Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 500GB vs WD Caviar Black 1TB vs Hitachi Deskstar 1TB

First off, yes I realize I'm comparing desktop HDD to a notebook HDD. However, I was just surprised to see that the Hitachi 2.5" benchmarked almost as well as the WD Caviar Black 3.5".

I thought the WD Caviar Black 1TB was supposed to be one of the best performers? I originally purchased the WD for my desktop build, but wasn't impressed by it's performance at all, so I decided to benchmark it. I picked up another HDD last night, Hitachi Deskstar 1TB (I think it's 7k1000.C) and a Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 500GB 2.5" for my laptop since they were both on sale. All HDDs mentioned are 7200 RPM. I ran each test several times and took the best one.

I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but the WD is my primary drive and is partitioned into 2. Both WD and Hitachi 3.5" have approximately 30% capacity. The Hitachi 2.5" is the primary drive on my laptop and is also partitioned into 2 and is at 25% capacity. I still a noob when it comes to computers, so maybe I'm missing or overlooked something?

If I am, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to return this WD Caviar Black HDD ($99) and purchase another Hitachi Deskstar ($69).

WD Caviar Black 1TB 3.5"


Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5"


Hitachi Travelstar 500GB 2.5"

 

wow... the burst rate for desktops is so high... almost 2 times that of notebooks... wonder why.

 

Without actually installing 'your' default install on both drives, you won't know which actually works faster for you. But, according to those benchmarks, the Hitachi is the one to keep in your system, based simply on the access times.

Can you post the Random Access Read times for them? Also the Random Access Write times would give you a better indication which is the better drive. Unfortunately, for the Write tests, the drives must be completely empty for HD Tune to run on them.

 

I'd rather not empty the hard drives after having to install windows and download drivers about a dozen times this week. But here are some RA read benchmarks I ran the other day.

Hitachi Deskstar 1TB



WD Caviar Black 1TB



Hitachi Travelstar 500GB



Edit: okay, got rid of HP Protect tools and all is well now

 

The IOPS scores for Travelstar 7K500 seem to be missing.

 

corrected, uploaded the wrong image

I ran another read test and here's what I got
min - 43.1
max - 104.2
avg - 80.4

access time - 16.6
burst rate - 156.3

 

Wow the Hitachi 7K500 is performing very well now. Much better than the numbers I've seen before. I wonder what caused the difference. Maybe new firmware, maybe it's your system/OS.

Could you re run the IOPS benchmark for 7K500 with HDTune 3.5?

Here's some comparison:
7200.4.


WD1600BEKT

 

short stroked

 

Yeah, I did it in short stroke for the 2 desktop HDDs since I wasn't really familiar with what it was. Figured, I should do the same for the laptop HDD to make a more fair comparison. Can't run anymore tests on the WD Black 3.5" since I returned it yesterday.

I'm extremely happy with the performance of the Hitachi HDDs though (both desktop and laptop). I ended up putting 2 Hitachi Deskstar 1TB HDDs in the desktop and 2 Hitachi Travelstar 500GB HDDs in the laptop. Since my desktop is a new build, I've been transferring some large files back and forth. With the WD and Hitachi setup, a 138GB file was transferring at an average of ~65-70MB/sec. With the Hitachi and Hitachi setup, the 138GB file is transferring at an average of ~90-95MB/sec. Plus they consistently run about 5 degrees C cooler.


Phil, I ran 3.5 several times and it consistently gave this reading.