Hitachi 7K200 7200rpm 2.5-Inch hard drive

Hitachi 7K200 7200rpm 2.5-Inch hard drive

Published August 25, 2008 at 01:16:08 PM, by Blair Mathis

Overview & Design

Overview
Adding a new, faster hard drive to your computer is like turbocharging a Minivan. Well, sort of. You need it to go the distance, it doesn't need to look fancy, and it needs to hold a lot of stuff. Not only that, but you want it to be reliable, quiet, and simply put - kick ass. But what happens when the previous hard drive you had, was LARGER, but slower? Would you sacrifice the space for speed? What about the noise?

In this review, we pace a Qosmio F45 unit with its 250GB 4200rpm Fujitsu drive against the brand new Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 7200rpm 200GB. Will the upgrade win us over? Let's find out!

Design
Yep, it looks like a hard drive. If you are wondering on how to install this baby in your notebook, I suggest you check out our recently posted review 'How to Change your Hard drive' written by yours truly.

This is a SATA hard drive, and only fits with notebooks/bays that accept SATA connections. SATA differs from the previous format ADA/IDE/ATA that a lot of older notebooks have; it is quickly becoming the new standard.

Specs & Tests

7K200 Specifications

Capacity 200GB
Interface SATA 2.5' (mobile)
Spindle Speed(RPM) 7200
Buffer Memory 16mb
Average Seek (ms)
Average Latency (ms) 4.2
Track-toTrack seek time (ms) 1.0
Maximum External Transfer Rate (Mb/S) 150
Data Transer rate on SATA up to 1500 mb/s
Discs/heads 2/4
Operating Temperature (Celsius) 5 - 55
Non-Operating Temp. (Celsius) -40 to 65
Shock, Operating: 2ms (Gs) 350
Shock, Nonoperating 2ms (Gs) 1000
Dimensions .37 x 2.75 x 3.93

System Specifications

Toshiba Qosmio F45 AV412
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 (1.80GHz)
Front Side Bus 667MHz
Chipset Intel 945PM
LCD 15.4" WXGA (1200x800)
Memory 2GB (2x1024MB) DDR2 667 SO-DIMM
Graphics Intelx3100 @ 128-256 shared
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate

The Qosmio was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk' with the AC plugged in, meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented. Yeah, talk about time consuming with each hard drive reaching over 200GB. The things we sacrifice for you readersanyways

Synthetic Tests

IOMeter 2006.07.27 is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool, originally developed by Intel. We run four different tests using IOMeter, consisting of two different tests performed at both 100% read and 100% write. CPU utilization is also measured during each test. To obtain an idea of CPU utilization, we averaged the read & write utilization during each of the Maximum I/O and Maximum Throughput tests. This test would not run under Windows Vista.

Maximum Throughput: This test simulates maximum drive throughput using 64KB packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.
Maximum I/O: This test simulates maximum drive I/O performance using 512 Byte packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.

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

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

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

Real World Tests

Note: All of the timed tests were repeated three times, with the drive defragmented and rebooted between test runs. The final score is the average of the three scores.

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

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

Performance

I/O Meter
There is no Vista-compatible release yet for I/O Meter and that didn't stop me from downloading and installingand then it failing. I am sorry to report that the I/OMeter test will not be included in this review.

WorldBench6

Since WorldBench 6 tests the overall computing experience with many common applications, we don't see a huge performance jump. The 7K200 does get an 8% higher score, certainly nothing to scoff at.

HDTach
Again, the joys of working with windows Vista. HDTach does not natively support Vista, however, I was able to run it by selecting Windows XP compatibility under the Properties of the executable file.  

HDTach Test	Fujitsu MHX2250BT 250GB 4200rpm	Hitachi 7K200 200GB 7200rpm
Burst Speed	64 MB/s	144 MB/s
Random Access	22.4 ms	15.2 ms
Average Read	27.7 MB/s	55 MB/s
CPU Utilization (+/- 2%)	1%	7%

As you can see, the burst, Random access, and Average read go to the Hitachi drive. I'm not sure what to believe with the CPU utilization test - but if going by these numbers, the Fujitsu drive spanked the Hitachi. Let's see what HD Tune says

HD Tune
We encountered yet another weird error thanks to Vista. All drive tests function as normal, however the 'health' tab will not show any information. I'm not sure why this is, and it's obviously related to Vista because my XP machine will display this with no problems. Without further delay, the performance numbers from HD Tune:

HD Tune Test	Fujitsu MHX2250BT 250GB 4200rpm	Hitachi 7K200 200GB 7200rpm
Transfer Rate	24.2 MB/s	45.6 MB/s
Access Time	21.1 ms	15.7 ms
Burst Rate	68.2 MB/s	77 MB/s
CPU Utilization	29.5%	32.4%

400MB File Transfer Test
Here are the averaged times for the 400mb single file Bitmap image copy to the root of the drive.

The Hitachi blew the Fujitsu out of the water, a performance gain of nearly 140%!

400x1mb File Transfer Test

Interesting find! The Fujitsu has a slightly better multi file transfer speed, I was not expecting these results. Even tested 3 times over, and defragmented - the tests concluded that the 400 file transfer speed lays king to the Fujitsu drive - but only by a marginal amount. 7 seconds may not be a lot, but it is a definitive win.

Startup
On each defrag and then restart, I timed the start up time for Windows Vista Ultimate to make it's final 'beep' at me, letting me know the startup times for each laptop. Both were configured with the same default settings provided by Toshiba (via the manufacturer's restore discs). The average times are noted below.

The startup times are apparent for the speed increase the Hitachi drive offers. With the load time differences nearing almost 30 seconds, it's almost a little unbearable to go back to the 4200rpm drive after you are used to the faster 7200rpm Hitachi.

In the end, the numbers speak for themselves. I don't have a conclusive answer as to why the Fujitsu drive transfers the 400x1MB files faster, although it could lay with the CPU utilization. The previous tests showed the Fujitsu using fewer CPU cycles, which can make a difference when transferring such a large number of small files.

Conclusion

Pros:

• Strong performance
• Maximum storage at 7200rpm spindle space

Cons:

• Gives up capacity to 4200/5400rpm models
• Price / Performance isn’t as great as expected

Conclusion
Hitachi’s new 7K200 is a great performer, offering top of the line performance and a competitive capacity. This drive is certainly a great upgrade for anemic 4200rpm models and should be seriously considered by those building their own notebook. Despite the strong performance and reasonable capacity, users will likely find a better bang for the buck in 5400rpm drives. With capacities up to 250GB and lower $/GB prices, 5400rpm models perform very close to even this speed demon and are the more economical choice. But in the end, spindle speed influences performance the most and Hitachi’s new 7K200 is a beast.

Overall, I give it a “Recommended” rating – as this definitely targets users who crave performance or are serious about their upgrades. It does utilize great speed, but takes a hit on storage space. As the rating suggests, I hope this review gave you enough research to merit your own decision for a purchase.

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Technical Specifications

No specifications are available.