Guide: Comparing Seagate Vs. Hitachi 7200 RPM 100GB Hard Drives

by Dustin Sklavos, California USA

INTRODUCTION

Nearly a month ago, I reviewed the Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 and decreed, ye verily, it is good. Today I return with its primary rival, the Seagate Momentus 7200.1.

It's no secret that the two biggest names in the notebook hard disk business right now are Seagate and Hitachi, and if you want pure performance, you go with either of these vendors. These two drives are the best of the best, and in most of the reviews I've seen online, the Seagate had a slight edge on the Hitachi. I'll be putting the two drives through their paces in real world situations as well as general use, and I'll condense the nonsense into something you can use.

You may want to see my previous review and my original hard disk guide to bring yourself up to speed on terminology, and to familiarize yourself with the Hitachi TravelStar 7K100.

THE SEAGATE MOMENTUS 7200.1

As of the time of the publishing of this article, the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 and the Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 can really only be found as OEM drives: as just the bare drive, sold in a padded box and antistatic bag, with no manuals or extras. While the package I received for the TravelStar 7K100 was a complete retail box, including an external USB enclosure (a very nice addition), I've been unable to find that retail box for purchase online. Likewise, I've been unable to find the Momentus 7200.1 in a retail package.

The two drives are fairly comparable, but there are some minor differences.

Hitachi has a very complete feature list. (view large image)

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Seagate's Momentus 7200.1 is missing two features the Hitachi has - Automatic Acoustic Management and Power-up in Standby - but also has a slightly larger cache. (view large image)

Storage capacity and rotational speed are identical between the two hard disks.

TESTING METHODOLOGY

The Seagate Momentus 7200.1 was tested against the Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 using the same methodology as in the previous review, and I have included benchmarks from the Fujitsu 4200rpm 100GB drive from that review for reference. All three drives were tested using my Gateway 7510GX laptop, the relevant specifications of which are as follows:

• Mobile Athlon 64 3700+ (2.4 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)
• 1GB PC2700 DDR RAM
• 128MB Mobility Radeon X600 (400MHz Core, 520MHz DDR Memory)

The drives themselves:

	Hitachi TravelStar 7K100	Seagate Momentus 7200.1	Fujitsu MHU2100AT
RotationSpeed	7200 RPM	7200 RPM	4200 RPM
Capacity	100 GB	100 GB	100 GB
Buffer	8MB Buffer	8MB Buffer	8MB Buffer
Connection Type	Parallel ATA	Parallel ATA	Paralell ATA

It's worth mentioning that the Serial ATA versions of the Hitachi and Seagate drives have more features, including Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

As in my last review, this one will be based more on perceptable, real world performance than just a series of benchmarks that mean next to nothing to the average laptop user.

To closer approximate the average user, each drive was formatted and partitioned identically with the following installed:

• Windows XP Professional SP2
• Omega Catalyst 6.2 Video Drivers
• Catalyst 6.3 Southbridge Drivers
• Doom 3 v1.3
• Stock Gateway Drivers for all other hardware
• ATI Tray Tools on startup
• Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition on startup

Additionally, they were configured to connect to the wireless network in my apartment on startup.

HDTUNE TESTS

This is the most widely used and respected hard disk benchmark on our site, and it's the one I opened with last time, so I'll open with it again. Hitachi and Fujitsu scores included from previous article for reference.

Fujitsu MHU2100AT HDResults

Your typical stock notebook drive, the Fujitsu MHU2100AT running at 4200rpm.(view large image)

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Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 HD Results

The Hitachi TravelStar 7K100, which mercilessly pulverizes the MHU2100AT in pure performance. (view large image)

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Seagate Momentus 7200.1 HD Results

The Seagate Momentus 7200.1, producing comparable performance to the Hitachi, if only slightly slower. (view large image)

I mentioned this in my original hard drive article and it bears mentioning again: the Hitachi absolutely screams. In terms of pure performance, the TravelStar 7K100 is the absolute fastest hard disk you can buy for your notebook.

