New Hitachi Travelstar 5k250 arrives

Ordered from Zipzoomfly for $220, and here is a quick HD Tune result:


I'm happy with the performance. It is faster than the 7200rpm 7k100 (although not as faster as the new 7k200) and 5400rpm means longer battery time, and this HD is very very quiet.

 

Wow! That's a really great result for a 5400 rpm drive!! Very nice.

 

Very nice results for a 5400RPM drive. The access time is 17.6 ms - about average for modern 5400RPM drives it seems. My 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hitachi got a 16.3 ms time:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8127&d=1183926216
The difference in access times is not large though. I'm not sure if that would be noticeable in real life or not.
The 250GB has much higher data transfer rates though. As posted, great results for a 5400RPM drive.

 

Hi. I just received one too..performance is excellent ...but does your 5K250 makes a random clicking noise too?

cheers

 

I think that is just a Hitachi thing. I had an old 60GB Hitachi that always made seemingly random clicking noises.

 

How about u get this for $160, and crack it open?

 

Why not? You will get a free enclosre for your old HDD. It should be the WD2500BEVS inside since that's the only 2.5" 250GB being produced by WD.

I attach the HD Tune result for the WD in case you haven't seen it. It may be fractionally slower than the Hitachi 250GB.

John

 

Yes. I noticed the same clicking noise too (it only shows up when the HDD is not doing busy reading/writing). At first I though I got a defect one. Since it was in the 30-day period, I called Zipzoomfly and they sent me a NEW one. But the second one also makes the same clicking noise, so I guess it is normal (or a common problem for 5k250). I don't know if turn on the acoustic manager will help.

btw, my 2-year old Hitachi 400GB SATA HDD also has similar noise (even louder) since the first day it arrives, but it seems working well.

 

I had that clicking sound since day one but with another Hitachi; so probably it's normal on Hitachi HDs... or not. 8 months later my Hitachi was damaged and Asus replaced for a new... Seagate.

 

the WD sure is slower but for $60 less i think its worth it! only problem is it will void ur warranty!!!

 

Well, I decided to return my 5K250 and see if I can get a refund
I've owned a lot of 2,5 drives (including 7K100) and none of them made such strange clicking noise.
I think I'm going switch to the samsung or the fujitsu 250 GB 5400models.

 

Be forewarned that the Samsung HM250JI had compatibility problems with the Intel 945 chipset. However, this may now be fixed. I can't check because I sent mine back and got the WD2500BEVS, which is also very quiet and cool.

John

 

Yeh get the WD for $160! there know for reliabiliy, and there pretty quiet!

 

hmm, As far as I can tell the WD used in the enclosure has only 2mb cache while the one sold by it self, the WD2500BEVS, has 8mb of cache.
Dont know how much this will affect the overall speed, but it must have some impact on the performance.
I guess its safe to assume its the same drive, but WD is saving some money by putting less cache in the usb version,
where I guess you would not notice anything, as usb2 is the bottleneck..or?

any thoughts?

 

What is average temp on the 250gb hitachi? My WD2500BEVS gets 38 idle.

 

Is the difference in cache for the passport drive and the retail drive true? Can somebody confirm please?

 

See this thread about the WD passport.

John

 

Looks good for a 54 drive, but still prefer the 7k200

 

Tom's Hardware have looked in depth at the 5k250 and 7k200.

John