Hitachi P7K500

Tamas · Post by **Tamas** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 6:17 am

I haven't find any review about this drive, and I've just bought two of them, tought might somebody interested about P7K500, so I've opened this topic.

Specs and general info about this drive: http://www.storagereview.com/hitachi_an ... tar_p7k500
-energy efficient
-250GB / platter

I've bought two HDP725050GLA360 - Hitachi P7K500, 500GB (2 platter), 16MB cache, SATA drives.

Some pics about the drive together with it's predecessor T7K500:
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v1.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v2.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v3.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v4.jpg

As you can see on the pics, this is a cost effectively optimized version of the last series with less metal cast, and more SMD components on the PCB, the new version don't have the old 4 pin power connector anymore.

Stated power consumption:
idle (1 disk / 2 disk): 3,6W / 4,8W
seek (1 disk / 2 disk): 6,4W / 8,2W
The new drive runs around 3 degree cooler than the old one, guess it's really has more efficient design.

Performance (HD tach graph - AAM disabled on both drives): http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v5.jpg
Sequential speed is impressive.

Seek noise: Seek performance decreased quite a lot from the T7K500's 13,4ms to 18,5ms (I think the reason for this is the higher data density, which needs more precise head positioning.), but fortunately also the seek sound became more softer. It's absolutely not disturbing for me. I have a rubber suspension so I left the AAM setting disabled, while I had to enable AAM for T7K500 because it was simply too loud for me. If you'd like to get almost inaudible seeks without suspension, you can use AAM to set even more softer seeks.

Airborne acoustics: Maybe because the new metal cast, I could hear more wind noise from the drive than from the T7K500, but I could only distinguish the two drives from 5-7cm (2-3").

Vibration: (1-10; 10=no vibration)
P7K500 500GB (2 platter) first drive: 6
P7K500 500GB (2 platter) second drive: 7
some more subjective references about hard drives which I have for comparison:
Hitachi 4K40 40GB 4200RPM (1 platter): 9
Western Digital Scorpio 80GB (1 platter): 8
Hitachi 5K250 250GB (2 platter): 7,5
Hitachi T7K500 320GB (2 platter): 7

Price: 123$ (Here in Hungary this is a very good price.)

Conclusion: This drive has a good price, and with a bit of luck (vibration good or excellent

) you can get a very quiet drive with soft seeks, and it runs cool.

justlnluck · Post by **justlnluck** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:32 am

I've had this drive for about a month now. Best drive I've ever owned in my 20 years of PC experience. I've extensively used Seagates, Samsungs, IBMs, and Western Digitals. They either had idle whine, seek noise, undulating vibrations, or Seagates constant grinding STIR. With this Hitachi drive, I can see the hdd activity LED flickering on my case. But without it, I would not know it was even on.

bendit · Post by **bendit** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 7:03 pm

I may have had a bad sample but the idle noise on my 250g was obnoxious enough for me to send it back to Newegg.

justlnluck · Post by **justlnluck** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:04 pm

Interesting. Mine is the 2 platter 500Gig. No idle noise, even with the case open and my ear beside it. This is a clear contrast from the Seagates and Samsungs that have high pitched idle whine. Especially the Samsung.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:39 am

Did AAM on improve vibration? I am consider buying a 500GB P7K500, too. btw, did Hitachi make any fancy box for P7k500 like WD GP or just a plain retail box like T7K500? Thanks in advance.

Charles · Post by **Charles** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:20 am

Hi TamÃ¡s!

Nice to see my folks here.

Where did you buy this drive?

I am planning to buy a one-platter 250GB type (or 320GB).

BR
Charles

Tamas · Post by **Tamas** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:32 pm

loimlo wrote:Did AAM on improve vibration? I am consider buying a 500GB P7K500, too. btw, did Hitachi make any fancy box for P7k500 like WD GP or just a plain retail box like T7K500? Thanks in advance.

AAM mainly affects the head positioning speed, but if rapid seeks cause vibration in your PC case, it can help a little.
-P7K500 uses a plain retail packaging.

Tamas · Post by **Tamas** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:36 pm

Charles wrote:Hi TamÃ¡s!

Nice to see my folks here. Where did you buy this drive?
I am planning to buy a one-platter 250GB type (or 320GB).

