Hitachi Travelstar 7k320

You've done it. You've finally filled up your laptop's hard drive, andyou're dying to add another few gigabytes of your favorite songs andmovies to your collection. You've got to get yourself a bigger harddrive, but for years an increase in size has meant a downgrade inperformance, making you hesitate to do so. Well sir or madam, there'sno need to drag your feet any longer. Modern drives today are not justbigger or faster than their predecessors, they're bigger and faster! Oryour money back*.

Hitachi Travelstar 7k320

Published October 20, 2008 at 04:36:46 PM, by Justin Wolfson

You've done it. You've finally filled up your laptop's hard drive,and you're dying to add another few gigabytes of your favorite songsand movies to your collection. You've got to get yourself a bigger harddrive, but for years an increase in size has meant a downgrade inperformance, making you hesitate to do so. Well sir or madam, there'sno need to drag your feet any longer. Modern drives today are not justbigger or faster than their predecessors, they're bigger and faster! Oryour money back*.

To prove this attractive sounding sales pitch, we took a brand newHitachi Travelstar 7K320 320GB 7200rpm and popped it into the LenovoSL400, which we recently reviewed HERE, and tested like mad.

To make the comparison meaningful, we looked back at the testresults from an older Hitachi 7K200 200GB. At the time that was one ofthe largest 7200rpm hard drives available. We were pretty sure ournewer model would still blow the 4200rpm Fujitsu that the older modelwas originally compared against out of the water, but we were morecurious to see if the increase in size caused any notable performancedifferences between our two 7200rpm units.

* I'd like to think I'm a funny guy, but our lawyers have instructedme that lawsuits are not funny. So just to be clear, this money backclaim was entirely fabricated to make a segue. It'd be nice though ifit was true, wouldn't it?

Design
A very slim standard looking laptop hard drive. Same size and feel as the Fujitsu.

Specifications
Capacity 320GB (2x160)Interface SATA 2.5" (mobile) (3gb/s)Spindle Speed(RPM) 7200Buffer Memory 16mbAverage Seek (ms) 12Average Latency (ms) 4.2Power 1.8W read/write, 0.2W standbyTrack-toTrack seek time (ms) 1.0Maximum External Transfer Rate (Mb/S) 150Data Transer rate on SATA up to 1136 mb/sDiscs/heads 2/4Operating Temperature (Celsius) 5-55 degrees CNon-Operating Temp. (Celsius) -40 to 65Shock, Operating: 2ms (Gs) 400Shock, Nonoperating 2ms (Gs) 1000Dimensions .37 x 2.75 x 3.93System SpecificationsModel Lenovo SL400Processor Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz)Front Side Bus 1066MHzLCD 14.1" WXGA+ (1440 x 900)Memory 2 GB PC2-5300 @ 667 MHz (MAX 4 GB)Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS 256MBOperating System Windows Vista Ultimate

Synthetic Tests
IOMeter 2006.07.27 is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterizationtool, originally developed by Intel. We run four different tests usingIOMeter, consisting of two different tests performed at both 100% readand 100% write. CPU utilization is also measured during each test. Toobtain an idea of CPU utilization, we averaged the read & writeutilization during each of the Maximum I/O and Maximum Throughputtests. This test would not run under Windows Vista.

Maximum Throughput: This test simulates maximum drive throughputusing 64KB packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both100% read and 100% write.Maximum I/O: This test simulates maximum drive I/O performance using512 Byte packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100%read and 100% write.

WorldBench6 is a subsystem-level benchmark that measures theperformance of a PC's graphics, disk, and video subsystems in a Windowsenvironment. We ran the Disk Transfer Rate test.

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random accessread/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives(ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom devicedrivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layersof software as possible and get as close to the physical performance ofthe device possible.

HD Tune is a hard disk utility which measures transfer rate, access time, CPU usage, and burst rate.

Real World Tests
400MB File Copy Time is measured as the time it takes to copy a 400MBfile from the Windows desktop to the root folder of the drive.

400x1MB File Copy Time is measured as the time it takes to copy fourhundred 1MB files from the Windows desktop to the root folder of thedrive.

I/O Meter
Sadly, I/O Meter is not yet compatible with Vista and we were unable tosuccessfully run these tests. We did, however, repeatedly test what itwas like to try and run I/O Meter on Vista anyway. The result:frustration. I'll spare you the details, but needless to say I have toapologize on I/O Meter's behalf as it will not be appearing in thisreview.

I don't really know what to make of the fact that this got a 71 whenthe SL400 with the older hard drive got a 97. Some unknown variablemust have thrown off this test. WorldBench tests the overall computingpower of a unit and not just the hard drive, so either way it's nosurprise that the results from our test on an older machine are lowerhere.

HD Tach
The 7K320 compares well to the 7K200,posting a slight improvement in Burst Speed and Average Read but also aslight decrease in Random Access. Just like the 7K200 it uses a lotmore of the CPU than the older Fujitsu, but in all other categories inblows it out of the water.

HD Tune
Interestingly, in this test, the 7K320actually uses far less CPU than the 7k200 and the Fujitsu. These timesare both faster than the 7k200, and both far faster than the Fujitsu.However these tests will be partially dependent on other hardwarefactors, so the newer computer probably helps.

Conclusion
The need to sacrifice speed for space or vice-versa is gone with theadvent of these modern mobile HDDs. The Hitachi 7k320 performs everybit as well if not better than its 200GB cousin, not even flinchingunder the weight of its industry leading 320GB of 7200rpm storage. Ifyou need the space though, there are a few models out there now touting500GB at 5400rpm. So I guess you can still sacrifice a little speed formore space if you want. But the trend is clear - more and more, spindlespeed capacities are catching up to storage capacities, and the 7k320is a prime example. If you're looking for lots of space at a greatspeed, then this hard drive is worth the price tag ($180) and comesrecommended.