Wee Hitachi 7k200 200GB 16MB cache!

Found a store with it in stock. Time to buy and upgrade! Although not cheap.

Currently have Hitachi 7k100 100GB but from what I can tell, it is slowly dying on me. It makes rather loud seek noises every once in a while so I don't store any important data on the drive. Oh and its out of warranty.

Was trying to decide to go with the Samsung/WD 5400 RPM 250GB drive or Seagate 7200 160GB. But now that I found a store with the Hitachi, going with that!

Compromise in storage, between 160 & 250 GB and the 16MB cache will be great, although since its going in a laptop probably won't be as beneficial as on a desktop.

This is SATA, in case someone wonders if its IDE or Sata

 

I'm sorry..that's laptopHD or desktop and if it's laptop HD, how much you pay for it?

 

I have 2 ordered in my notebook. Think about adding in a third and going Raid 5. These are 2.5" Notebook drives. They are normally about $250 each +S/H.

 

Err yeah it is a laptop based HD... 2.5". And price was $249

Wu Jen:
How do you put three 2.5" drives into your notebook? Or are you using an external array? I have seen some desktop replacement notebooks to have room for 2x 2.5" drives but not 3 drives.

 

I think this is one of the HDD's that have a slightly larger than normal height because it uses 3 platters vs 2, so it may not fit in some notebooks, mostly the ultra portables.

also because its 3 platters its not as data dense as the dual platter designed hdds out there, so the performance wont be as high.

Id have to dig back into the discussion we had on this from several weeks back to confirm this is the same hdd we were talking about, so you may want to look into it.

I got the WD Scorpio 250gb 5400rpm. I dont have my notebook yet so I cant test it but I would be a great opponent for you to test the speed of that drive against so we can see if the price/performance ratio is good or not.

 

I would hope its a 2 platter design... if not that means Hitachi is lying on their spec sheets.

Did brief research on it before putting in the order. Its 9.5mm, which is standard and 2 disk (platter) with 4 heads. Gleamed this from their drive specification pdf sheet.

 

Post some HDTune shots of this drive when you get it. I have been dying to see how this compares to the 7200.2 series.

 

My Blackhawk is a Clevo D900C (aka Sager 9260, Pro-Star 9191 etc) It has space for (3) 2.5" HDD's. I ordered mine from PcMicroWorks. 2 Reviews have been done on this site, here and here.
I plan on adding a 3rd drive myself and resetting my Raid 0 array to a Raid 5 array. I just hope these drives are good as Seagates 7200.2 drives.

 

It seems the 7k200 is available on the dell XPS models, but I couldn't find any retailer that carries this hard drives.
In fact I'm more interested in the 5k250 which was announced the same day with 7k200( I prefer capacity and battery life over performance ). Anyone knows when will the retail version of these drives be available?

 

Do they make retail versions of these Hitachi drives? Only type I've ever seen are OEM versions.

I do know they make retail versions of Western Digital 2.5" drives.

Should be receiving my drive tomorrow.

 

Where did u get this drive? Newegg.com usually sells lots of Hitachi (and other brands) OEM drives, but they have neither the 7k200 nor 5k250 in stock.

 

Battery life differences will be minimal, especially if you change the drive's power consumption settings (free ISO download from Hitachi's site). My old Dell Inspiron 600m lost about 7 minutes of battery life with the 7200 vs 5400 drive.

 

Is there a cheap adapter or somthing I can buy to hook my notebook hdd to my desktop just to get some performance numbers up for everybody?

I dont think buying an enclosure would be nessisary and they can be kinda pricey.

 

I bought my Hitachi 7k200 200GB OEM from mwave.com, they still had them in stock earlier today. But remember its pricey... new technology or rather new products of that type are never cheap...

I'd guess you are talking about a cheap adapter for IDE version? The Sata type hard drives can use the sata data/power ports of the desktops, so you can just plug it in... just gotta find a good way to mount it.

If you have IDE version there are adapters for that. I know my brother bought an 2.5" IDE > desktop IDE converter from Fry's Electronics in the past. Online wise, I have never tried looking for one so I can't really help you there. But they do make them.

The adapter basically allows the drive to hookup to the standard IDE connector. Meaning 2.5" Drive > Converter > Normal IDE cable.

 

zipzoomfly has the 7K200 for $299 while mWave has same model for $249 as of today

strangely, hitachi is shipping both a SATA II 3.0gb/s version in addition to a 1.5gb/s version. My Seagate 7200.2 had a pin which I removed in order to enable the 3.0 transfer rate - seems easier than making two different versions of the same drive.

 

I found for $239

 

The 7K200 uses the same 2 platter design as the 7K100, but with higher density platters, thus the 200 GB capacity. I believe the they share the same dimensions. The 7K200, to my knowledge, is not available in an IDE version, although the 7K100 is.

 

I've got two on order, fedex tracking number says they'll be here monday. both, including shipping for $445.

 

Nice! Hopefully you can download HFT (Hitachi Feature Tool) to manage AAM or perhaps your BIOS (I know Dells have this) does set the AAM for you (Automatic Acoustic Management I think - adjusts the noise produced by the HDD - seeks only - at the cost of a very marginal performance hit)

 

please let us know your first impressions. I am tempted to upgrade from my 120GB Seagate 7200.2 based on this review: http://www.barefeats.com/rosa05.html

 

I'm selling my PA speakers to get one of these. Newegg does have them now. though I will probably go with some other etailer to save on instate tax.

 

R.I.P. 7K200.

I am sad to inform you all that the 7K200 in my MBP has given up the ghost. I have tried several recovery programs and they have all so far failed. Now it's in a PC running SpinRite, which reports 16,000 hours left to completion and some physical drive damage, so it's safe to say the drive is simply fried.

I didn't do anything to make this happen - it just died while I was using email and web. Caused the entire OS X to freeze up like molasses to never start up again.

She was fast while she lasted... as a friend said: speed kills.



For those of you who have this drive: I recommend to do frequent backups.

 

Stuff happens, I'm sure it was slow and painful death, if you were able to monitor SMART or run a disk check utility once in a while you can catch it.

Happens with all drives.