BR
Charles

Hello

I've bought it from here, call him wether he has more on stock. 500GB version costs around 22500FT, or you can try this shop: Shop

justlnluck · Post by **justlnluck** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:16 pm

My previous Samsungs and Seagates were so noisy, I had to lay them down on bubble wrap inside the case. This Hitachi is silent enough that I can directly mount it without padding and you can't hear a thing from your chair. The lack of vibration is a beautiful thing and it makes me wonder why so many overlook the Hitachi.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:38 am

Thanks, Tamas. I guess I've to go to retail store to get a P7K500 cause no package difference.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:00 am

I have an Antec P150, i wanna buy a P7K500 250GB model; in your opinion, is it necessary to cool it down with front 90mm fans, or can i avoid install them?

Conroy · Post by **Conroy** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:13 am

_MarcoM_ wrote:I have an Antec P150, i wanna buy a P7K500 250GB model; in your opinion, is it necessary to cool it down with front 90mm fans, or can i avoid install them?

I'm not sure how cool we want to keep drives (can anyone answer this?), but the P7k500 500gb in my Solo stayed below 38 degrees when I had no fans in front.
I have my drive in the second lowest tray, and taped a piece of paper over the top 92mm vent so that more air goes in through the bottom.

Once I added one Nexus 92mm fan to the bottom, temps seemed to go down one or two degrees. It didn't seem to make much difference to the hard drive, but I left it there because it seemed to help my video card.

I haven't really paid too much attention to temps though yet, but I'm planning to do more thorough tests soon. I can test something specific if you'd like.

Tamas · Post by **Tamas** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:57 am

Conroy wrote:
_MarcoM_ wrote:I have an Antec P150, i wanna buy a P7K500 250GB model; in your opinion, is it necessary to cool it down with front 90mm fans, or can i avoid install them?
I'm not sure how cool we want to keep drives (can anyone answer this?), but the P7k500 500gb in my Solo stayed below 38 degrees when I had no fans in front.

Drive manufacturers usually specify maximum operating temperatures around 55 degrees. My drives run at 40-50 degrees without any problem.
Interesting article from google about hard drive reliability, and impact of temperature on hdd's.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:02 pm

Thank you Conroy and Tamas for the usefull answers.
The article from Google is very interesting: "......failures do not increase when the average temperature increases....... Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend." Oh well, so don't worry and be happy

whiic · Post by **whiic** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:47 pm

There's lots of classified data related to Google's study, such as how drives were cooled and were they all cooled the same way. It also had 5400rpm drives... the only manufacturer of those (at the time of creation of the study) was Maxtor... who also happened to be having trouble with reliability.

5400rpm drives run cooler. 5400rpm drives are Maxtor. Maxtor are cooler. Maxtor is the shit. "Cooler is the shit". This is my opinion. It does not apply to all HDDs in general but the HDD population Google was using back then.

Google also noticed something about long-term reliability which I thought might be related to the issue that cooler 5400rpm also happen to be equipped with ball-bearings and thus are less tolerant to operational hours than "hotter drives".

Google's study verified previous studies about accuracy of SMART diagnostics and temperature relation was only part of this study. They also happened to use temperature as reported through SMART, thus relied on HDD's temperature sensor and logics that converted and filtered the readings to form where it was presented in SMART. Way too many factors that made the HDD population non-random:
- Maxtor the only manufacturer of 5400rpm HDDs
- Maxtor having reliabilty issues
- 5400rpm drives being equipped with BBs, 7200rpm drives with fluid bearings
- reliance on accuracy of SMART temperature attribute.

Temperature affects reliability in a negative way - to some low limit. If HDD is cooled too much (say, below 10 deg C) reliability will start to decrease as well as risk of condensation increases. Condensation increases risk of head crashes, corrosion and fouls bearing lubricant. Excessive cooling may also affect lubricant viscousity.

Google's study may be the largest study but when it comes to temperature - reliability relation, it's not a conclusive one. Too many other variables that they kept secret (because they can't reveal information that would give free advertisement to any of the manufacturers - Google is above all else a company that sells ad space! They are not a university and their priorities lie alsewhere.)

KaOSoFt · Post by **KaOSoFt** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:42 pm

Tamas wrote:I haven't find any review about this drive, and I've just bought two of them, tought might somebody interested about P7K500, so I've opened this topic.

Specs and general info about this drive: http://www.storagereview.com/hitachi_an ... tar_p7k500
-energy efficient
-250GB / platter

I've bought two HDP725050GLA360 - Hitachi P7K500, 500GB (2 platter), 16MB cache, SATA drives.

