Hitachi has recently been among the high-end range when it comes to internal hard drives, being consistently listed on benchmark lists with Seagate, Western Digital and even various solid state drives. Their latest release, the Deskstar 7K1000.D, is no exception being the highest ranked Hitachi drive on PassMark’s High End Hard Drive Chart.
Specifications
- Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
- Capacity: 1TB/750GB/500GB/320GB/250GB
- RPM: 7200 RPM
- Cache/Data Buffer: 32MB
- Media Transfer Rate: 1822Mbits/s, max
- Interface Transfer Rate: 600 MB/s, max
- Advanced Format Drive
The new Deskstar 7K1000.D is a fourth-generation 7K1000 drive, following up the line of 1TB hard drives that began in 2007 with five platters. The previous generation, the Deskstar 7K1000.C, crammed the 1TB data across two platters. Now, with the Deskstar 7K1000.D, Hitachi has delivered a desktop hard drive using one platter to achieve the 1TB capacity point. This was first seen back in May with Seagate’s GoFlex Desk product line. An article on hard drive areal density can be seen here.
Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000.Dis a typical 3.5” desktop hard drive with three mounting holes on each side and four on the bottom. This a Serial ATA (SATA) drive, with a SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) interface. It comes with the standard SATA data and power connectors as well as a 2-pin jumper connector. On the top plate, there is a breather hole located at the lower right end, just like the previous generation, the 7K1000.C.
This internal hard drive features Advanced Format technology. This means the sector size is increased from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes, which in turn increases capacities and improves error-correcting capabilities.
Another key point offered from Hitachi is its power-efficiency. With eighth-generation Advanced Power Management technology paired up with the innovative HiVERT (Hitachi Voltage Efficiency Regulator Technology), pioneered on the 2.5” Travelstar line, the 7K1000.D benefits with 16% power savings during idle periods as well as top-notch power management and thermal emissions.
Performance and Benchmarks
Testing information including test system, performance tests, and more can be seen here.
Real World Tests - File Read/Write speeds
Single large 63.9 GB file: 96 MB/s
Multiple (1287) small files (totaling 2.33GB): 103.5 MB/s
Read access time (average): 18.20 ms
Write access time (average): 8.52 ms
ATTO Disk Benchmark – Max Read/Write (MB/s)
Deskstar 7K1000.D: 184/180
Crystal DiskMark – Max Read/Write (MB/s)
Sequential data transfer speed: 177.7/173.7
512K: 49.88/56.60
4K: 0.637/1.096
4K @ QD32: 0.866/1.090
PCMark Vantage (MB/s)
Windows Defender: 26.041
Gaming: 13.892
Importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery: 67.671
Windows Vista startup: 19.339
Video editing using Windows Movie Maker: 32.240
Windows Media Center: 58.237
Adding music to Windows Media Player: 6.956
Application loading: 3.975
Overall score: 4271 points
PCMark 7 – Secondary storage (MB/s)
Overall score: 1824
Power consumption at idle was measured at 3.7W. Sound levels were recorded as being unnoticeable during both normal and heavy usage, which isn’t surprising with most hard drives these days. The hard drive was slightly warm under stress, but nothing to worry about.
Conclusion
Overall, the Deskstar 7K1000.D has made some significant enhancements over its 7K1000.C predecessor including power consumption, a fully upgraded buffer cache, and of course the single-platter design. Against its competitors however, the access times are lacking. Other than that it is definitely on par, and even ahead, of most current internal hard drives in every other aspect. Also, as far as price/performance (pre-Thailand floods) – the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D wins over most.
You can purchase the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D at most online retailers including Newegg.com.
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