But let's break down the numbers, compare, and figure out exactly what we're dealing with here. I'm going to omit the Fujitsu as, frankly, it's clear the Hitachi and Seagate are much faster, and it's not worth measuring how unspeakably better they are.

	Hitachi	Seagate	Difference (Seagate - Hitachi)
Minimum Transfer Rate	26.1 MB/s	25.3 MB/s	-0.8 MB/s
Maximum Transfer Rate	52.9 MB/s	46.3 MB/s	-6.6 MB/s
Average Transfer Rate	41.2 MB/s	37.9 MB/s	-3.3 MB/s
Access Time	15.3 ms	15.2 ms	-0.1 ms
Burst Rate	77.7 MB/s	69.5 MB/s	-8.2 MB/s
CPU Usage	6.6%	7.0%	+0.4%

The smaller differences are within the margin of error; burst and maximum transfer rates aren't sustained and are more representative of "this is how fast it COULD go." If we're going to go by HDTune, the Seagate is slightly slower than the Hitachi, which was expected.

ACCESS TIMES

As before, boot time was measured with the Seagate and found to be by and large inconclusive. The system typically gets hung up on connecting to the wireless network or loading Norton. Outside of those situations, the Seagate and Hitachi are virtually indistinguishable.

I also measured loading time for the first level of Doom 3. Doom 3 is a very demanding game, and it loads a LOT of data off the hard drive. Even on snappier systems, loading Doom 3 can take a LONG time.

Doom 3Level 1: this game level was used to test load times from each of the hard drives(view larger image)

My old 4200rpm Fujitsu loaded the level in one minute and four seconds (1:04).
The Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 loaded the same level in twenty-six seconds (0:26).
The Seagate Momentus 7200.1 loaded it in twenty-nine seconds (0:29).

	Time to Load Level 1 of Doom 3
With Fujitsu 4200 RPM HD	1 min 04 secs
With Hitachi 7200 RPM HD	0 mins 26 secs
With Seagate 7200 RPM HD	0 mins 29 secs

I remember sitting there with the stopwatch waiting for it to load on the Seagate and going "oh God, the suspense is killing me!" But the difference in loading time is scarcely perceptible.

The last test I performed was a transfer of 28GB of data between partitions.

The 4200rpm Fujitsu finished the transfer in one hour and three minutes (1:03).
The Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 and Seagate Momentus 7200.1 tied at thirty-nine minutes (0:39).

	Time to Transfer 28GB of Data between partitions on HD
With Fujitsu 4200 RPM HD	1hour 3 minutes
With Hitachi 7200 RPM HD	39 mins
With Seagate 7200 RPM HD	39 mins

Marvel! As different as night and...later that night.

HEAT, NOISE, AND BATTERY LIFE

My poor Gateway has amazing performance, but battery life isn't its thing. After the Athlon 64 and the X600 have had their piece of the power pie, there's very little difference left for the hard drive to make. I've noticed no difference in battery life between any of these drives.

As for heat, the Seagate and Hitachi are actually pretty comparable, and their temperatures in regular use seemed more affected by ambient temperature of the room the notebook was in than by the drives themselves. The most amusing part is, of course, that these drives idled at lower temperatures than the 4200rpm Fujitsu did. Under load, they also both hit the same temperature, topping out at 52C.

And noise? I do have to credit the Seagate as being the quieter drive, but the difference is pretty nitpicky. If you put your ear up to the notebook while the drive is under load, the Seagate remains difficult to hear, while the Hitachi is a little easier to pick up. However, neither one can really be heard over the notebook's fan, let alone music.

IN PRACTICE

In practice, the drives feel pretty much the same. In fact, I'd venture to say that if you had one in your notebook, and someone randomly switched them without telling you, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference (assuming the new one was properly imaged and blah blah blah).

Prior to writing this article and reviewing the Seagate, I was admittedly a little stressed. Both Hitachi and Seagate graciously provided me with their top of the line drives to review, and it's safe to assume they both wanted the good press their drives would likely earn.

