Thinkpads Forum

Seagate/Hitachi 7K100/7K60's compared

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... -7200.html

Conclusion

So, we’ve just had an opportunity to compare the fastest hard disk drives of the 2.5” form-factor. 7200rpm drives of that size may be viewed as representing the technical potential of the manufacturer as flagship products do.

The selection of drives for this test session allows making some curious observations. For example, we can see how technologies are improving over time and how they affect the operating characteristics of Hitachi’s 60GB drives of the 7K60 and 7K100 families. There really is a considerable performance increase. The higher areal density results in higher linear read and write speeds and improves the performance in a number of real-life tests. The Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB enjoys an advantage over the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB in most tests, with rare exceptions.

We can also see the effect of the interface on the drive performance. The UltraATA interface most modern 2.5” drives are equipped with has a theoretical bandwidth of 100MB/s against 150MB/s of Serial-ATA, but it doesn’t mean the latter interface is superior in practice. The maximum internal data-transfer rate of the reviewed drives is far within the limit of the external interface and our tests have proved this once again: the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB ATA (ST910021A) with the traditional ATA interface is almost everywhere faster than its SATA-compatible mate Seagate Momentus 100GB SATA.

But what device is the winner of our tests? In fact, there are two drives that are worthy of one another – Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB ATA (ST910021A) and Hitachi 7K100 100GB (HTS721010G9SA00). These devices have achieved the highest results in most of the tests. The SATA-interfaced Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 100GB has won more tests in total, so it can be considered as the best among the presented devices.

You may want to consider it first if you need a high-performance HDD. If the SATA interface doesn’t suit you, the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB ATA (ST910021A) may make a worthy alternative. Alas, the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB SATA, which has also been in our focus, can’t contend with the two mentioned devices and does worse than its SATA-interfaced opponent from Hitachi. Still, its performance is high enough, so you may want to consider it as an option, too.

One thing that's interesting about those tests is how clearly it shows that the Hitachi 7k60 was not that fast of a drive. As you, w0qj, pointed out in another thread, the differences in data density with newer drives makes a big difference.

At the same time, although the 100Gb Hitachi 7k100 is clearly the fastest drive, the differences are pretty negligble between it and the other drives. It's 11% faster in sequential read than the SATA 100Gb Seagate 7200rpm drive and 10% faster than the PATA 100Gb Seagate 7200rpm drive.

Also, although it's curious that the PATA Seagate drive is generally faster than the SATA drive, I think the difference is pretty much meaningless. In sequential read, the PATA drive is 1.5% faster than the SATA drive.

And when you start looking at the other tests run, the differences between the Hitachi 100Gb drive and the Seagate drives are sometimes even less. So though the Hitachi drive is the fastest, I don't know that for most people a 10% difference will be noticeable and that the Seagate drives can really be said to not "contend" with Hitachi.

It's also worth considering other factors. I've found that generally IT people feel like they experience lower failure rates with Seagate drives (IT people of course being people who deal with a lot of drives). And Seagate offers a 5 year warranty (everyone else is at most 3 years). Just another thing to think about when choosing drives. Though the Hitachi 7k100 100Gb drive is not doubt a great drive.

If you want a full gamut of tests on most every drive available, take a look here:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=104

awesome!
just awesome!

I'm definately getting that beast of a
HitachiTravelstar100GB/7200rpm, even if I only use 9 GBs of it during my T41's lifetime!!!

and chances are I'll be that guy with 91% free space on his 100GB drive forever!



Then again I see lots of people driving Hummers to go grocery shopping all the time FTL!


So I wouldn't feel that bad

donking! wrote:One thing that's interesting about those tests is how clearly it shows that the Hitachi 7k60 was not that fast of a drive.

It certainly was when it was first released and the only other HDs available were 5400RPM or 4200RPM.

I was one of the first in the Thinkpads community to get one of the 7K60s way back when. Installed in my venerable PIII 850MHz 600X it literally transformed the machine, to the extent that it beat my then new 1.13GHz T23 with a 5400RPM 48GB HD hands down in every test I threw at them.

Regards,

James

Delmarco wrote:I'm definately getting that beast of a HitachiTravelstar100GB/7200rpm, even if I only use 9 GBs of it during my T41's lifetime!!!

and chances are I'll be that guy with 91% free space on his 100GB drive forever!

I remember the day last century when I got my Toshiba T3100/20 portable which contained a 20MB (yes, 20 Megabytes!) HD and wondering how I could possibly use all that storage.

Now I'm a guy who somehow finds the need to have a 7K100 in each of my T41p's (as well as several of my hangar Queens) as well as a 7K100 in my Dock II, with a 300GB 3.5" WD in an external USB housing "just in case"!

Regards,

James

You may find your HDD fill up very quickly (my 7K60 was 90% full before I upgraded to 7K100----> couldn't even defragment my HDD properly):

1. store your digital camera photos on your HDD (that's why I still use film cameras). My friend had 180 pictures of 5 megapixel jpg taken in past 3 months, and it ate up 170 MB of space! Image the storeage requirement over the entire year, year after year...

