The Terabyte Landmark: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000

January 19, 2008 by Devon Cooke

The terabyte mark was reached almost exactly a year ago, when Hitachi announced their 7K1000 at the CES 2007 conference. At the time, it was not only the largest drive available, but by many accounts, it was also the fastest, giving Western Digital's previously-untouchable 10,000 RPM Raptor a run for its money.

In the year since, the other major manufacturers have introduced new models that match the 7K1000's capacity, but none has managed to pass it. In terms of performance, the 7K1000 is still at or near the top; so far, Samsung seems to be the toughest competitor, but Samsung's drive hasn't been widely reviewed enough to draw any conclusions yet.

So, even though the 7K1000 is now a year old, it's still well worth looking at — it's size and performance won't be obsolete any time soon. But, what about noise? With a year's worth of reviews already out there on the internet, we don't have anything new to say about its performance, but we can do what we do best: Give the drive a complete and thorough acoustic examination.

This box is about ten times the size of the actual drive.

The drive was shipped to us in a large retail box, most of which was occupied by red packing foam. The drive was embedded in the middle inside a shiny antistatic bag, and a few basic accessories were also included: A cable, some screws, a generic manual / install guide, and a CD with a few utilities.

Very well padded.