You can imagine my relief when the drives performed nearly exactly the same, ceding extremely minor victories back and forth. There's no clear cut "winner" because 99% of users just aren't going to experience a difference between one and the other, but they WILL experience a difference going from a 4200rpm or 5400rpm to either of these drives.

But I do have to be honest; using these high end Seagate and Hitachi drives, I couldn't tell one from the other.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the review for the Hitachi TravelStar 7K100, I said Seagate had their work cut out for them trying to eclipse it. This has remained true, and Seagate was unable to eclipse the Hitachi. However, the Hitachi doesn't exactly eclipse the Seagate either, and I have to declare a draw.

What's important to note is, as I said before, either one will improve the performance of your system if you're still on a 5400rpm or 7200rpm speed hard drive.

In fine NotebookReview.com tradition, I'll list the pro's and con's of either drive:

	Hitachi 7K100 7200RPM / 100GB	Seagate Momentus 7200.1 7200RPM / 100GB
Warranty	3 year	5 year
Noise	Slightly louder	Slightly quieter
Speed	Slightly faster	Slightly slower

Six months ago, this battle would've been won based on price: Hitachi had better market penetration and their drive was a full $80 cheaper. But now? The biggest lead in price I've seen the Hitachi have is $20, and if you shop around you can find either one for about the same price. Notebook hard drive prices have tanked in the last six months; these two were fetching $300 price tags and can be had for less than $200 apiece now.

Ultimately, I can happily recommend either drive, and for you it's just going to be a matter of personal preference.

I'd like to thank Hitachi and Seagate for providing me with the opportunity to review these drives.

Pricing and Availability:

Other Articles by this Author

• 64-Bit and Dual Core Mobile Processors Guide
• Notebook Memory Guide
• Guide for New Notebook Technologies in 2006
• Notebook Hard Drive Guide
• Notebook Screen Guide

 

Thanks, I was trying to find a good 100GB 7200 RM for my upcoming V2000Z and this guide helped me decide.

I'll be going for Hitachi.

 

Good review. I have used both Seagate and Hitachi hard drives, and I am very happy with both.

 

I personally always stay away from Hitachi notebook HDs simply because they are just too audible for my taste (even when using the acoustic management tool). The db reading you see in reviews can be deceiving. You'll have to hear them in person to know for sure.

I live in a very quiet environment and can not stand any kind of computer noise (HD, fan, inverter buzz). The slight performance gain isn't worth the noise (for me) so I always stick with my favorite HD brand - Fujitsu. They are silent, fast and reliable. Too bad they take forever to hit the retail flow online when a new model comes out.

Seagate notebook HDs may be a bit quicker than some Fujitsu, but they are a bit louder too (I've heard some that were also silent though, so it will vary).

Toshiba notebook HDs used to be VERY loud - even louder than the Hitachi drives, but I recently got a hold of a 100GB 5400rpm (16mb Cache) drive and it is almost as silent as the Fujitsu.

So for me, it's acoustics first, then performance (a nice combo of both is ideal). I would rate Hitachi last on my list since I didn't 'feel' a significant performance gain and the access/seek noise was maddening (for me).

But, to each their own.

 

I have the SATA Hitach 100GB 7200RPM in my notebook, upgraded from an 80GB 5400RPM Samsung. Big difference - the Hitachi is much faster, especially in load times.

I read several articles comparing the Seagate and the Hitachi. The results were right along with what you got Pulp - Hitachi is slightly faster. Yes, it is a bit clickety, but I don't mind that as long as it delivers performance.

Yes, I've had Toshiba hard drives - they're junk heaps. Doesn't matter which model. Worst drives you can buy. Fujitsus are nice and quiet.

Nice article.

 

I would have liked to have seen a comparison between the new drives and a 5400rpm drive with 8 or 16MB of cache.

 

It's like NBR can read my mind. I was just looking to get one of these drives. Thank you for posting this nice little review. There is one thing that may put the Seagate ahead of the Toshiba in terms of which to buy; the warranty. Seagate backs their drives with an unrivaled 5 year warranty. It is nice to see a company so confident in their product that they provide that kind of guarantee. For me this is an important detail as I will be storing the results of my research on it and even though I'll do regular back-ups, you never know when that irreplaceable Nobel-prize-winning result may be lost due to hard drive failure.