(contrary to popular belief, storing these on CD-RW or DVD-RW is dangerous. if scratched, you can lose your data very easily and extremely difficult to recover (especially if you have kids = scratched disks).


2. DVD authoring -- literally gigabytes of files for *each* project.
which was why i had to upgrade to 7K100 from a 7K60...


3. if you store your MP3 (WMA, etc.) music collection on your HDD.
I recently converted about 25% of my (legit) music collection for my own use, at the highest MP3 setting of 320 kbits, and each file was about 11 MB in size! One CD = over 110 MB each...

(i anticipate i won't have time to go back to re-record these in 5-10 yrs time due to improvements in encoding technology, so the very best MP3 quality [commonly supported format] is good enough for me...)

JHEM wrote:

donking! wrote:One thing that's interesting about those tests is how clearly it shows that the Hitachi 7k60 was not that fast of a drive.

It certainly was when it was first released and the only other HDs available were 5400RPM or 4200RPM.

I was one of the first in the Thinkpads community to get one of the 7K60s way back when. Installed in my venerable PIII 850MHz 600X it literally transformed the machine, to the extent that it beat my then new 1.13GHz T23 with a 5400RPM 48GB HD hands down in every test I threw at them.

Regards,

James

I don't know that comparing the Hitachi 7k60 to whatever 5400rpm drive was in your T23 at the time is a meaningful comparison.

All 5400rpm drives are not the same. Data density and cache size make a big difference in speed. Speed is not just determined by rpm. At the time the Hitachi 7k60 came out, 5400rpm drives were undergoing changes in data density and cache size that made some of them pretty much as fast as the 7k60 (within a 10%) speed difference.

There are older articles on barefeats.com and storagereview.com, and elsewhere if you search around, that demonstrate this. They pointed out, when the Hitachi 7k60 came out, that it didn't offer that much of a speed bump over other top 5400rpm drives at the time.

donking! wrote:I don't know that comparing the Hitachi 7k60 to whatever 5400rpm drive was in your T23 at the time is a meaningful comparison..

It was an IBM 48GB and certainly my tests were only one data point. But that doesn't negate the rsults.

donking! wrote:At the time the Hitachi 7k60 came out, 5400rpm drives were undergoing changes in data density and cache size that made some of them pretty much as fast as the 7k60 (within a 10%) speed difference.

Nonsense, they didn't hit the market until almost a year after the 7K60 was introduced in 2003 and even then never really gave the 7K60 a run for its money.

donking! wrote:There are older articles on barefeats.com and storagereview.com, and elsewhere if you search around, that demonstrate this. They pointed out, when the Hitachi 7k60 came out, that it didn't offer that much of a speed bump over other top 5400rpm drives at the time.

Sorry, but you'll have to find me a review contemporaneous with the HD's release that says something along those lines. Even Barefeats states in their 7/2003 test "The Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 beat (or tied) the best of the other notebook drives in 4 out of 6 tests, making it the fastest notebook drive money can buy. If you're looking for a 2.5 inch wide, 9.5mm thick notebook drive for your PowerBook or portable FireWire case, this is as good as it gets!" http://www.barefeats.com/fire39.html

Xbitlabs from 1/2004 - "Hitachi 7K60 was the best in every test and confirmed its superiority over other models in nearly every respect. So if you want to have a miniature drive with the maximum performance, you should seriously consider this one." http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... -7200.html

Toms Hardware from 8/2003 - (Paraphrased) "The Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 dominated every benchmark." http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/08/13/ ... munchkins/

Regards,

James

JHEM wrote:

donking! wrote:At the time the Hitachi 7k60 came out, 5400rpm drives were undergoing changes in data density and cache size that made some of them pretty much as fast as the 7k60 (within a 10%) speed difference.

Nonsense, they didn't hit the market until almost a year after the 7K60 was introduced in 2003 and even then never really gave the 7K60 a run for its money.

In the Tom's Hardware article that you cite, it says: "Seagate's Momentus scored well, in general. As a newcomer to the notebook market, it performed wonders. Its access time and minimal data-transfer rates were not far behind those of the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60."

That's a 40Gb 5400 rpm Seagate drive that the article refers to. That's in August 2003.

For read performance the 7k60 was 11% faster than the Seagate 5400rpm drive. For write performance 20%. For access time 3%. In the Business Disk Winbench test 8% faster. In the Highend Disk Winbench test 8% faster.

That pretty much supports my claim that, at the time the 7k60 came out, there were 5400rpm drives almost as fast as it (with only a 10% general speed difference).

*

The barefeats article you cite compares the 7k60 to a Hitachi 5400rpm and a Hitachi 4200rpm drive and to two Toshiba drives.

