Thinkpads Forum

I've used both brands hard drives and, until recently, was very confident in Seagate HDDs. Since the 7200.11 fiasco (hard drives failing left and right, cutting warranty from 5 to 3 years - an admission of declining quality IMHO, poor customer service, horror stories, etc.) I have been distrustful of Seagate, so I bought a 320GB Hitachi 7K320 for my X61s to replace my 250GB Seagate 7200.3 drive. I didn't notice any performance issues between the two drives.

Now that I have my T400, and it came with a 160GB 5400RPM drive that I find detestable in terms of performance, I need to upgrade to a 320GB 7200RPM drive (well 2 if I can get them to work in Software RAID). I've read some very positive reviews of the new Seagate 7200.4 drives, and that they are very fast, but I have also read many negative reviews about DOA units, clicking issues, and drives that die a week after purchase. I haven't found any reviews of the new Hitachi 7K500 drives, but I'm inclined to go for one.

Does anyone have experience with both? Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions about which drive to buy? I'm looking for comparison reviews for the two drives, but so far nothing has come up.

Cheers

The 7k500 is really hard to come by right now. I think WDs score the best in the benchmarks right now, but in real world usage they're all about the same in my experience. You see good and bad about all manufacturers, either "I only buy" or "I'd never buy". Perhaps it's just luck of the Irish. I like Seagates. All my drives right now are Seagates - desktops and laptops. My notebook drive has been a solid performer while running cool and quiet. I had a Seagate desktop fail recently It sucked that I had to pay to ship it, but I don't know that I'd call it a horror story.

WD also just came out with a 640MB version too for laptops.

My personal vote goes for Hitachi. They are even going to issue the 7K500 series in a special edition for 24/7 use It is not only the fiasco with the 7200.11 that keeps me from getting another Seagate, but I have seen 3-4 7200.3 HDs that had their little quirks with my ThinkPad (I still have one of those 7200.3, the others weren´t mine), like dead sector messages from windows or problems with the hot-swap in the ultrabay. My main HD is still an 'old' Hitachi 7K200 for good reasons.

Just my 0.02$

Marin