 

So on my e1505 Dell that should be delivered today with a 100 gb 7200 hard drive, which hard drive will it be?

 

Good job Pulp. Takes some backbone to call a draw.

 

I appreciate it, but honestly, I'm not sure anyone could really tell the difference between these two, and most hardware review sites are pretty much liars. At the risk of completely shamelessly pimping NBR, what I like about this site is that it's almost designed in such a way to avoid precisely the kind of crooked **** most other review sites get away with. When the GeForce FX series came out way back when, nVidia made Kyle Bennett, the idiot editor of [H]ardOCP (URL withheld to avoid giving that miserable site any traffic), look like an idiot when it was revealed their drivers were cheating in 3DMark. He was pimping their products for ages and when they screwed up, he stuck up for them, and they left him eating dust. But NBR's different. 75% of the reviews are from regular pants users, people who already bought the notebooks and can't really be bribed.

End rant, start new one:

It's the great white lie of the whole computing industry, and the degrees between upgrades are so small that you NEED a synthetic benchmark to measure them, because just good old fashioned actually using the product yields next to nothing.

The difference between processor speeds in computers is really so infinitesimal that it matters to next to no one. 90% of users won't ever really push their processor. Most people just aren't really going to see the difference between 4200rpm and 7200rpm that often (though I certainly do when my machine hits the swap file). And people even on these forums sometimes seem to buy into the **** that you NEED high end stuff. You NEED a 7200rpm drive and you NEED an X700 or better, and that's a lie.

While desktop computers are easily upgradeable and a different breed entirely, really, I think the key to understanding notebooks and buying accordingly - be it buying a new notebook or just an upgrade - is looking at what you NEED and not what you WANT. I nearly picked up an 8510GZ because it had a faster hard drive and better video than my notebook, but I'm glad I kept my 7510GX, because it shaves a full hour off my video rendering time. Need vs. want, people.

Gonna uh...gonna get off my soapbox now.

 

Great review thanks. I got one thing to point out- Automatic Acustic Management is off by default on most drives- including my Hitachi so you could make 7K100 a bit quieter by enabling it (it increases seek times but doesn't chenge read/write speed). I wonder what the temperatures would be in Turion/Centrino notebook with the fan off most of the time. My 4200 Hitachi is 51*C idle with fan off and 46*C idle with fan on, so these two you tested will probably get warmer in notebooks like mine- still as mentioned- they will probably remain cooler than some of 4200rpm (including mine)

Regards

 

Good review and in place with the buffling option which 7200 to choose .

I'm suspecting segate high density drives will be much quicker for larger drives when they make them .

btw : Did you get at least to keep the drives ? ;-)

 

this review leaves me torn. on the one side, the higher speed of the hitachi interests me, but on the other side after having owned a rio karma (3 years old and still the greatest mp3 player known to man) i dont know if ill ever trust a deathstar again (and for those who dont know, the hardrive problems were 98% hitachi's fault

 

I bought a Seagate 100 (model 910021AS @ eBay) & a 80 GB SATA (98025AS @ newegg) over any other due to the 2 year longer warranty .
TY for the detailed review & HDTune screenshots.
When I figure out how to place screen shots here I could show what results I get on my Z71V-64MB.
Have noticed the 80GB (only 1 rec'vd & in use so far) seems to make a bit more noise if NB is not completely level. I only hear slight whir on boot up or during BM testing otherwise. Was a bit louder during OS install but that was probably actually the :asus: 8X DL DVD burner (TS-L532A) .

 

Hi Pulp - just sticking my head over the parapet to say cheers for the review! The time has come to replace the drive in my ageing PowerBook, and it was exactly what i needed. It's kind of cool that the two drives are so evenly matched - it means i can buy either and be happy about it! That said, i'm going to go for the Seagate, because of the two extra years of warranty. I have no idea if the rest of the machine'll last that long, of course ...

-- tom