Thinkpads Forum

Anyone knows this new drive from Toshiba?
TOSHIBA MK1637GSX 160GB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive

It claims 3.0G/s and lower power consumption.

deodeo wrote:Anyone knows this new drive from Toshiba?
TOSHIBA MK1637GSX 160GB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive

It claims 3.0G/s and lower power consumption.

That's not a comparable drive to the 7K100 -- it's more like the 5K160: a 160GB 5400 rpm.

Note that the 300 MB/s (3.0Gb/s) is the ATA-7 buffer-to-PC transfer speed, not the speed off the media. Toshiba's specs don't include a media transfer rate, but expect that to be below 70 MB/s for a 5400 rpm drive.

Power consumption is 1.0W at idle and 2.2W reading/writing. The 5K160 is 0.8W at idle and 1.8W reading/writing.

The 7k100 is currently the best laptop HD made period. Nothing (not even Seagates 100GB 7200RPM offering) comes close to it in performance.

In 3-6 months the 7K200 will be released with up to 200GB capacity, perpendicular recording (higher density = FASTER platter transfer rate) and possibly the addition of some REALLY large NAND caches to make it a hybrid drive.

Until then, 7K100 is king.

I bought a 7K100 for my T60

Had the Seagate 7200.1 been the same price, I would have gotten it without a second thought. Seagate's 5 year warranty and quieter operation are worth the slight performance hit (at most 3% according to laptoplogic.com's comparison).

Did you guys know that the 7K100 SATA drive is currently only $121 shipped on Newegg? Grab one (or three!) before the $15 off sale ends!

pianowizard wrote:Did you guys know that the 7K100 SATA drive is currently only $121 shipped on Newegg? Grab one (or three!) before the $15 off sale ends!

Sweeet deal!

The 7K100s are great HDDs, especially at that price point.

I've always enjoyed great reliability on Hitachi TravelStar HDD. My 7K100 has been working very nice since I popped it in my T42p. Now I should get myself a 7K1000 for my desktop rig!

nyu3 wrote:I bought a 7K100 for my T60

Had the Seagate 7200.1 been the same price, I would have gotten it without a second thought. Seagate's 5 year warranty and quieter operation are worth the slight performance hit (at most 3% according to laptoplogic.com's comparison).

I have had BOTH of these hard drives in hand, running side by side. The claims that the Seagate are quieter are just plain bull.

Plus, how many people here keep these drives for 3 years, much less 5? No one I know of. So the warranty difference is pretty meaningless to me.

IMHO the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 rpm is better than the 7K100 generates less noise and heat with same performance.

brentpresley wrote:Plus, how many people here keep these drives for 3 years, much less 5? No one I know of. So the warranty difference is pretty meaningless to me.

Brent, What do you do with your 3 year old drives? If you're giving them away I'd like to get in line?

Seriously, I have not seen any compelling reason to choose Hitachi over Seagate. The performance number are so close as to be insignificant, both are quiet, fast, and close in power consumption and the price differences to close to matter. The only differences I can see are the warrantee and Seagates far superior exchange policies when you have problems.

Am I missing something? Please enlighten me.

nxman wrote:IMHO the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 rpm is better than the 7K100 generates less noise and heat with same performance.

Based on manufacturer specifications, the Seagate actually generates more heat, and especially so at idle:

Seagate Momentus 7200.1
2.6W seek mode
2.2W/2.2W read/write mode
1.3W/0.26W idle/standby mode

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100
2.3W seek mode
2.0W/2.0W read/write mode
0.85W/0.2W idle/standby mode

Manufacturer specs say that the Momentus is 1 dB quieter (generally not a perceivable difference to the human ear) than the 7K100. I would bet variations in individual drives (of both manufacturers) are significantly larger than the rated 1 dB difference.

nxman wrote:IMHO the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 rpm is better than the 7K100 generates less noise and heat with same performance.

The Seagate uses 40GB/platter drives while the hitachi uses 50GB. This difference alone accounts for the increased speed difference

Search for several comparisons using google and you will see that in all of them the 7K100 beats it.

storagereview did a very good comparison

steveg47 wrote:

brentpresley wrote:Plus, how many people here keep these drives for 3 years, much less 5? No one I know of. So the warranty difference is pretty meaningless to me.

Brent, What do you do with your 3 year old drives? If you're giving them away I'd like to get in line?

Seriously, I have not seen any compelling reason to choose Hitachi over Seagate. The performance number are so close as to be insignificant, both are quiet, fast, and close in power consumption and the price differences to close to matter. The only differences I can see are the warrantee and Seagates far superior exchange policies when you have problems.

Am I missing something? Please enlighten me.

Just my personal experience.

I've used both, and both are good drives. But honestly I am a power user and do a drive upgrade every 9-12 months. At that pace I don't care who has the longer warranty. It is about performance for me. In that realm the 7k100 has no equal.

tomh009 wrote: Based on manufacturer specifications, the Seagate actually generates more heat, and especially so at idle:

Seagate Momentus 7200.1
2.6W seek mode
2.2W/2.2W read/write mode
1.3W/0.26W idle/standby mode

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100
2.3W seek mode
2.0W/2.0W read/write mode
0.85W/0.2W idle/standby mode

Manufacturer specs say that the Momentus is 1 dB quieter (generally not a perceivable difference to the human ear) than the 7K100. I would bet variations in individual drives (of both manufacturers) are significantly larger than the rated 1 dB difference.

