Hitachi Brings 400GB to Desktops with the Deskstar 7K400
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 10, 2004 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Noise Comparison
We're still hammering out exactly how we want to do sound comparisons of drives, but one thing that we definitely want to include are sample sound files of the drives themselves.The drives were tested outside of a case, with no fans in the case running. The microphone was placed 1.5" away from the front right side of the drive (connectors at the back, PCB exposed on top). The clicking at the beginning and end of the recording are sounds not related to the drive, but fumbling with the power switch on the case. The sounds that you are hearing are the drive spinning up and initializing itself.
All files are provided in MP3 format and are recorded in a 32kbps mono format.
Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 - MP3
IBM 75GXP - MP3
Maxtor D740X-6L - MP3
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 - MP3
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 - MP3
Western Digital Caviar SE - MP3
Western Digital Raptor I - MP3
Western Digital Raptor II - MP3
The 7K400 idles about the same as the rest of the competing drives, but it's the seek noise that really gets you - while transferring, the 7K400 is one of the louder drives out of the bunch.
We're working on expanding our sound analysis to include MP3 recordings of actual transferring to/from the drive, but until then, we've decided to include some actual readings from a SPL meter.
These ratings were taken with a system running (since we were doing transfer tests) at approximately 1.5" away from the front side of the drive. As you can see, the idle volumes of all of these drives are about the same, but start transferring and you can begin to see where we were able to notice the 7K400 a bit more.
Subjectively, the 7K400 isn't too bad; it's just not whisper quiet when seeking/transferring.
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Falloutboy - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
This is great but unless it geting into the 50cents per gig range it won't really make sence. I could just get 4 200gbs for the same price and raid themgimpsoft - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
if you have space for 4 drives on your casei say go with mulitple 160GB hard drive or 149GB true GB
149 * 4 = 596GB almost 600GB
$93 * 4 = $372
for $93each why pay $450 for 320GB
samsung Hard Drives on newegg
mulitple drives is much better then one
C/windows E:/storage X:/storage D:/storage
so you uncompress a file from C to C will take longer & won't be able to open anythign else until uncompress is done
from E to X or from C to X you could surf the web have an dixv open with small slow down & have it finish faster then having to be done in one drive
Jeff7181 - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
Nice to see capacities increasing. Seems like for a while there hasn't been much in the way of capacity increases... just some speed increases with the Raptor and SATA.A friend of mine heard about the drive too and asked why anyone would need 400 GB of storage space if they weren't doing anything illegal like pirating software or media. My answer to him was, programs (especially games) will only get larger. And with no worries about storage limits, you could rip your entire CD collection in a lossless format and keep it on your hard drive for listening and making MP3's to put on a portable device, etc. Then there's video... with more people building HTPC's, a 400 GB drive would be a nice addition to a HTPC for recording TV shows in HD... copying your DVD's to the drive for quicker viewing and not having to mess with the discs all the time.
I think storage space is lagging behind a little bit... I have a 36 GB Raptor and an 80 GB drive and I don't find myself running out of storage space, however, I do find myself deleting things thinking "I don't really need this, I'll just get rid of it and free up some space." I remember back in the mid 90's I think, I bought a 12 GB Quantum drive, when high capacity mainstream drives were 6-8 GB... the Quantum was a HUGE drive at the time, but pretty slow. Where are the HUGE but slow drives today? I think it would be acceptable to use a 5400 RPM drive in a HTPC if it could offer 50-100% more storage space thana 7200 RPM drive, AND be more quiet and cooler. Or just for people who archive home movies or something... an 800 GB drive would be great for them... speed wouldn't matter all that much because a 5400 RPM drive is perfectly capable of streaming DVD quality video and audio.
Anyway... as I said... it's nice to see storage capacity increasing, not just speed.
mkruer - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
"If you can wait on that hard drive upgrade, however, much newer technology is coming next quarter. With platter densities finally surpassing the 100GB mark, 16MB buffers to accent and with NCQ becoming mainstream, the 400GB offerings that should hit the streets later this year will hopefully offer more than just massive storage capacities, but maybe even a new level of performance."Anand, do you have any specific information on future roadmaps by the manufactures. I would be interested to see how Western Digital will respond.
kjellrni - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
kjellrni - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
pookie69 - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
Nice article. I can appreciate the difficulties in trying to bench and review HDDs, but so far i feel you have done a good job, and i am very much enjoying reading these HDD reviews.Only thing, it may have been a good idea to talk a bit about some of the technical features of the Hitachi 7k400 - such as those 2 sensors on the underside of the HDD that help ensure much greater spindle head accuracy through system vibrations than currently seen in other HDDs. The name of the technology evades me now, but it sounds really cool.
In any case, great review - the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 looks like being an awesome HDD, so i do hope that there'll be a rview on that sometime soon :)
ROcHE - Saturday, July 10, 2004 - link
Nice review. The recorded hard disk sound is a very good addition. You guys just need to edit the first 1-2 and last 1-2 seconds to remove those weird sounds and it will be perfect.You can actually hear how silent is a barracuda and how loud is a Maxtor or a WD SE.
It's good to see my one year old Western Digital SE near the top of the performance charts. It shows how hard it is to improve hard disk performances. Kudos to Hitachi for a great hard drive.
Thanks ;)