SSD. Silence is golden

 

True, single platters are the best choice for silence.

 

I placed the Toshiba single platter in an external enclosure. It's incredibly silent, almost virtually silent compared to the 7K500!

 

I've toshiba MK2556GSY 250gb 7200. It's sigle platter I think.
It's really very silent. Before I had 7k500 500gb. It was silent too, but comparing it to toshiba it was like a jubo jet

 

any updates... when is the 7k750 out...?

 

Not as far as I know. Some price comparison websites are listing the 7K750s since they were announced but they still have no prices nor availability estimates. The specs between 7K500 and 7K750 are also not that different. That's why I settled with the 7K500.

If you need a drive upgrade now, based on my research for 500Gb models:
- For all-round performance: Western Digital WD5000BEKT
- For silence: Seagate 7200.4
- For a balance between silence and performance: Hitachi 7K500

All of this drives are out for a while already so I think reliability should be good with all of them.

 

And for best performance: Seagate Momentus XT. See the review in my signature to see how it fares against WD5000BEKT and SSDs.

PS. for silence I wouldn't get a 7200.4. Better a single platter 7K500 or 5400rpm drive.

 

i'm runing 2 7k500 in raid0 no sound no vibration it's quiet and fast

 

There's definitely no vibration from the 7K500 in my unibody Macbook Pro which, because it's made of aluminum, it is quite prone to resonating vibrations. It produces very faint seeking click sounds which I actually always liked in HDDs.

My only gripe at the moment is with when the drive is constantly going back and forth between having the needles parked and seeking. It's not the clicking from this that bothers, it is this rotation noise muffling up and down that gets annoying and distracting.

Check the link for an audio sample of someone's 7K500 where this sound effect can be observed. The drive clicks mark a transition between muffling up or muffling down:
http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207927&d=1261314985
In the audio sample it is not so frequent but in my MacBook it does it too much

I wonder if it is possible to eliminate/minimize this rotation noise muffling up/down all the time without affecting the battery life too much.

 

I did little more research into this little issue and found that aftermarket HDDs will likely cause this issue on Macs because the firmware is set for Windows PCs which manage power in a different way. Macs will default to the most agressive power saving mode which is to park the heads as much as possible. Drives supplied by Apple have a custom firmware to take this OS difference into account and behave normally.

To remedy this I'm now using Hdapm for preventing the drive from parking the heads all the time. I'm not using the maximum value of 254 but instead 210 which seems to be a good balance between # of load cycles and power saving. Another option might be to use the Hitachi feature tool but that won't work on Macs because of EFI.

Anyone has any idea of what would be the equivalent Hdapm value that best matches what Apple uses for Apple customized HDD firmwares?

Thanks!

 

is this coming out soon ? any idea or should i get the wd 7200 rpm black 750gb...?

only thing holding me back on wd black is that is noisy and vibrates.... i expect/assume the hitachi 7k750 to be silent....

so wait for the 7k750 or get the wd scorpio black 750gb 7200....?

dont know what to do....

 

there's still no signs of the 7K750 for sale anywhere. And it wouldn't surprise me if won't come anymore since WD bought the Hitachi HDD division.

If you need 750Gb then just get the WD. Otherwise the 7K500 500Gb is very good.

 

^ probably will not see it soon as a single/sole-sourced factory that makes a critical semiconductor/chip for the Travelstar (not the Hitachi HDD factory itself) unfortunately went under in the recent disaster in Japan.

 

Or they could just silently show up as WD7500's.. if the Hitachi brand gets assimilated into WD.

 

guys any news on the 7K750 ?

 

no 10 characters

 

No news yet. I have been looking forward to it as an e-sata external drive.


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is the 320gb 7k500 a single platter drive? i didnt think so.....but its the most silent hard drive i've ever had

 

Could be single platter by now, because the Z7K320 (or whatever it's called) is also single platter.

If you post a HDTune it would be possible to see.

 

i have never used HD Tune before, i just downloaded it, what should i do?

 

ok i ran the benchmark, this is what i got, i've got a lot of other stuff running at the same time but i dont think it should affect it much because none of them are hdd intensive i reckon


HD Tune: HITACHI HTS725032A9A364 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 5.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 99.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 67.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.5 ms
Burst Rate : 120.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

 

The performance looks like a dual platter 7K500 drive. It makes sense though, even as a dual platter drive the 7K500 is relatively quiet.

 

my little test Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 (750GB)

[mikroTEST] Hitachi 7K750 2,5" 7200RPM - dla cichofili - Forum PCLab.pl

maybe help

 

Wow it's looking good. Thanks for posting. Can you run HDTune Pro random access benchmark and Crystal Disk Mark please?

 

wow...!!!

is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 (750GB) now on sale and available for purchase ?

thanks

 

In Poland - yes.

Now I'm at work. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

 

Going by the ATTO benchmarks: Sequential performance seems above WD. Small file performance seems below. I think WD will be the faster drive for OS.

C4IT for 4C ??750GB?WD Scorpio Black
Maxit Online :: Max Value Ultimate Tech

 

Tests done on Windows XP (emulated sector 512), so the HDD does not fully exploit its capabilities (I think so).

Standard is a sector of 4096 (supported by Win7), but the license does not intend to buy at the moment.

WD Black unfortunately, it is louder - this was the main reason for buying Hitachi.

 

Yes I think that's going to be the big benefit over WD: silence.

These drives are already available on Ebay with international shipping. Search for 7K750

 

Done (Windows XP 32-bit, emulated sector 512)





Edit: HD Tune PRO v4.61

short


normal

 

Yay. Hong Kong means I'll get it in a couple days too.

 

Thanks a lot. Is there any way you can test it in Windows 7?

The way it's looking right now there's no point in buying this drive.

 

This would entail the removal of a partition, format to 4k and installing the system. At present, unfortunately, is not an option. Wait until someone else test it.

P.S. Win XP (with all installed programs) from the start button to login screen, loading in 38sec.

 

will this be avialable in the rest of the world soon like america and europe ?

 

I'm 99% sure.

 

still not here
...

a I see its on newegg

 

I just benchmarked my new Hitachi 7K750 in Windows 7. Check the link in my Sig.