Some pics about the drive together with it's predecessor T7K500:
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v1.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v2.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v3.jpg
http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v4.jpg

As you can see on the pics, this is a cost effectively optimized version of the last series with less metal cast, and more SMD components on the PCB, the new version don't have the old 4 pin power connector anymore.

Stated power consumption:
idle (1 disk / 2 disk): 3,6W / 4,8W
seek (1 disk / 2 disk): 6,4W / 8,2W
The new drive runs around 3 degree cooler than the old one, guess it's really has more efficient design.

Performance (HD tach graph - AAM disabled on both drives): http://web.interware.hu/ntamas26/P7K500v5.jpg
Sequential speed is impressive.

Seek noise: Seek performance decreased quite a lot from the T7K500's 13,4ms to 18,5ms (I think the reason for this is the higher data density, which needs more precise head positioning.), but fortunately also the seek sound became more softer. It's absolutely not disturbing for me. I have a rubber suspension so I left the AAM setting disabled, while I had to enable AAM for T7K500 because it was simply too loud for me. If you'd like to get almost inaudible seeks without suspension, you can use AAM to set even more softer seeks.

Airborne acoustics: Maybe because the new metal cast, I could hear more wind noise from the drive than from the T7K500, but I could only distinguish the two drives from 5-7cm (2-3").

Vibration: (1-10; 10=no vibration)
P7K500 500GB (2 platter) first drive: 6
P7K500 500GB (2 platter) second drive: 7
some more subjective references about hard drives which I have for comparison:
Hitachi 4K40 40GB 4200RPM (1 platter): 9
Western Digital Scorpio 80GB (1 platter): 8
Hitachi 5K250 250GB (2 platter): 7,5
Hitachi T7K500 320GB (2 platter): 7

Price: 123$ (Here in Hungary this is a very good price.)

Conclusion: This drive has a good price, and with a bit of luck (vibration good or excellent ) you can get a very quiet drive with soft seeks, and it runs cool.

justlnluck wrote:My previous Samsungs and Seagates were so noisy, I had to lay them down on bubble wrap inside the case. This Hitachi is silent enough that I can directly mount it without padding and you can't hear a thing from your chair. The lack of vibration is a beautiful thing and it makes me wonder why so many overlook the Hitachi.

I HAVE TO TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU ALL...!

justlnluck wrote:With this Hitachi drive, I can see the hdd activity LED flickering on my case. But without it, I would not know it was even on.

Hahahaha, again I totally agree! Why? Well, Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA hard drive activity LED is barely visible because of the blue LED from the power switch, and with these Hitachis I feel like they are doing nothing.

So, I bought two HDP725050GLA360 - Hitachi Deskstar P7K500, 500 GB (2 platter), 16MB cache, SATA drives a month ago, and man, I can't be happier!

Here are the performance results: http://www.uploadfilesystem.com//viewim ... u07923.png

The one in red is where the operating system is installed.

Let's see, what can I say about them... they are totally AWESOME! I have them installed on a Themaltake Tsunami, and while they have some vibration (based on your scale, I'd rate them 7), with rubber srews they are barely audible. Even when seeking, I have to put my ear five centimeters away to be able to hear it working. I shut all my fans off so I could do the tests. I didn't have my old Hitachi Deskstar 80 GB with me, so I could test it too, but I can tell you, I could hear it a little bit when seeking even from my chair. On normal usage, I have my fans all set to 7v, because I like having little noise while working; while playing I don't care.

Temperatures... well, it might be because how I have them on my case (with a fan in front), but temperatures have NEVER gone beyond 30 ÂºC. They always stay under that mark.

I'm not so technical, so there's no way I'd be happy for the performance results from HDTach. I'm actually happy because load times on games shortened by almost 48%! Those are words from a normal user, so I hope you understand what I mean! In case you don't, this means that even if a Raptor offers superior performance, I have enough with this drive, and with almost 300 GB more!

Thank you Tamas, because thanks to you is that I knew about this hard drive. Thank you a lot!

See you around!

KaOSoFt · Post by **KaOSoFt** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:49 pm

Hello.

Does anyone know if these drives support NCQ? I think the 7K500 does...

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:49 am

Yes, it supports NCQ, but I highly doubt the performance increase in these slow HDDs would be equal to normal 7200PRM HDDs.

JaYp146 · Post by **JaYp146** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:59 pm

Just thought I'd bump this thread TTT, as the 320GB version is now $49.99 shipped @ Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145213

Hitachi P7K500

Hitachi P7K500

Re: Hitachi P7K500