Hitachi E7K60 versus 7K60

[wolfman]

I'm considering both of these drives, the 7K60 being a 7200 rpm 60 gig drive with 8 meg of cache and the E7K60 being the same, but designed for "continuous" operation - IE never goes to sleep.

I'm looking for any feedback on the E7K60 for installation in an Thinkpad - is there a significant battery loss due to the "always on" nature of the drive? What about failure rate? About the same as the 7K60? Noise? Heat?

Thanks!!!

[stgreek]

The E7k60 is NOT recommended by IBM for use in laptops, only in servers. Although my laptop has been on for a year or so, I use the 7k60.

[Chun-Yu]

If you look at the specs on Hitachi's site (http://www.hgst.com/), you can see that the E7K60 uses more power than the 7K60 when idle, therefore I would not recommend it for a ThinkPad.

[wolfman]

Actually the reason why I asked was because Tom's Hardware site says it's a good application in a laptop:

While Hitachi's Travelstar 7K60 looks the same as its E7K60, the E7K60 is designed for continuous, 24/7 operation. The capability is well suited for notebooks, as well as for a large gamut of server systems for which performance is a secondary consideration. Applications include blade servers, the whole range of space- and energy-saving systems, as well as home multimedia servers for Internet access, MP3 files, video databases, etc. "

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20 ... ks-01.html

[stgreek]

Actually the reason why I asked was because Tom's Hardware site says it's a good application in a laptop:

While Hitachi's Travelstar 7K60 looks the same as its E7K60, the E7K60 is designed for continuous, 24/7 operation. The capability is well suited for notebooks, as well as for a large gamut of server systems for which performance is a secondary consideration. Applications include blade servers, the whole range of space- and energy-saving systems, as well as home multimedia servers for Internet access, MP3 files, video databases, etc. "

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20 ... ks-01.html

I wouldn't trust a single opinion for my purchases, especially if that was Tom's Hardware. If IBM says that you should use E7K60 for servers and 7K60 for notebooks and Tom's hardware says otherwise, who would you choose? I am not saying these people have not clue, I am saying general hardware reviewing sites are usually not so accurate when it comes to reviewing. Just compare theit "silence" reviews to those of silentpcreview. Day and night.

[wolfman]

Understood, and I am thankful to hear IBM does not advise this to be used in a laptop and I will go with the 7K60. Thanks for the follow up.

[erik]

almost two months ago i installed a 40gb E7K60 into my thinkpad s30, which is a subnotebook slightly smaller than the X40.   so far i have had zero problems running the drive.   it recovers from both sleep and hibernation faster than the 60gb 7K60 in my R50p and the temperature isn't any hotter than the 20gb 4200rpm drive which it replaced.   and, contrary to what has been said, the E7K60 will go to sleep just fine.

hitachi puts E7K60 drives through much more rigorous testing to approve them for mission-critical, 24x7 environments.   the E7K60 drives are some of the first notebook drives in history that aren't designed to fail.

bill morrow tested a 60gb E7K60 in his R50p without any issues, either, so he would be another source of first-hand experience if you have any questions.   i purchased my drive on his recommendation and plan to install E-series drives in all of my future thinkpads.

-erik

[Flightvector]

Well IBM is like many of the companies today that are increasingly needing to keep costs down in support. If they told customers that the E7K60 posed no issues, people who are a bit over their heads may try upgrading their drives and are likely to run into problems, racking up needless cost in their all-domestic technical support infrastructure. IBM is trying to advertise decreased IT costs to corporations, so they would not risk promoting customers to upgrade their drives, where IBM no longer has any control over whether customers will have their preload partition. It really is no different than IBM saying that getting rid of the preload partition is not recommended.

Slightly higher power draw will simply reduce battery life, and I could not envision any other real issues with it. I won't say much more since I am not highly familiar with the E7K60 and its differences, but decisions by manufacturers for the use of components like these are usually less engineered than we like to think. What IBM says may not always be free of other underlying influences; the majority of users have no clue, so being conservative is a must.

[wolfman]

I just installed my 40 gig 7200 rpm E7k60 today and it's working great. Drive is very fast. Feel a slight vibration through the palm rest and the palm rest is slightly warmer than before, but overall very happy. Cut load times of some of my applications in 1/2!! Definately worth the $135 from www.zipzoomfly.com.

[mailclw]

it can be bought in above link for 60 gB plus 20 buck rahter than 40 gb, why not? It is good but noisy in my opinion

[warreng24]

Just my two cents...

I installed a E7k60 in my Gateway Solo awhile back. After using it for about two weeks I swapped it out with the old drive. The E7k60, just ran so dang warm! I was looking at an "idle" temperature of 110F vs 98F. The "read/write" temperature would linger around 122F. Apparantly this was the normal temperatures for this drive.

I hear that the 7k60 runs a bit cooler.

BTW, I would have kept it in, except that on the Gateways the touch pad above the HDD bay, so I felt like I was burning my fingertips.

-Warren