Hitachi CS7K1000 SATA Hard Drive: Massive storage and performance
Written: Jun 14 '08 (Updated Jun 14 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast and quiet
Cons: I need a 100TB drive :-)
The Bottom Line: I have had a good track record with Hitachi Deskstar drives and will continue to use them for my future storage needs.
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| Gr8ful's Full Review: Hitachi ?CinemaStar 7K1000 HCS721010KLA330 1 TB SA... |
Hard drives are the one computer component of which I never seem to have enough. As soon as I think I am good to go, I find myself editing more videos or music and wind up needing additional storage and working space. I recently bought two 750GB Seagate drives and just last month I needed more space already, so I bought two 1TB Hitachi drives hoping that will hold me for a while. Here I am one month later and I have filled three quarters of one drive and about a third of the other with video and music.
Hitachi CS7K1000
The hard drive is a standard 3.5” drive that installs internally using SATA data and power connections. The drive holds 931GB of data after formatting due to the misrepresentation of the term “gigabyte,” of which I have written before so I will refrain from repeating myself here.
Quick Specs
* Capacity: 1 TB
* HDD Form Factor: 3.5"
* Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
* Average Latency: 4.17 ms
* Interface: SATA 3.0 Gb/s
* Seek Time: 8.5 ms read / 9.2 ms write
* Memory Buffer: 32MB
Performance
The drive performs very well for recording video and audio. The large memory buffer helps with transfer of very large amounts of data and with the 3Gb (gigabit) interface bandwidth, the drive has no problem keeping up with high definition video or audio recording. This also makes it an ideal drive for avid gamers who want the least amount of lag or glitching in their games.
Keep in mind that to get the full benefit of the speed you must have a 3Gb SATA controller on your motherboard or installa a PCI/PCI-e 3Gb SATA controller card. The drive is only as fast as the controller allows it to be, so if you have a 150Mb SATA controller you are not going to see the speed I talk about in this review.
The drive runs warm but not hot. I have a 120mm case fan installed blowing across the drive and it stays around 115º at idle and under load it reaches 125º give or take a degree. Compared to other hard drives I have and have had in the past its temperature is just under the average, which means good.
Capacity
The Hitachi terabyte drive is the same physical size as the first hard drive upgrade I bought in 1994. The difference, of course, is the amount of capacity. That first drive held only 420MB but was the same physical size and back then imagining 1,000,000MB on a single hard drive was wishful thinking at best. As more and more technology develops for the home computer the software gets larger and the space needed for user storage also increases so larger hard drives are a necessity. The average computer user today will make use of 30-60GB of storage space compared to 200-300MB just a few years ago. Enthusiasts and professionals will use up to 1TB of personal storage space and people like me have multiple terabytes of personal data to store. Before long we may see the 100TB storage drives.
The Hitachi 1TB storage drive is more than most people will need. It is not enough for my use but it is better than using many more (smaller) drives for the same purposes. I suppose I will end up getting a couple more of these drives in the near future but for now my storage capacity limit is abated.
Conclusion
The Hitachi CS7K1000 is a high capacity / high performance hard drive that will satiate the storage capacity of most people for a long time. The drive runs at an acceptable temperature for use in servers and workstations as well as home computers. The speed of the drive is very good and large file transfers are done very fast. I have had a good track record with Hitachi Deskstar drives and will continue to use them for my future storage needs.
Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)
Recommended:
Yes
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