Hitachi 7K250 SATA drive

[026TB4U]

Well, I purchased the Hitachi 120GB 7K250 drive for my son's machine to replace a failed 60GXP. Turns out I got the 60GXP back in 5 days, so this HD has been sitting on my desk for 9 months collecting dust.

Well, my Western Digital 1000JB took a crap (so much for Hitachis suck, buy a WD) and was forced to back up all my data and make the switch. The bad part was that the partitioned data drive area was the area that got corrupted, so I had to rely on my backups which were fairly incomplete. :sorry:

So anyway, the drive is in and I finally installed my AIW 9800Pro that I won from this cool website called Bitbender something (jk, thanks again everyone).

So, I am now smoking along with my new hard drive and video card. I'm not fully set-up, so I haven't tried out all the card features yet. As far as the HD, its faster than the WD, it definitely quieter, and it's nice not having to use a IDE-to-SATA adapter. It's a much cleaner install.

I'll run an ATTO soon and post it.

[026TB4U]

As promised. This is on my NF7-S using the 1.0.0.28 SATA driver which I know is old. The newest driver is 1.0.0.50 and is on windows update. But I read that there are some problems with it, so I'm sticking with these until I can do some research. There may be an improvement with the newer drivers, but I need to see which is the best. If anyone knows, please let me know.

[floppybootstomp]

Looking good there 0-60 :smoke:

I been thinking, I have a total of 6 WD's in use here, including the 2 Raptors, and they're OK, but I did have a WD 120Gb IDE drive crap out on me, only three months old as well.

Got it rma'd OK, took a week.

And what was on it? Why, only a lot of WAV files I'd recorded from 7" 45rpm singles. They took me three evenings, about 10 hours, to record. And all blitzed.

I really don't know which brand to trust sometimes but that Hitachi looks good.

Now load up Call Of Duty using that AIW 9800 Pro and meet me and IA/DJ/WTF online for a fraggin' :)

[026TB4U]

Originally posted by floppybootstomp
Looking good there 0-60 :smoke:

I been thinking, I have a total of 6 WD's in use here, including the 2 Raptors, and they're OK, but I did have a WD 120Gb IDE drive crap out on me, only three months old as well.

Got it rma'd OK, took a week.

And what was on it? Why, only a lot of WAV files I'd recorded from 7" 45rpm singles. They took me three evenings, about 10 hours, to record. And all blitzed.

I really don't know which brand to trust sometimes but that Hitachi looks good.

Now load up Call Of Duty using that AIW 9800 Pro and meet me and IA/DJ/WTF online for a fraggin' :)

I think my WD is about 8 months old. I hope the Raptors are more reliable than the hard drives out today. They should be since they are marketed as a server/enthusiast hard drive and are supposed to be more robustly built.

I will probably switch to them at the next hard drive failure if they do prove to be reliable and they are the best option at the time.

I am seriously considering picking up another Hitachi and going Raid-1 (mirroring). From what I understand, there is only a small impact on performance and it would be nice to have the extra protection.

But that's another day and another thread.

I would love to frag with you guys but I don't have the time atm. :sorry:

[ImaginAsian]

if you read this article just posted on anandtech, he says what i had been suspecting all along with Raid-0. that it is good for benchmarks but useless for real world desktop performance pretty much. he used a 128K stripe size, i don't know whats the optimum stripe size but i'll trust him :D

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

anyways, ive always liked IBM/Hitachi drives - still going strong with my 75GXP 30GB thats well over 3 years old now. also have a hitachi 120GB drive as well. going to move the 30GB to an external enclosure and get a hitachi 160GXP SATA drive - the prices are insane now ($95) for mass storage.

sure the raptor 74gb is a speed demon but ive come to the conclusion that i can get more then double the capacity for half the price and 90% of the speed - no brainer in my book!

was looking to do RAID-1 too...but then again i backup to CD's and soon to DVD's :)

[026TB4U]

Thanks IA,

I had read the article. There are people that will argue the fact, btu raid 0 isn't for me. And as the article said, not much of a performance hit at raid 1.

There are no more 160GXP as far as I know. I think you're talking about the 7K250 (the drive I have). They are ~ $90 at NE. Make sure you get the SATA version since there is an IDE version. Check the model numbers HERE (http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/Dlocator.nsf/comptool/comptool) and scroll down to the 7K250-X.

[ImaginAsian]

oops i meand to say 160GB and yep NewEgg is the shit. that's where im gonna get it from - SATA, 8MB Cache, quiet as hell - im sold.

wonder if you can do raid-1 with a 120 and a 160 pair?

[026TB4U]

I thought that looked wrong. I think you meant 180GXP. Either way, the 7K250 is the 180GXP replacement/upgrade.

[floppybootstomp]

Originally posted by Digital Junkie
wonder if you can do raid-1 with a 120 and a 160 pair?

You could if you used the 2 x 160's, 1 x 160 as master disk with OS and 1 x 160 as backup within RAID 1. Any other combo would be a waste of 40Gb.

I've used many RAID 0 setups now and tbh, there isn't a great deal of difference in real everyday usage terms. The only real increase in performance I've noticed is RAID-ing the 2 x Raptors.

Also have two x SATA WD 120Gb's in a RAID 0 atm in the 'video editing' machine. Like I said, I can't honestly notice much difference in performance as opposed to a single disk. Except, of course, in ATTO.

[ImaginAsian]

anand's article took two raptors in raid-0 and it showed no difference except benchamarks.

guess i couldn't partition out 40gb from the 160gb and use the 120 paired with the other drive huh?

[floppybootstomp]

DJ: I ain't on no ego trip, I'm not out to prove anything, I've admitted that a RAID 0 setup in real terms ain't really that much faster.

However, using two Raptors in a RAID 0 - it flew. No ifs, no buts, the system was shit hot and fast. That ain't no benchmark, that's just me noticing it against every system I've used. And I do have a system that ain't too shabby to compare it against.

Anand, as far as I'm concerned, are talking bollocks.

Or they just trying to be smartarses.

Believe me, 2 Raptors in a RAID 0 cooks. Full stop. Period.

Well, it does for me anyway.

And no, as far as I know, any RAID config has to use the whole disk, you can't partition a section out.

[ImaginAsian]

hey i didn't say i didn't believe you, all i said was anand used two raptors and their results didn't show much in real life is all

[floppybootstomp]

Okey doke DJ :D

Hey, OT, but I'm up early atm, I rose at 6.45am, unheard of for me, but I got work today and have to start early. And when I posted # 11, I'd just got back from the pub and was perhaps feeling a tad inebriated :D

Not that that's any excuse mind. And I still say Anand talking out their bumhole ;)

[ImaginAsian]

here are some more articles, this time from Storage Review corroborating Anand's results with Raid in a single-user workstation.

http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0

This one also talks about the Tag Command Queuing that is now offered on the Raptor 74GB and mated with a supporting RAID Controller. Sad to say with TCQ enabled, the single user envrionment performed worse :(

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html

shucks i was going to get an external 4-port RAID Controller with TCQ and NCQ support too. might still do just that for the flexibility...im sure i could turn of TCQ/NCQ somehow. Want to try and move all my drives to SATA connections. Or I might just get a SIIG 4-port SATA Adaptor for $50 and be done with :)