Hitachi 1-Tbyte Drive Is Up To The Task

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies makes exceptionally good drives. Case in point: Hitachi's new large Deskstar 7K1000 SATA drive performed well when placed under constant I/O testing for days. The 7K1000 is 1 Tbyte in size so it is large enough for the most demanding jobs on servers and PCs.

With a 3.5-inch standard-size drive, the 7K1000 uses a perpendicular magnetic recorder (PMR) to achieve the expected 3 GBps for SATA technology. The 7K1000 is a second-generation PMR-type drive that uses an exotic read head metal alloy to improve read/write as well as access time.

PRODUCT: Deskstar 7K1000 PRICE: $399 WARRANTY: 3 years DISTRIBUTORS/ INTEGRATORS: Arrow, ASI, Ingram Micro, Synnex COMPANY: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies San Jose, Calif. (888) 801-4618 www.hitachigst.com

The PMR technology also consumes less power and makes the drive more quiet. At its highest I/O, the 7K1000 consumes slightly more than 13 watts and generates around 3.2 bels, according to Hitachi. The drive was tested using a digital sound level meter on a small tower Antec test case. The sound level produced by the drive was not higher than previous SATA drives tested in the same case.

To achieve the high access time, the 7K1000 spins at 7,200 rpm with a latency of 4.7 milliseconds. The data buffer is 32 Mbytes. This is on par with drives its size from other vendors. Seek time is 8.5 ms on reads and 9.2 ms on writes.

Test Center engineers recommend downloading Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT) software to identify defective drives. The utility works on DOS and does not overwrite existing data on the drive. DFT simply checks to see if the internal drive components, such as the drive heads, platters and electronics, are functional.

When a drive fails, the utility generates a technical return code and even a return merchandise authorization if the system builder wants to go through Hitachi's online warranty process. The code is only generated if the drives were built by Hitachi and IBM.