The numbers you quoted above for the Seagate are for the PATA not the SATA.

Both Seagate and Hitachi numbers are for PATA so they are quite comparable. I don't believe the comparison would be much different for SATA.

steveg47 wrote:

tomh009 wrote: Based on manufacturer specifications, the Seagate actually generates more heat, and especially so at idle:

Seagate Momentus 7200.1
2.6W seek mode
2.2W/2.2W read/write mode
1.3W/0.26W idle/standby mode

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100
2.3W seek mode
2.0W/2.0W read/write mode
0.85W/0.2W idle/standby mode

Manufacturer specs say that the Momentus is 1 dB quieter (generally not a perceivable difference to the human ear) than the 7K100. I would bet variations in individual drives (of both manufacturers) are significantly larger than the rated 1 dB difference.

The numbers you quoted above for the Seagate are for the PATA not the SATA.

Exact same drive. Only the interface and one chip are different (a bridge chip).

The numbers quoted above are for the seagate pata not sata. They are different. And this is the T60 forum and T60's use sata.
If you want to nitpick the fairly trivial differences between seagate and hitachi drives then at least be accurate.
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datashe ... us7200.pdf

Specs from different manufacturers are often not comparable. I've seen more than one review in which the Seagate runs cooler and subjectively quieter.

http://laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.p ... ull&page=6

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... 1AS_6.html

Both reviews show that the performance of the two drives are very close. Furthermore, the SATA version of 7200.1 actually wins more than half of the benchmarks... still close though. Furthermore, the 7K100 SATA version performs ever so slightly worse than the PATA version (and draws more power too)
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/sto ... 7k100.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... 7k100.html

I have both the Seagate 7K100 and Hitachi drives on my T60 and there's no question, at least with the two drives I have, that the Seagate is quiter. Of course I can only even hear either drive if I'm in an extremely silent room.

I've also used Seagate drives on other laptops in the past and always found them to be quieter.

The Hitachi is of course faster. But I think unless someone has a really critical use for that small speed difference the whole comparison is splitting hairs (I guess that goes for the noise issue as well).

I choose Seagate drives because I've found them to be more reliable (uh oh, opening can of worms with that remark?).

steveg47 wrote:The numbers quoted above are for the seagate pata not sata. They are different. And this is the T60 forum and T60's use sata.

If you want to nitpick the forums here are the SATA numbers:

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 - SATA
2.6W seek mode
2.4W/2.4W read/write mode
0.95W/0.28W idle/standby mode

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 - SATA
2.7W seek mode
2.3W/2.3W read/write mode
0.9W/0.25W idle/standby mode

I'd say the 7K100 is still slightly cooler, with the exception of seeking activity. And we know that the 7K100 is faster, so that really leaves the sound level (though arguments go both ways here) and warranty as the Seagate advantages.

The PATA numbers again, for comparison's sake.

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 - PATA
2.6W seek mode
2.2W/2.2W read/write mode
1.3W/0.26W idle/standby mode

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 - PATA
2.3W seek mode
2.0W/2.0W read/write mode
0.85W/0.2W idle/standby mode

cb474 wrote:I choose Seagate drives because I've found them to be more reliable (uh oh, opening can of worms with that remark?).

Back in the old days when 9GB SCSI drives were the biggest you could get, I had such bad "Seacrate" experiences that I still prefer just about anything else. And my IBM/Hitachi reliability experience has been overwhelmingly positive.

As always, your mileage may vary ...

Deathstar ring a bell?

I've heard that one, yes. Never did use many IBM IDE/EIDE drives, mostly UltraStar and later TravelStar, so didn't quite get to explore its true meaning!

I've used (let's count...) 7 Travelstar's (4.3GB, 15GB [replaced in my last day of warranty in my A22e ], 30GB, 40GB, 40GB 5400rpm, 60GB E7K100, 100GB 7K100) and I've found they're very reliable. I've recovered data from HDD that suffered a shock with no problems.

Very impressed with Hitachi HDD

My first T60 came with a Hitachi 80 Gig 5400 Rpm so i decided
to upgrade it to 7200 rpm i read the reviews of the
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 at newegg.com
all were excellent and Seagate is known for its top quality
so i made the upgrade and immediately i felt the increase in performance my second T60 came with 7K100 and i really didn't feel
any difference between the Seagate & Hitachi except the 7K100 being much noisier and generates more heat than the Momentus i know most reviews say the opposite but this is what i really felt after using both drives.

How did you determine that it generated less heat? Did you run NHC on both systems, under similar loads? Or did you measure the power consumption?

I bought the Hitatchi 7k100. Aside from a bit of extra heat under the right palmrest, it runs great. Its extra quiet, thanks to the Hitachi drive quieting program (free on their website). The loudest thing on this T60 is the fan, and its not much above a whisper.

David,

I congratulate you on your wise choice on behalf of all the forum oldtimers!

tomh009 wrote:How did you determine that it generated less heat? Did you run NHC on both systems, under similar loads? Or did you measure the power consumption?

The palmrest feels hot on the Hitachi.

You can always put your spare (retired, warranty expired) 2.5" HDD into an external USB enclosure for data backup.

This is where Seagate's 5 year warranty comes in handy...