Hitachi VS Western Digital?

Hey,

I recently ordered a 200gb Hitachi SATA Notebook hdd for my Toshiba A100 but I've just been told that its out of stock but if I don't want to wait another week for it I can have a 250gb Western Digital. So is there any advantages of having a Hitachi over a Western Digital? They are both 5400RPM with 8mb cache.

Thanks,
Michael

 

I heard that Hitachis are better.

 

I would jump on the 250gb 5400rpm drive by western digital, it will be slightly faster than the 200gb 5400rpm drive by Hitachi.
If you really want the best performance, see if you can get the 320gb 5400rpm drive, as that has a much higher data density and data throughput than the 200gb and 250gb 5400rpm drives.

K-TRON

 

hitachis are usually regarded the best overall. i can't say from experience. i would recommend the western digital scorpio though. the higher density will net you a slight performance increase and it should be pretty darn quiet. or you can even do what k-tron said, for even a slightly higher boost in performance.

 

Im a WD fan, they are always silent and I have yet to have one die on me. I consider the big brands nearly the same for general purpose but there are a few specific models here and there that another company does not have a clone of.

My desktop for example has the 640gb 3.5" drive from WD to my knowledge its the only drive that has 2x320gb platters so its ultra data dense thus making it super cool & quiet and giving it great performance (over 88mb/s average on my test with like 120mb/s peak)

I have the 250gb 2.5" WD drive in my laptop and again cool & quiet I could not even hear the hdd running when it was outside of my laptop running a benchmark unless I put it up to my ear.

 

Ok thanks for all your help,

Sounds like Western Digital are as reliable as the hitachi's so I'll go for that. Yay another 50gb

 

Well hold on a sec I've used laptop drives from both companies so let me add my two cents. My laptop shipped with a 100 GB Travelstar, which at the time was one of the fastest 2.5in 5400rpm drives. I have been running out of room on it even when I never dreamed I'd come close to filling it. In march there was a deal on the 250 GB WD Scorpio and I jumped on it. I wanted 7200 RPM but for the money the Scorpio was a much better deal. Also the largest 7200 RPM drive was 100 GB so it was a lateral move at best. The Scopio is definately faster, but that's probably due to the huge jump in data density. The WD was definately overkill for me, but the price was litterally like $20 more than the smaller 5400rpm drives I was looking at. Oh this is for PATA so I don't know how things approximate with SATA, but I doubt there is a massive amount of difference besides interface speed.

Hitachi Attributes: Runs cool but is audibly loud. The Hitachi has a bit of a hum or whine when the drive is idle and a distinctly louder hum when the platters are spinning. I could hear both unless my fan was under max load and that still didnt drown it out. This maybe because Acer didn't have the absolute best sound proofing, but the Hitachi is still louder. I think it naturally generates less heat and thus is easier for the same laptop to disperse it's heat.

Western Digital Attributes: Run practically silent but runs warmer. There is added heat up on the front of my laptop, where the HD bay is. I say it's a good 2 to max 5 degrees warmer. It's not hot, it's warmer. I wish I had some temperature readings to back this up. I would almost never notice the heat comming directly from the HD unless it was a very hot day outside (and I was using it for several hours and there were a lot of read/writes) or if it had been running like at least a day (and there was a lot of read/writes). Still though, it's eerie how quiet it is.

The companys are about even, I tend to rate Hitachi a little higher for consistantly having better performance at the same rpm and size. I think it boils down to: Can you put up with a bit more noise or a bit more heat? This is where someone is suppose to butt in "But Seagate drives run cool and silent AND have a longer warrenty. Why don't you mention them?" Yeah they are. It also seems their quality has come down in the last year or two because the moved manufacturing and slashed manufacturing costs. I'd wait for them to iron out those kinks. The warrenty's nice, but more people are actually using it. I dont want to take the risk of losing stuff and being a guinea pig for them to fix their formerly mature technology. I'm guessing another product year or two.

Edit: I bought the drive a couple weeks before it was determined that the Ferrari battery charging fiasco was not fixable without far too much money. I thought about returning the drive and eating the restocking fee, but I decided against it. It's the largest PATA laptop drive , afterall. What am I gonna do, downgrade for more money? The laptop, even if it's relagated to a desk, needed a bigger HD. Or me to buy another external.

 

The 250gb WD is what I have and its really cool, so the heat issue can be really dependent on your laptop I suppose. My hand sits right ontop of the HDD with nothing more than a small bit of plastic from the Hdd and my hand and its just slightly warm. Actual readings..... let me run a benchmark and brb.


Here you go check it out 42c seems cool to me:



Gotta remember something like noise and performance are pretty much a constant but heat is variable alot depending on the enviroment and also even how you have the hdd setup (page file, indexing, ect)

 

Yes well it sounds like I choose the right decision in going for the Western Digital for no added cost. The extra 50gb should come handy although with the external hard drive enclosure I've brought for the old hard drive brings me to a whooping 300GB lol

 

My uncle works at hitachi, Ive actually got to tour the company.. Good stuff. Even got a complementary flash drive.

 

Good to hear you grabbed an external enclosure for the old one.

Thanks Vicious. I think the biggest variable is that my laptop is better designed at getting rid of heat from the CPU and GPU than the hard drive bay

 

Anybody who wants to monitor their HDD temp here is a link to NHC (free) it will do that and much more.

 

Sorry if this is off-topic, but i gladly recommend you seagate. I have a 100gb one in my packard bell and it's virtually silent, fast and rarely hits 40c.

 

that NHC thing looks great, I'll install it once my new hard drive gets here

 

ive got a hitatchi on my gateway and Western digital on my bro acer laptop. il admit hitatchi is slightly noisy, i can hear the access and stuff, but its not a bother, then again the WD makes much more heat, lol its a give and take. but its still a hard drive.

 

yeah It always seems to be that way when it comes to computers sometimes I wonder what would happen if all the big companies worked together and like the heat saving technology of say hitatchi and combined it with the quietness of Western Digital

 

My WD 320gb 5400 is noisier than any Hitachi drive I've owned

 

really? everyone else has said that hitachi's are louder.

 

every drive is different and everyone's perception differs as well - what is loud to one might be quiet to another.

 

@darkmikey: when I first got the WD I posted here about the noise, including that it is noisier than my Hitachis, and just about every answer said the WD noise was normal.