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Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

If you are looking for the single biggest desktop hard disk drive you can find, then you have found it. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 is the biggest hard drive on the market at this time.

Features

• 500GB storage capacity
• SATA
• 8MB buffer

One notable thing about this drive design is that it only comes in 500GB. Usually a single design will come in a variety of sizes. This disk has only 1.

Not that its a down point, with 500GB of capacity spread over 5 platters, its enough to satisfy even the most space hungry of users.

This humungous drive runs very hot, up to 62° C. However it does very well in tests and gets good points for access times and transfer rates. It boasts 48MB/s read/write transfer performance.

Its data transfer performance is the best amongst the Hitachi SATA drives, except for the T7K250 which has a higher maximum transfer.

It’s I/O performance puts it in the mid level of hard drives. Hard disks with NCQ outdo the levels reached by this drive, so it would be nice to see that added. It’s transfer bandwidth is high, but doesn’t really translate into much higher speeds overall.

Despite its very average figures, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 did very well in real world situations. It boasted actual file writing speeds that put it near the head of the class, and was the fasted in “XP startup” test.

Not only is this a very large drive, but it is a very capable one. It’s a great combination to see real world performance with large capacity. You won’t need to upgrade for a while.

In summary…
Pros

• Good real world performance
• Extra large storage capacity

Cons

• Runs quite hot

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB Hard Drive

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

The DiamondMax 80GB is a slightly older model from Maxtor and was the first hard drive to be offered by them.

This model came in sizes up to 200GB. It’s not the fastest around anymore, but is still worth a mention as it does a very good job anyway.

One of the nice features of the drive is that it comes with fluid dynamic bearings making it much more quieter in use than its traditional ball bearing breathren.

Its features are

• 8MB of cache
• SATA interface
• fluid dynamic bearings

In testing it doesn’t perform too badly. Although it does slightly underperform it successor the DiamondMax 10 it does a good job against it’s bigger 250GB brother. The DiamondMax outperforms it by about 10% or so.

In terms of raw performance modern drives have taken a fairly smooth increae in speeds, often to do with the compactness of data on the drive as well as speeds of the platter and things like NCQ.

It’s overall I/O performance is cetainly at the lower end of new drives, but still enough for probably most peoples needs.

The interface bandwidth of this drive is quiet high. It falls in the upper half amongst its competitors. Unfortunately it has one of the slowest random access times, but still faster than the Seagate 400GB.

Overall this drive is a good look into the history of drives, but not great in terms of comparitive performance.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Thursday, October 6th, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 comes in a whole lot of different sizes. The 250GB model makes a good lot of sense as it combines a size that is good for todays uses as well as not being too expensive.

By changing the number of platters or only using parts of platters Hitachi gets a whole range of hard drive sizes from a single drive.

Basic specifications are as follows…

• 8MB buffer
• SATA interface

This drive is not the most current, having being superceded the 7K500 which strangely enough only comes in 500GB.

Despite this, it is not a bad performer. The maximum transfer speeds are more than that of the 7K500, while the minimums are similar with the write minimum being a little lower.

A very good all round performer, the drive will offer faster startup times for Windows XP which makes a difference with how long you have to wait.

File writing speed is a little bit of a letdown for this drive with its speed at actually writing files to the drive being slower than many of the other SATA drives on offer today. This is however not a major letdown and the good name and history of the drive make up for it.

It runs at a cool 49 degrees celcius, which is a little hotter than its younger sibling, but still at a reasonable level.

If shopping for one of these drives and the 250GB is a little on the pricey side, consider one in the same range just with a smaller capacity.

So, rounding up…

Pros

• Decent performance
• Good drive quality with a range of sizes
• 8MB buffer

Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 80GB 7200RPM SATA2 Hard Drive

Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 is a notable drive from this long time hard drive manufacturer. It is not the biggest hard drive on offer, and pretty small for a modern drive, but there are other benefits.

The main selling point of this drive is it’s price, at only around $60 dollars, it costs little compared to many of the high end offerings.

At a glance…

• 80GB drive size
• SATA2
• Single platter

The 80GB of space is provided by a single disk platter inside the drive. Inside a drive there are one or more disks (called platters). Bigger drives now have up to 5 platters inside. There is only so much that can be squeezed onto a platter with current technology so upping the number of platters is the current solution for large size drives.

SATA2 is also something unusual for a drive of this size. Mostly newer and bigger drives offer this technology, but even then it really makes no difference. Most hard drives can’t even deliver enough to fully utilise the 150MB/s bandwidth of SATA let alone the 300MB/s of SATA2. Still a nice extra though.

In terms of it’s actual performance its midfield. Nothing too spectacular and no major letdowns.

Amongst modern drives it boasts of average everything. Average I/O, access times and write transfer. However, it does boast a high bandwidth over its connection of 118MB/s. It’s file writing speeds fall only slightly behind it’s bigger brothers.

Another great feature is that it runs very cool.

Some modern drives like the Western Digital Raptor drives run very hot and actually need cooling. At only 41 degrees Celcius it will keep your computer’s insides cool.

Overall a good bargain

Pros

• Runs very cool
• Easy on your pocket
• SATA2 technology

Cons

• Small storage size compared to other modern drives

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

The increase in speed over old style IDE drives is astonishing. The extra speed given by the SATA interface as well as the performance increase with 7200RPM disk rotation makes everything on the computer run that much faster. Just what I like.

