Hitachi Deskstar 7K500

Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 Available Capacities Model Number Capacity HDS725050KLA360 500 GB Lowest Real-Time Price (500 GB): Introduction Hitachi’s Deskstar series of drives have always been rather polarizing here at StorageReview as well as around the enthusiast community in general. One reason is sheer capacity and performance… Hitachi’s (and formerly IBM’s) drives have always been among the largest and speediest around. Another cause, however, is a legacy of troubles. Two iterations, the 75GXP and 60GXP, have been dogged by allegations of high failure rates.

Several families and several years have passed since the fervor over those two families hit a fevered pitch. As time moved on, the hubbub over those lines has died down… but Hitachi’s commitment to remain on the bleeding edge of capacity and speed has not. Last year’s Deskstar 7K400 reintroduced the firm’s unique five-disc assembly and delivered first-class performance that until very recently vied for the SATA performance crown. A parallel ATA unit retrofitted for serial operation, the 7K400 incorporated a surprisingly robust (yet relatively unadvertised) implementation of ATA-4 tagged command queuing.

The manufacturer’s first attempt at a native SATA drive design was the transitional Deskstar T7K250. Though it featured from-the-ground-up SATA construction and implemented SATA Native Command Queuing, the drive took a step backwards from the 7K400 when it come to capacity. Now, however, the firm is back in full-force with a new flagship, the Deskstar 7K500.

Hitachi’s latest leverages the five-platter design reintroduced in the 7K400 with higher-density 100-gigabyte platters and is the first half-terabyte drive to hit the market. Like all Deskstars, the 7K500 claims a relatively aggressive 8.5 millisecond average seek time. It is the first of Hitachi’s drives to feature a larger 16-megabyte buffer similar to those found in competing designs. Like the T7K250, the 7K500 boasts a second-generation 300 MB/sec SATA interface and NCQ. A desktop-standard three-year warranty protects the drive.

With 7K500’s monstrous capacity, Hitachi targets the hot-rod rigs put together by power users as well as entry-level servers with light duty cycles where capacity remains a more significant factor than blazing random accesses.

As a contemporary 7200 RPM drive, the Deskstar 7K500 will be compared against these drives in the tests that follow:

WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate – Begin– The sequential transfer rate attained by the outermost zones in the hard disk. The figure typically represents the highest sustained transfer rate a drive delivers.

WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate – End– The sequential transfer rate attained by the innermost zones in the hard disk. The figure typically represents the lowest sustained transfer rate a drive delivers.

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Hitachi’s drives have traditionally led the field when it comes to random access times. The Deskstar 7K500 posts a 12.9 millisecond access time which, when taking into account 7200 RPM’s 4.2 ms latency, yields a measured average seek time of 8.7 ms. The result misses Hitachi’s claim by a small 0.2 ms margin. Writes clock in slightly slower than reads at 13.1 milliseconds. These scores trail those of the older 7K400 by over half a millisecond.

The 7K500’s sequential transfer rates are respectable but hardly earth-shattering. With an outer-zone rate of 62.9 megabytes per second, the Deskstar lags the similar-density competition such as the WD Caviar and Maxtor MaXLine by 2 to 3 MB/sec. The 7K500’s 100 GB/platter construction does, of course, top its 80 GB/platter predecessor and, oddly enough, Seagate’s 125 GB/platter Barracuda. Transfer rate decays significantly as data moves inwards. An inner-zone measurement of 33.7 MB/sec lags all other large-capacity drives save only Hitachi’s older 7K400.

With a StorageReview Office DriveMark of 877 I/Os per second, the latest Deskstar takes the field by storm. The 7K500 bests WD’s impressive Caviar RE2 by 6% and even edges out the 15,000 RPM Fujitsu MAU3147 (not shown, see the Drive Performance Database) to set a new record in our revised productivity suite. Enabling NCQ slides the 7K500’s score down by about 5%, though the resulting score nonetheless is enough to maintain a lead over WD’s drive.

Hitachi’s latest continues its impressive showing in the High-End DriveMark. At 645 I/Os per second, the Deskstar again wrests the top 7200 RPM slot away from the Caviar. In a showing similar to that found in the Office test, the 7K500’s new native SATA design and 16-megabyte buffer combine to deliver an impressive 23% increase in performance over the firm’s old design. Activating NCQ results in a slight performance hit.

