Fastest Notebook HD is coming!!! Hitachi 7K200

[brentpresley]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39534


Considering HD bandwidth is the limiting factor for performance on most PCs (and worse so on laptops) I thought this news deserved its own thread.


That, and about a DOZEN of you have asked me when the successor to the 7K100 would be out.


(and for those that want to know, YES - this is faster than the 160GB 7200RPM Seagate drive that was recently released ).

Press release here:
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/sit ... ewsLang=en

[gator]

NICE!

[andyP]

HOT STUFF

[brentpresley]

HOT STUFF

Actually, these will be cooler than the 7K100, which was a GRAND step over the 7K60.

[andyP]

sorry I meant that as "tounge in cheek", that drive should be HOT as in "sell like hot cakes" - definitely something I could use.
Well spotted

SENIOR ADMIN insert/comment:
andy, brent was just yanking your chain about the HOT thing..

[maximus_]

Can't wait to pick up one of these

[milstein]

the 10,000 rpm notebook hard disk?

[brentpresley]

the 10,000 rpm notebook hard disk?

That will never happen. Too much power and heat to run in a notebook.

This is a 7200RPM, but with a MUCH higher platter density and possibly a bigger cache.

[Daniel]

Now the main question is this.. Will the T61s be shipping with this HDD?

[brentpresley]

Now the main question is this.. Will the T61s be shipping with this HDD?

No, the main question is how soon can we upgrade.

[beeblebrox]

There are a lot of news about Samsung and Hitachi about their new 250GB and 300GB drives @5400rpm.

I assume they will be on the market in a few weeks as well, and certainly with 7200rpm by summer.

Seagate has leaked details about a potential 500GB by end of this year...

[skanky]

There are a lot of news about Samsung and Hitachi about their new 250GB and 300GB drives @5400rpm.

I assume they will be on the market in a few weeks as well, and certainly with 7200rpm by summer.

Seagate has leaked details about a potential 500GB by end of this year...

nice, i'd definately be interested in a 300gb 5400rpm over a 200gb 7200rpm. i can afford to wait a few seconds longer, but i cant make extra space out of nothing

[brentpresley]

There are a lot of news about Samsung and Hitachi about their new 250GB and 300GB drives @5400rpm.

I assume they will be on the market in a few weeks as well, and certainly with 7200rpm by summer.

Seagate has leaked details about a potential 500GB by end of this year...

nice, i'd definately be interested in a 300gb 5400rpm over a 200gb 7200rpm. i can afford to wait a few seconds longer, but i cant make extra space out of nothing

That's what a personal server is for.

[tomh009]

nice, i'd definately be interested in a 300gb 5400rpm over a 200gb 7200rpm. i can afford to wait a few seconds longer, but i cant make extra space out of nothing

I can always use an external USB2 or Firewire disk for extra capacity, but it doesn't make myThinkPad any faster. 7200 rpm for me, please!

[DavidR]

So, where can I buy one?

[shalliday]

this is faster than the 160GB 7200RPM Seagate drive that was recently released Wink).

Thank you very much for posting this information! Yesterday I ordered the Seagate 160gb 7200 drive and after reading this today, I called up and canceled my order. Now, all I need to find out is where can I buy one.

[brentpresley]

this is faster than the 160GB 7200RPM Seagate drive that was recently released Wink).

Thank you very much for posting this information! Yesterday I ordered the Seagate 160gb 7200 drive and after reading this today, I called up and canceled my order. Now, all I need to find out is where can I buy one.

No problem. Just keep in mind these were just ANNOUNCED today. Right now only Dell has them, so it may be a month or two before retail drives are available.

[jdhurst]

I imagine the bigger 7200-rpm drives are faster than my 60Gb 7200-rpm, but I have been using 7200-rpm laptop drives for years now, and I wont use anything slower. HD speed is a bigger boost than CPU speed (which I also upgraded). ... JDH

[darrenf]

Woohoo! If this is anything like the announcement for the 7k100 we should be able to purchase one of these by early 2009.

-darren

[laundromatt]

So, where can I buy one?

and, what's the damage going to be to one's wallet?

[shalliday]

and, what's the damage going to be to one's wallet?

According to the Inquirer press release:

Although it is selling the HDD to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) already, it will also start selling the unit in shops over the summer, priced at $250.

[Oaklodge]

I'm still wating to get my hands on a Seagate 160GB 7200 .....

[agarza]

Excellent news! Hitachi like always is offering the best products aginst its competitors. I'd like to know if it's possible to get the Desktar 7k1000

[Ken Fox]

This is a long awaited development.

I agree with JD Hurst that 7200 rpm is hugely better than lower speeds, and I also think that the incremental improvement from a 7K60 to a 7K100 (based on my own experience) is less than earthshattering.

Likewise, I predict that the incremental improvement from a 7K100 to a 7K200 will be, shall we say, a yawn.

[Daniel]

This is a long awaited development.

I agree with JD Hurst that 7200 rpm is hugely better than lower speeds, and I also think that the incremental improvement from a 7K60 to a 7K100 (based on my own experience) is less than earthshattering.

Likewise, I predict that the incremental improvement from a 7K100 to a 7K200 will be, shall we say, a yawn.

I really hope that the performance increase is decent. Just the increase in areal density should be enough to give an decent increase in speed. The density has been approximately doubled (I'm not sure about platter count in the new disks) so there is a huge increase there. The new disks are also using perpendicular recording. Perp. recording helped Seagates 160GB drives be competitive with the 7K100.

[brentpresley]

This is a long awaited development.

