Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K3000 Hard Drive, an Alien-View"This here is not a review, but an Alien-View."Despite carrying the infamous Deskstar brand, Hitachi has become one of the most reliable manufacturers of magnetic (rotational) hard drives today - in spite of the very recent acquisition by Western Digital. The Deskstar brand was nicknamed the "Deathstar" when IBM was producing this model several years ago, before their hard drive department was acquired by Hitachi - yet the name still carries more notoriety than even the Barracuda of today.
This review will compare the 2TB version of the Deskstar 7K3000 series by Hitachi against one of the most popular drives to hit the market in the past three years - particularly the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB.
(The one on the right is the Hitachi 2TB drive - note its sexy blue PCB underside!!)
(And the one on the left is the Caviar Black, of the dull green ancestry)
The Hitachi 2TB 7K3000 drive boasted the highest-density 667GB platters for most of last year, when the rest of 2TB drives used 4-5 platters rather than 3 as this one. It even features higher-density platters than the 3TB version which uses five 600GB platters.
This specific drive is still one of the most attractive 7200rpm 2TB drives when it comes to several features that other drives currently on the market do not offer: 3-year warranty, relatively high overall reliability due to consumer reports, 64MB cache, only 3 platters of high density for faster sequential reads and writes, better compatibility with WinXP and legacy BIOS motherboards, and an attractive price tag. The fact that it uses only 3 platters means that the drive has less moving parts and heads, which usually translates to lower internal friction or heat output affecting operating temperatures, less noise due to less moving parts, and higher overall durability.
HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) provided a data sheet with some specifications for the 7k3000 series, here:
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/te ... 000_ds.pdfHowever, many still wanted more specific information as to the number of platters used. More importantly, many owners felt betrayed by a hard drive utility program reporting only 32MB cache rather than 64MB as Hitachi stated. The good news that will finally put this suspicion to rest is that the specific utility program, CrystalDiskInfo, was updated to version 4.6.2, and now discloses the buffer size as "Unknown" - shown in the image below:
Furthermore, AIDA64 correctly states the drive to have 64MB "Buffer Size":
However, while AIDA64 states that the drive has 4 disks (or platters), it mentions 7 heads. This was confusing for me, leading me to think that it uses 7 sides (3.5 platters). So I did as much research as possible on this. A nifty hard drive benching/info program, HD Tune, was actually able to give clear indications - proof enough - as to how many platter sides the drive actually uses. First, before diving into the details, here's a snapshot of the hard drive information shown by HD Tune:
(by the way, like CrystalDiskInfo, it shows "N/A" for buffer size..)
Then here's some basic (default) read test measurements done by HD Tune:
(a lot of information is shown here - note the high access time that's as bad as some 5400rpm drives)
Now, to show how HD Tune can actually give some clues, I'll post a couple instructions on how to do this - first, go to the settings and change it from "partial" to "full" here, so that there's a more thorough testing of the drive:
Then place a check mark in the box for "Short Stroke" and set it to 3GB, so that you can clearly see the repeated patterns where it alternates between each platter sides:
Since each platter side would be tested on a slightly different physical location, we'd be seeing slightly different measured speeds for each of the 6 sides, as shown here:
Above, the pattern repeats in cycles of 6 different levels, overall. Again, this is a clear indication as to 6 different platters being measured as the program gauges the performance of the overall hard drive, from the beginning to the end (while testing all of the platter sides).
Therefore, I could safely assume that the drive is using only 3 disks and 6 sides rather than 4 and 7 as AIDA64 reported.
So far in this review, two of the most controversial issues concerning this Hitachi drive have been resolved, hopefully satisfying all of the user-review concerns over at Newegg.com
(
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145473 )!
Unfortunately, there is yet a 3rd controversial issue - the access time. I'll be comparing some things against the 7200rpm 1TB Caviar Black to see how the access time differ and how it affects things.
Looking at HDTach (compatibility set to WinXP SP3 so it would run under Windows 7):
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
compared against the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB:
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
The Caviar Black boasts a 12.1 random access time, which is a lot better than Hitachi's 15.5ms. The average read is still roughly 35% better in favor of Hitachi's, regardless.
Using ATTO:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
Compared against the Caviar Black:
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
Overall, the Hitachi drive is considerably faster, but for the small file sizes ranging from 0.5 KB to 2.0KB, we can see that the Western Digital 1TB drive is quite a bit faster - like a good 7200rpm drive should perform with 12ms rather than 15ms access times.
On to AS SSD:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
vs:
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
As with the access times, the 4K and 4K 64-Thrd times suffer greatly with the Hitachi drive against the Caviar Black. There must have been a glitch with the 4K read time for the Hitachi, though, as there could have been something running in the background while the drive was being used as the main OS drive.
Plus CrystalDiskMark:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
vs:
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
Once again, the 4K times suffer for the Hitachi. The 5400rpm drives would not be much slower than this! Even the 512KB chunk loses out to the Caviar Black for the write time, and is barely any faster with the read time.
Then to AIDA64's benchmark read suite:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
vs:
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
This does not really show anything new here, but the numbers by AIDA64 are more "impressive" than what other programs show.
PCMark Vantage thankfully shows a real good deal as to how the drive performs in real-world scenario, as a typical user would normally experience with the drives:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
(WD Caviar Black 1TB)
In most typical usage scenarios, the Hitachi 2TB drive blows the Caviar Black 1TB drive out of the water. This is to be expected according to double the platter density size, but in a couple tests, the Hitachi barely wins out. Therefore, the access time is not all that important, which is why many users are quite content with their 5400 rpm drives, believing that the platter density size compensates for it.
The final comparison between the two drives is a large clone (copy-paste) of an unzipped .iso backup of Windows 7 Ultimate (3.01 GB in size, 874 files) from the drive onto the same drive itself-
Hitachi 2TB HD took 52 seconds
WD 1TB HD took 54 seconds
Unfortunately, it's not the best test because the Hitachi drive was the main drive with an active Windows partition on it, unlike the other drive which was completely left alone without any background processes interrupting it.
One speculation as to the reason why this drive in particular has around 15ms access time, which is as bad as some 5400rpm drives with 15-18ms access times, is that Hitachi was trying to make this drive less noisy.
It still appears to be just as noisy as the Caviar Black 1TB, though. Also, while it's still very cool to the touch while heavy usage - only reaching 32 degrees Celsius at the most, it still runs about 1-2 degrees hotter than the Caviar Black. Heck, 32 degrees still makes it one of the coolest drives that I have ever had my hands on (out of dozens of different 7200-15000rpm drives in my possession)!
Regarding RAID compatibility - although I have not tested it with RAID, many forum participants are reporting it to work just fine with RAID right out of the box.
For those who need to know, this drive uses the latest '800' firmware revision, while sporting the darker rather than lighter blue PCB color.
The overall "feel" of the drive is that it is a very well-rounded 2TB drive with respect to speed, heat, and noise. SMART error-checking diagnosis passed with flying colors, after heavy usage for a few weeks without any issues.
A 3-year warranty on this Hitachi drive is appreciated as other manufacturers are cutting their warranties to only 1 year, while still boasting roughly the same price tag. This drive is recommended - especially for those holding off on using SSD's in combination with larger and equally cheap "green" 5400-5800rpm drives.
- Here's a bonus benchmark by 7zip, although it's mainly limited by the CPU power (Ivy Bridge 3570K running at 4.5GHz), just for the heck of it:
(Hitachi 7K3000 2TB)
Hope you enjoyed this review! Please spread the Alien love if you liked it!