The Deskstar 7K500 builds upon its exceptional desktop scores by seizing the top slot in our FarCry capture. A 13% improvement over the performance turned in by its predecessor powers the 7K500 (with NCQ enabled or disabled) past WD’s Caviar.

More of the same arises in our Sims 2 recording. The 7K500 again delivers a large improvement over its predecessor and tops the charts after blowing past WD’s drive by a comfortable 7% margin.

Finally, the Deskstar completes its sweep of our non-server tests by leading the field in our trace of the ever-popular World of Warcraft. Hitachi’s lead here slims down a bit, but the drive’s 13% improvement over the firm’s older design nonetheless sets the 7K500 apart from most of the competition.

The Deskstar 7K500’s multi-user scores contrast starkly with its desktop prowess. Its relatively swift actuator permits the drive a respectable start at low loads. As queue depths increase, however, the 7K500’s modest (and, incidentally, linear) gains grant the drive only a comparatively small rise in overall achieved IOps. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.9, hardly a speedster in this domain, easily overtakes the Deskstar drive with 8 or more I/Os outstanding.

Differences between the NCQ-equipped 7K500 and older, TCQ-equipped 7K400 are striking. The legacy ATA-4 queuing found in the 7K400 exacts an early penalty out of the gate- despite its superior access time, the 7K400 commences far behind any other drive with just a single I/O outstanding. As depths increase, however, the drive’s TCQ implementation scales quite well and empowers the 7K400 to keep up the pace with the best of today’s NCQ-equipped units. The 7K500, on the other hand, slopes much more modestly and never comes close to matching the performance of its predecessor.

Startup (Peak) Power Dissipation– The maximum power dissipated by a drive upon initial spin-up. This figure is relevant when a system features a large number of drives. Though most controllers feature logic that can stagger the spin-up of individual drives, peak power dissipation may nonetheless be of concern in very large arrays or in cases where a staggered start is not feasible. Generally speaking, drives hit peak power draw at different times on the 5V and 12V rails. The 12V peak usually occurs in the midst of initial spin-up. The 5V rail, however, usually hits maximum upon actuator initialization.

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The Deskstar 7K500’s objective sound pressure measurement of 43.6 decibels weighs in slightly louder than that of its predecessor. Even so, the drive whispers away at idle and does not draw attention to itself when properly mounted in a case. Likely due to its relatively large, swift actuator, the Deskstar’s seeks are slightly more audible than the competition. Still, it is just enough to let the user know that the drive is busy fulfilling requests.

Hitachi manages to keep the 7K500’s idle power consumption at 8.5 watts, matching that of the 7K400’s and placing the drive right in the midst of the competition. When performing a full-bore random seek, however, the 7K500’s dissipation rises to 14.6 watts and tops the chart. This is not a total surprise given the drive’s 10-arm actuator… but the 7K400 also features a 5-platter design and manages to dissipate nearly a full watt less. The newer drive thus places just a watt or two below the coolest-running SCSI drives. Ensure adequate airflow in potential installations.

The Deskstar’s peak power dissipation figures contrast sharply with its operating power numbers. Drawing just 15 watts on the 12 volt rail, the 7K500 manages to spin up its 5-disc assembly with amazing efficiency. Despite a one- to three-platter advantage, none of the competition can match Hitachi’s drives.

According to filtered and analyzed data collected from participating StorageReview.com readers, a predecessor of the
Hitachi Deskstar 7K500, the

Hitachi Deskstar 7K400
, is more reliable than of the other drives in the survey that meet a certain minimum floor of participation.

Note that the percentages in bold above may change as more information continues to be collected and analyzed. For more information, to input your experience with these and/or other drives, and to view comprehensive results, please visit the SR Drive Reliability Survey.

In the end, however, despite the hoopla over SAS’s impending arrival and its interoperability with SATA, today’s monster SATA drives more often than not still find themselves in power user rigs. Such machines, no matter how heavily taxed, do not parallel the usage patterns found in a server. That leaves single-user results and when it comes to the 7K500’s, who can argue? It’s perhaps the fastest SATA drive ever.

 
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