I agree with JD Hurst that 7200 rpm is hugely better than lower speeds, and I also think that the incremental improvement from a 7K60 to a 7K100 (based on my own experience) is less than earthshattering.

Likewise, I predict that the incremental improvement from a 7K100 to a 7K200 will be, shall we say, a yawn.

22% is FAR from a yawn.

[Ken Fox]

22% is FAR from a yawn.

Yes and no. All you have at this point, unless I am mistaken, is what Hitachi is saying about Hitachi's drive; this is otherwise known as "marketing."

When online review sites measure such things as hard disk performance, processor performance, chipset performance, or any other single component as it relates to "performance," you end up with numbers that seem very cut and dried, with the actual benefit to any user being anything BUT cut and dried.

This is, of course, because the speed and function of a computer is derived from all its constituent parts, used in the way that a given user uses it. For example, if one is a research scientist whose primary use of a computer is for crunching numbers, than isolated processor performance increases are more important than for the typical user, who uses his computer to browse the web, for email, data storage and retrieval, and simple digital photo processing. Even so, a 22% increase in processor speed for this hypothetical scientists might end up being more like an 8% overall speed increase, or some other small number, when all the other (unchanged) components are thrown into the mix.

I have a very clear memory of my experiences with 4200, 5400, and 7200rpm notebook disks over the years as this science changed. At the time, 4200 seemed "fast enough," but I used these slower disks in the time of less complicated operating systems and programs. The increase to 5400rpm was welcome, but came at the same time as many increases in software complexity (Windows 2000, then XP, in comparison to prior DOS and Win 9x code), so there was not as much apparent "gain" from the 4200-5400 transition. 7200rpm came along during a period of relatively stagnant "code bloat," and noticeably speeded up system bootup and program initiations. Nonetheless, once a system is booted up and programs are running, disk access speeds are mostly important for data retrieval, and few users are retrieving lots of data from second to second or minute to minute.

22% speed increase presumably represents a best case scenario for certain aspects of disk performance, at least according to Hitachi, who has every reason to seize upon the most tantalizing number in their pre-product launch publicity. From the standpoint of most actual users doing the sorts of things that most actual users do, I doubt that the SYSTEM speed increase resulting from an upgrade of a 7K60 or 7K100, to a 7K200, will be worth either the price or the effort, unless there are other needed benefits, such as for the user who seriously needs extra hard disk capacity in their notebook(s).

This whole discussion brings up the topic of whether advances in hardware are still producing meaningful benefit to end users, after the requirements of ever-more-bloated code are taken into consideration. I can't speak for most people but I can for myself. I own 2 desktops and 4 (soon to be 5) laptops, all with relatively recent technology. I do many things with my computers, everything from data storage to database, to word processing to email, to web authorship, graphing, digital photo processing with Photoshop CS2, and many other things. I honestly believe that the amount of system performance available now is more than adequate for all the things I ask my computers to do, and I do more things with my computers than do most people.

The equipment and software manufacturers would all go out of business if most people felt that what they had now did not need to be upgraded (as I have stated I feel). Therefore, there is a need to create a buzz about what is coming down the pike, what will become available for sale in the next cycle and mini-cycle. The improvements become less and less significant to the average user, but goods need to be sold. So, here we have Vista, a real resource hog if there ever was one, and it (and programs running on it) will NEED these hardware "improvements" just to run as fast as our-already-sufficient programs ran on our earlier operating systems.

I'm trying not to be a Luddite here; improvements in computer code and hardware have brought us many things, and I'd surely not want to go back to the bad old days of my 560 Thinkpad and DOS 3.2 (or was it Windows 95? I forget). But right now we are in a period where all the hype surrounds this and that piece of hardware, or the Vista "Aero" interface, or other intangible stuff that is being shoved down our throats by the PC/software industry rather than coming from any real need or desire of the mass of users out there.

If people concentrated on what they actually needed to do, what they actually use their computers for, there would be a lot less interest in Vista, Santa Rosa, Core4Quad, and 7K200 products, to name but a few.

[brentpresley]

Put this into perspective - the OVERALL system performance increase netted from going from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive is larger than the ENTIRE performance spectrum between the lowest clocked Core Duo (T2300 @ 1.66GHz) and the fastest Core 2 Duo (T7600 @ 2.4GHz). And that includes the 15% faster clock for clock increase in the Core2 over Core.

I know for a FACT that this will GREATLY increase my ability to load virtual machines (XP Pro SP2) from the disk and the like in VMWare and I look forward to waiting on my machine less and getting more done.


And besides, this thread isn't directed at MOST users. If you are happy with your current performance and don't want more, I kindly request that you stop discouraging others from pursuing it.

The FACT remains. THESE DRIVES ARE FAST. And SIGNIFICANTLY faster than ANYTHING ELSE out there. PERIOD.

[gator]

Ken, whatever your points regarding need and performance, having a high-speed 200 GB HDD beats lugging a seperate USB HDD around. This 7k200 is drool-worthy just for that.

I had a 7k60 on my X31 (thanks to Brent!) and it ran hotter and noiser than the 7k100 on my T60. I am not a nitpick, but the difference was not something I could ignore. I think the 7k100 was (and still is) a great product. I bet the 7k200 is going to be even better.

[shalliday]

Ken, whatever your points regarding need and performance, having a high-speed 200 GB HDD beats lugging a seperate USB HDD around. This 7k200 is drool-worthy just for that.

I'll second that. Had the Seagate 160 on order but as soon as I heard about the release of the 7K200, I immediately canceled the order. Have been very pleased with the 7K100 and from reading the specs, figure the 7K200 is well worth the extra cost and the added delay in having to wait for it to become available..