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| by Misoprostol | April 25, 2007 | ||
| Hitachi 7K1000 Terabyte Hard Drive Review Introduction Hitachi is best known for their consumer electronics but it is their computer storage division that has developed something exciting; the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000, the world’s first 1TB desktop storage drive. The Drive Technical Specifications: Deskstar 7K1000
  Testing Methodology Each drive was prepared for testing with the following steps. 1. Each drive got a clean install of Windows, had drivers loaded 2. Each drive was then defragmented before running synthetic tests 3. Supreme Commander and PC Mark 2005 were installed, and each drive was defragmented again 4. Real world benchmarks were then run Noise Level Unfortunately at the time of this review I don't have equipment at my disposal to give dBA readings on the drives, but I can say that subjectively the Hitachi 1000GB was the quietest drive of the bunch with the Seagate 320GB drive a close second. The WD Raptor 150GB was much louder than either of the other two drives, particularly while defragging or installing software. HD Tach Synthetic Results Hitachi 1TB  WD Raptor 150GB  Seagate 7200.10 320GB  HD Tune Synthetic Results Hitachi 1TB  WD Raptor 150GB  Seagate 7200.10 320GB  PC Mark 2005 Synthetic Testing XP Startup  Application Loading  General Usage  Virus Scan  File Write  PC Mark Overall Score  Real World Game Testing I used Supreme Commander to see if the hard drive would have an effect on loading times to start a round. The level loading time was started when I clicked Launch on an 8 player match versus 7 bots, and ended when the commander crashes into the ground to start the match. Supreme Commander Level Loading  Warranty It's evident that Hitachi is confident with the build quality of this drive and has backing this drive up with a 3 year warranty on the retail version, instead of the industry standard of 1 year. Well done Hitachi! Conclusion As you can see from the performance graphs above, all three drives are very close performance wise, with the WD Raptor and the Hitachi trading places at the top of the benchmarking charts. I can't stress how impressive this is due to the 7200RPM rotational speed of the Hitachi 1TB drive, and the 10,000RPM speed of the Raptor. The quiet operation, cool temperatures, and aggressive pricing of the Hitachi 1TB retail unit (est. $450cdn.) all have me eagerly looking forward to its release in the Canadian market. It's the current king of the hill in the high capacity storage market, and everyone else seems to have some catching up to do.   I'd once again like to thank our sponsor NCIX.com for providing this sample drive for benchmarking and testing purposes. Please feel free to discuss this review in our forum. LINK |
