Thinkpads Forum

I would like to know if this drive a battery sucker?? Plan to fit it in to my T22.....

ambientscape wrote:I would like to know if this drive a battery sucker?? Plan to fit it in to my T22.....

According to some tests (it's a report in Chinese, so...), the battery time of using 7K60 is about 30 minutes less than using a 4200rpm HDD in all kinds of power scheme. So... of course 7K60 consumes more power than a usual HDD, but you gain a lot in the performance.

I don't agree - but then I don't read Chinese either. Before buying a 7K60 I (naturally) referred to this forum and most of the reports I read/saw were pointing to increased battery performance - the implication being that the fluid bearings etc. were decreasing friction and thence consumption.

I think it rather depends on who you believe.

I don't know how much the increased performance compared to a 60GB 5400 rpm........because I've upgraded from a 4200 rpm drive and I feel big difference even it is only 5400rpm.

I upgraded from an 80Gb 5400rpm to the 7K60 - I have not (ever) run any benchmarks but I'm pretty sure this thing flys - startup is noticably faster, but I fully agree that any other differences could be entirely subjective...(Based on the fact I bought it with MY money, it's going to be better, if you get my drift ! )

Comparing the specs of the 7K60 and the upcoming (since a half year announced) new 2.5" drives from Hitachi (5400rpm) there isn't a big difference in performance (data through-put) anymore. Also the power consumption of these new drives should be very low.
I wonder if these new drives from Hitachi will get available very soon...anyone, who knows when they will finally available for consumers anywhere in the world?
I can't wait much longer and will switch to the new Seagate drives if Hitachi can't deliver what they have announce such a long time ago...

i have the 7k60 and i havent really notice a huge difference in battery.

i had the org 40gb 4200 drive and now the 7k60 and i love it, its worth the upgrade in every way!

I've checked the price on Hitachi 7K60 and Hitachi 5K80....they are almost the same price!! I don;t know whether I should got for larger storage or performance wise!

Well if you don't know, who else is going to?

ambientscape wrote:I've checked the price on Hitachi 7K60 and Hitachi 5K80....they are almost the same price!! I don;t know whether I should got for larger storage or performance wise!

Get the performance drive, then a larger one in an external case.

Do you know any sites I can get a cheap hard drive in UK apart from ebay?? Man....I don't trust e-bay!!. I got a faulty drive from ebay previously...and no refund...sucks

Do you have GOOGLE in the UK? Might be worth a try...I feel sure someone somewhere can tell you how to type 7K60...

I upgraded an HP (I know boo!) zv5255 laptop (AMD64 3400+) from a Fujitsu 60 gig 4200 2 mb cache to a 7k60 (8 megs cache) and benchmarked the heck out of both. On the Vopt Xp drive speed test it went from about 23 Mbps thruput reading from random places on the hdd to 36+ thruput. I did some battery testing and there was only a negligible difference in runtime (2-3%). I did the same with a Seagate Momentus 40 gig 5400 8 mb cache and it thruputs about 31.5 and again the battery runtime was no different. I will echo the suggestion to get a faster laptop hard drive. Going from a 4200 2 meg to a 5400 8 meg is similar to doubling the RAM. This is being sent on my PIII500 240X which I upgraded to a Samsung 60 gig 5400 rpm drive 8 mb cache. Even with only 192 megs of RAM running Windows 2000 it is a very zippy little machine thruput is about 28 Mbps...night and day different than with the old original 12 gig IBM Travelstar with about 1 meg or less of cache and 4200 rpm.

How much do you pay for your 7K60?? A very good explanation thou'......

Prices have tumbled. I got mine in September and it was about $175-180 "refurbished" on ebay. I suspect it was a return as it is a tad noisy. I went around a bit with Hitachi (it is under warranty) and they had me run a full diagnostic and email the output to them and there were no issues. It passes the long form Drive Fitness Test so I cannot return it but the 7K60 is supposed to be known for near silence. At the time new ones were well over $200. Right now you can get one from newegg.com (new) for less than $150 shipped.

Guest,

Keep pushing them. I bought a new drive and it vibrated a lot right out of the box. I ran the driags and they came up fine, but clearly it was a problem so I insisted that they fix it. It took them a while and the replacement came direct from the far-East, but they did replace it and the new drive is unreal quiet and has zero vibration. It's really quite extraordinary.

Bsed on the number of drives (of all speeds) that I've seen with vibration issues, I think they have a QC problem and must realize it. That said, once they got it right they really got it right!

BTW: by comparing when my drive is running and at rest, I can say that it only seems to be drawing 1-2watts of power which seems really good.

-darren

What's the specs of your machine? Your drive is having 3 years warranty as well?? Send it back all the way to the far east??Cost you a fortune thou'....

Just to clarify, the address I shipped my defective drive to was Hitachi US (TX or CA I think). It's just that the replacement unit came from the far east. I may have paid the shipping, but it would only have been a few bucks -- the drive is very light.

-darren

i just upgraded my 2373-K5H T42s from my IBM-supplied Fujitsu 40 GB 5400 RPM into the Hitachi 7K60 hard drive.

almost no noticable decrease in battery life.
i would estimate max 15 minute battery penalty.
the 7K60 hard drive does run slightly hotter, but not hot enough for the fan to kick in--so no extra power consumption from the fan either.