In the sequential write, the 7k60 is SLOWER than Hitachi's 80Gb 4200rpm drive and the same speed as Toshiba's 60Gb 5400rpm drive. In the random read test the 7k60 is SLOWER than Toshiba's 60Gb 5400rpm drive. In the random write test the 7k60 is the SAME SPEED as Hitachi's 4200rpm 80Gb drive. In the Quicktime movie playback test, it bests the next fastest drive (Hitachi's 40Gb 5400rpm drive) by a 5% speed difference.

Only in the duplicating a 457mb document test and in the sequential read test does the 7k60 do significantly better than all the other drives. But there's still always a drive within a 30% speed difference.

So, overall was the 7k60 at the time "the fastest notebook drive money can buy," as barefeats said, and "as good as it gets"? Yes. Was it that much different? No. Was it the obviously better drive at the time for all uses? No.

*

I'm not going to go through (here) the xbitlabs article you cite, because it is very long and detailed. For people who are interested and want to look at it, they'll find that in every test there are drives with slower spindle speeds that come within 5% to %15 of the 7k60. xbitlabs themselves, at the time, praised both a 80Gb Hitachi 5400rpm drive and a 40Gb Seagate 5400rpm drive. That's right after the part of the article you quote.

So all of these articles support my claim that at the time the 7k60 came out there were slower spindle speed drives that had nearly comparable performance characteristics (sometimes better) and that the 7k60 didn't offer that much of a speed bump. I didn't say the 7k60 wasn't the fastest overall. I just said I didn't think the difference was very significant.

Comparison articles like the one's cited, like to make these dramatic sounding conclusions, as you show. Using statements like "dominated," "fastest money can buy. " But these kind of articles make a lot out of differences I think many people (depending on their drive uses) wouldn't notice.

I leave it up to individual users to decide for themselves if they think 5% to 15% speed differences qualify as "dominating" other drives in the actual practice of their everyday computer use. I think this will vary a lot from user to user, depending on what they do. And people shouldn't forget that just because one drive is best overall, doesn't mean it's best for every purpose.

Within a space of 18 mths of my T42s (2373-K5H), i've gone thru 3 HDD's:

-Fujitsu 5K40
-Hitachi 7K60
-Hitachi 7K100


All I can say is that there is a VERY noticeable difference when changing from the 5K40 to 7K60, and a quite noticeable difference when upgrading from 7K60 to 7K100.

Forget about the benchmark percentages--it really does make a real world difference in terms of usability and graceful multitasking (especially when working with huge files on the 7K100).


BTW, a new HDD article came up:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/deta ... &part=full

w0qj wrote:Within a space of 18 mths of my T42s (2373-K5H), i've gone thru 3 HDD's:

-Fujitsu 5K40
-Hitachi 7K60
-Hitachi 7K100


All I can say is that there is a VERY noticeable difference when changing from the 5K40 to 7K60, and a quite noticeable difference when upgrading from 7K60 to 7K100.

Forget about the benchmark percentages--it really does make a real world difference in terms of usability and graceful multitasking (especially when working with huge files on the 7K100).

Why forget about the benchmark precentages? We know from the articles cited above that the 7k60 and the 7k100 benchmark out very differently. So the benchmarks are congruent with your experience. They are a good predictor of your actual experience.

I can't comment on the Fujitsu drive in this respect, since you don't say specifically what drive it is and I don't off hand see any reviews with benchmarks of a drive that seems like the one you refer to (so that we could see if the benchmarks are consistent with your experience).

For the moment, though, it doesn't really seem like you've given a reason to forget about benchmark percentages.

Also, as I said above, I don't think one person's experience is necessarily relavent to everyone else. It's interesting to hear your experience. But since people use their hard drives differently and the same hard drive performs differently at different tasks, I don't think people should be quick to extrapolate from one person's experience to what their's would be like (with a particular drive).

w0qj wrote:BTW, a new HDD article came up:
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/deta ... &part=full

Further, if you don't care about benchmarks, then why did you start this thread referring people to a very detailed, highly benchmark centric, xbitlabs review of 2.5 inch hard drives? A review which bases all of its conclusions on benchmarks. Consclusions which in turn you quote at length in your initial post. Didn't all of those benchmark based conclusions from xbitlabs mean something to you when you quoted them? And why in the very post (above) where you dismiss benchmarks do you then end your post referring people to yet another very benchmark focused review of a hard drive?

I don't really understand what point you're trying to make.

If it's about the 7k60 and 7k100, I never contested the (significant) speed differences between the 7k100 and the 7k60. In fact, the thing that's interesting to me about the 7k60 (which I elaborately detailed above) is that it's not that different speedwise from many 5400rpm drives. So it is no surprise that it differs greatly from the (notably fast) 7k100 drive. And if your point is about the Fujitsu drive you mention, well, this is the first mention in this thread of a Fujitsu drive, which I don't know, so I can't say anything about it at present and certainly didn't imply anything about it above.