Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 NCQ 320GB/500GB

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Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 instead of Western digital WD3200AAKS & Seagate 7200.10 ??

Im in the market for a new drive, ive not decided yet on 320GB or 500GB.

Ive scoured the forums last night and there is a lot of recomendations for either the: Western digital CaviarSE16 WD3200AAKS or the Seagate 7200.10 range.

Ive not seen anyone mention the Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 range at all and im wondering if there is a reason as they are priced well on 'this week only'

On the storagereview site I have seen this round up.




And shows the Hitachi as best with the Samsung as runner up.
 
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The Seagate and WD AAKS drives come out on top in the HDTach/HDTune tests, the Hitachi is a shade behind but there is a body of evidence which suggests that the Hitachi is good in a real world scenario.

Looking at the prices at the moment the Hitachi is a pretty good deal, especially the 500Gb one. Reliability wise they're good too, I've had probably 15+ IBM/Hitachi drives over the years and the only two that have died were my fault rather than the HDD.
 
I see a lot people on here running the HDTach/HDTune tests so I guess that is why they recommend the Western digital and Segates.

Im gonna get me a Hitach :)
 
I have 2 250s and a 160 and they are superb, I couldn't reccommend them enough, you won't regret it.

I think the other problem is that they still hold the stigma of the old deathstars from years ago and are seen as less reliable than the WD and Seagates.
 
Devious said:
I see a lot people on here running the HDTach/HDTune tests so I guess that is why they recommend the Western digital and Segates.

Im gonna get me a Hitach :)

Why Hitachi??

i'm a supporter of Hitachi. but HD TUne and HD Tach shows that WD and Seagate 7200.10 perform better.. kinda hard for me to justify buying them...
 
Amp34 said:
I think the other problem is that they still hold the stigma of the old deathstars from years ago and are seen as less reliable than the WD and Seagates.

I was thinking that, the old IBM's were known to die quite often.


naro said:
Why Hitachi??

i'm a supporter of Hitachi. but HD TUne and HD Tach shows that WD and Seagate 7200.10 perform better.. kinda hard for me to justify buying them...

Well HD TUne and HD Tach are low level synthetic benchmarks and 'apparantly' dont reflect real world speed unlike the PCmark scores in which the Hitachi wins.

I doubt there is much between them speed wise really, I just wondered if there was a reason why the Hitachi was never recommended on this forum before i bought one.

I also found this quote on the storagereview site which sounds good for the Hitachi.

StorageReview said:
There's three new drives at 320GB capacity point:
Hitachi T7K500 320GB (2 platters)
Western Digital WD3200AAKS (2 platters)
Samsung T166 320GB (2 platters)

The old ones include:
Western Digital WD3200xx (3 platters)
Seagate 7200.10 320GB (2 platters)

I consider the three newcomers welcome. T166 has been widely accepted by SPCR forumists due to it's extremely nice idle noise level. Samsungs are not excellent performers and T166 might even be more "Samsung-like" than previous drive generations. There's some end-user reports reporting lethargically slow access times both AAM enabled and disabled. Some samples seek a bit faster, though. Real-life performance might still be average (only proper benchmarking will tell).

WD3200AAKS is a wild card which might also prove silent in use and is likely faster than T166. This guess is based on WDs habit to make drives which are quite fast in real-life performance (only a tad below Hitachis). Previous WDs had quite impressive server performance.

T7K500's 500GB variant performs quite identical to 7K500, according to SR's performance database (no official review yet written). (7K500 is still best drive for real-life desktop performance. Now it has to share it's lead with T7K500.) Don't know how 320GB variant performs...

Of course there's the 7200.10 which excels in low-level benchmarks. Too bad they are not as superb in real-life. If they only knew how to optimize their firmware there'd be much to gain.

I would probably go for Hitachi if they're cheap where you're living. Samsungs might also be cheap but I'm not sure about the performance. Those Samsungs are pretty ideal for some PVRs and such but intensive use...
I wouldn't outrule WD either, depending on the price difference H vs. WD. And I might consider even a Seagate if the price difference was just few bucks. 2 years of additional warranty is not be worth much (HDDs are unlikely to die during 4th and 5th year anyway).
 
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