I got a pair of these hard drives a few weeks ago and am very pleased with them. Functionally they work great, giving no hassles so far. I actually have 2 of the predecessors to this drive, the DiamondMax 9.

I installed 2 of these drives on my new ASUS motherboard which I got while attempting to diagnose problems with my computer. Along with the motherboard came the ability to run 2 SATA hard drives in a RAID configuration.

With 2 drives setup in RAID 1, which mirrors the contents of one drive on the other, I am fairly sure that I can avoid the devastating loss of data which occured with my last hard drive crash.

The drives themselves are very quiet, they don’t make too much sound while operating except for the occassional low level grinding sound. One other strange noise made by the disks is when the power is turned on or off. I can’t explain the noise but it sounds like a quick burst of that slight grinding sound.

Reviews and reports on these drives are good. They were my second choice over a Western Digital drive, but I am more than happy.

Advantages of this drive include

• Fast rotation, common nowadays
• SATA for fast speeds
• Those great, thin SATA cables
• Ability to use the traditional power plug, instead of SATA power
• Quiet operation

In conclusion, I have had no regrets with this drive, and I don’t expect to need to upgrade any time soon.

Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM SATA-150

Monday, August 15th, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

Enterprise level speed and performance hard drives are now available in the consumer market. The Western Digital Raptor sets new levels for performance in a drive that is intended for the high level everyday computer.

This drive is the first of it’s kind to provide 10000RPM platter (the plates inside the hard drive) speeds to the SATA drive market.

Drives of this speed have been reserved for SCSI drives for servers and in corporations. The problem was that those drives were prohibitively expensive and always required a special SCSI card to use them.

So how much does this drive improve on current drives?

First the standard specs:

• Name: Western Digital Raptor
• Size: 74GB
• Spindle speed: 10K RPM
• Buffer memory: 8MB
• Average read seek speed: 4.9msec
• Average write seek speed: 5.9msec
• Interface: Serial ATA-150

The speed of these drives is really fast compared to other drives. The very low seek times and connection speed allow it to transfer nearly 50% more than a 7200RPM disk, also over a SATA connection.

The drives are quiet, especially in light that older 10000RPM SCSI drives were very noisy, these make about the same as a 7200RPM. They also don’t produce much heat, at least compared with a 7200RPM again, but don’t stack them directly over each other.

At around 200 bucks this drive is still very expensive, you can get a slower drive of the same size for around $65, also with a SATA-150 interface.

The main reason for the high speed is the newer and more advanced technology. There is always a premium for having the newest thing, and these are out of the ordinary in terms of their speed.

Due to the high price I would recommend them only if intensive hard drive use, like video editing is something you do all the time. I would still want a second large storage drive for space. Though the Raptor is big enough for my uses if it isn’t enough for yours, a second big one for storage is a good idea.

This drive really is fast, it’s just up to you if you want to fork out so much money, but the speed increases will definitely put a little grin on your face.

Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA-150 Hard Drive with NCQ

Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

This drive is a newer drive from Seagate, who are well known in the hard drive industry. This drive will certainly set some high standards in terms of speed.

This drive utilises SATA-150 a newish technology which aims to speed up the information stransfer between to and from the hard drive.

It has a 7200RPM rotation speed. Although not the fastest, when you compare it to some of the 10,000RPM offerings, which usually appear on SCSI drives 2 times the price or more. It’s also a darn sight better than the standard 5400RPM which was usual for drives for quite a while.

It has a low seek time of under 9.5 seconds and average latency of 4.16 seconds.

All of these things combined result in a drive which is very fast. Compared to the average hard drive you will see a marked increase in performance.

But the most special thing about this drive is NCQ. NCQ stands for Native Command Queuing. What this does is to maximise performance of the drive by dynamically deciding which things need to be read in which order. As drives are just large discs rotating, if the read/write head has to wait for the drive to spin the whole way round, it takes longer to perform the operation. What native command queuing does is it allows other operations to be place ahead of that one so they can be performed as their part of the disc spins under the head. For a detailed spec you can have a look at this whitepaper on the subject.

With all this technology, this drive will certainly impress in terms of speed and reliability. If you are looking to spruce up your gaming performance or do lots of hard drive intensive work like video or audio editing, this drive is for you.

Maxtor 120GB ATA-133 5400RPM Hard Drive

Saturday, April 23rd, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

Maxtor is a long time name in the hard drive business. Most of it’s offerings are reliable and can do the tasks they are designed for well, if not great. This hard drive is not exception.

Of course the greatest feature of this drive is it’s price. At around 50 bucks after rebate you get a lot of space for your money.

The drive is 120GB which is plenty of space for most people on cheap desktop computers. It connects to the motherboard using ATA-133 which is very fast, but still a tad slower than SATA which is a newer technology.

It’s spin speed of 5400RPM work against it, but not excessively so.

Reviews of this drive are positive. Most people found it to be easy to use with no hassles in installation.

A common report is that the drive is slow compared to other drives like Western Digital. This is not too surprising considering it’s fairly small 2MB of cache, which acts to store information on the way between drive and computer, usually speeding things up.

My recommendation is to use this drive as a secondary storage drive. If you plan to use it as a main drive where many applications will be accessing it at the same time, the slow speed will become apparent. But as a data only second drive this should be a minimal issue.

Overall a good drive for it’s price, just a little on the slow side.