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    WD Scorpio Black or Hitachi 7K320?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by pipspeak, Nov 3, 2009.

  1. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

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    I'm in the market for a bigger drive to replace a Travelstar 7K160 (actually a 7K320-160GB) in a Lenovo T400 and wondered what the verdict on the WD Scorpio Black and Hitachi 7.2K 320GB drives are. Both seem to get great reviews, so I'm thinking of simply deciding based on price. My key crtieria are for it to run as cool, quiet and energy-efficient as possible compared to the current 7K160.

    I'm also curious if there are any single-platter 250GB 7.2K drives out there yet. A single-platter drive would probably run cooler, faster and more energy efficient that a dual-platter 320GB drive and I would be happy to live with less storage to get a better overall drive.

    Also curious if it's worth going for a SATA-II drive (3.0 Gbps) versus my current drive that's the 1.5 Gbps version, or is it the case that no notebook is going to even come close to 1.5 Gbps speeds?
     
    pipspeak, Nov 3, 2009
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  2. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Supposedly there is a single platter drive from Hitachi (7K500) but it's still hard to find. Also, SATA/150 and SATA/300 don't matter for HDDs b/c as you said, no HDD can even saturate the former's bandwidth.
     
    sgogeta4, Nov 3, 2009
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  3. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    If you're concerned about cool and quiet, you may want to consider an SSD. Silent operation and low power consumption were just as important as performance when I decided to move to solid state drives. If you need a lot of space, though, it'll cost a lot...
     
    Commander Wolf, Nov 3, 2009
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  4. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

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    I'd love an SSD but sadly cannot afford the $600ish that a 256GB version would set me back!

    I really am torn between the two drive I mentioned... I'm inclined to get the Hitachi since I already have a version of the 7K320 in the laptop that's cool and quiet, but everywhere seems to be out of stock right now. And the WD does get rave reviews and wins most of the benchmark tests (even the WD Blue 5K500 does pretty well).

    I wish I could wait for the Hitachi 7K500 to become more available, but I want to get a new drive for a clean install of Win7... not sure how much longer I can withstand Vista with that Win7 disc sitting here...
     
    pipspeak, Nov 3, 2009
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  5. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

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    After reading more and more about the vibration issues with the WD, I ended up picking up a 7K320 for $60 from a local vendor with surplus. At that price I can't complain and will happily forgo the extra speed a 7K500 would give me :)
     
    pipspeak, Nov 4, 2009
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