Hitachi Deskstar 7K250

aabxx · Post by **aabxx** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 10:15 am

Excellent performance, and whisper-quiet too... number 1 on the leaderboard at storagereview.com for 7200 rpm drives!

I wonder why no one here is talking about them?

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... A80_1.html

I just got my 120 gb version for my otherwise completely silent pc (no fans, not even on the cpu), and it is certainly very quiet... after i cover it up a little, i fail to even hear it when it's heavily seeking!

I don't know how it compares to the cudas or the new samsungs when it comes to noise, but certainly it has better performance than them and at worse is perhaps just a tiny bit louder (who knows perhaps it's even quieter!).

At least I am 100% satisfied... btw they can be modified through the hitachi tools so it might be possible to make them run even quieter... although i'm not bothering as it is already completely silent here.

Xfinity · Post by **Xfinity** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 2:31 pm

Yea, I bought the 160GB drive and I am very pleased with it's performance and low sound level.

A good buy in my opion

...

Tom Brown · Post by **Tom Brown** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 2:51 pm

I've been wondering about the DeskStars too. Thanks for the report.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 3:09 pm

That's interesting.

I've heard the lower Gb model and it wasn't particularly quiet.

I must check out the new 160Gb myself.

Thanks for the info!

So many choices

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 8:43 pm

aabxx wrote:Excellent performance, and whisper-quiet too... I just got my 120 gb version for my otherwise completely silent pc (no fans, not even on the cpu), and it is certainly very quiet... after i cover it up a little, i fail to even hear it when it's heavily seeking! ....

Thank you for posting this info!

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 10:37 pm

I've always found IBM's to be pretty quiet. FDB and AAM are a winning combo. But those annoying resetting sounds are still a bother.

With the 7K250's have you noticed the reset sound at all?

aabxx · Post by **aabxx** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:17 am

I don't really know for sure what the reset-sound sounds like, i've only read descriptions... but as far as i can tell, there's no such thing here... but i don't really feel I can be trusted on any such statements

especially not since i cannot even hear the drive anymore...

Anyway the samsung is not really far behind performance-wise... so whatever drive in the new lines you buy, should be a sound (excuse the pun) buy

But of course the new hitachis are currently the quickest all-round 7200 rpm performers (with adjustable AAM), and the 120 gb 8 mb version even cost me 10 bucks less than the similar samsung-model...

I am very satisfied. So i recommend everyone to consider this drive seriously... but what do i know, the samsung might be noticably quieter...

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 3:07 am

aabxx,

are you running with AAM ON or OFF?

cheers,
halcyon

aabxx · Post by **aabxx** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 10:11 am

I'm running with the defaults, so I don't actually know what the
settings are... !

And as I've said earlier here, it's working
perfectly well so I don't even plan to check out the AAM-stuff...
because that would require adding a floppy disk drive to the
computer and all that hassle (you need to use a boot disk
if you didn't know)...

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Tue Nov 04, 2003 1:50 pm

I have a Hitachi Deskstar 180GXP.

I have used Hitachi' tools to place the drive into its silent mode. It makes a massive difference.

To be honest in normal use my Deskstar's seek's were cleared audible, but were not intrusive (to me). With the drive in its silent mode I can still hear it seeking through the case, but only if I concentrate my attention on it.

For me there are two major issues with this drive (acoustically).
1) There is a really annoying reset noise, that is both louder and longer when the drive is in its acoustic mode (how daft is that!)
2) There is significant drive motor whine that plays its merry tune throughout the day.

As the saying goes....my Deskstar's days are numbered......

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Tue Nov 04, 2003 3:35 pm

Does anyone know if there has been a review that talks about the performance difference if you have AAM on or off?

saaur · Post by **saaur** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 10:42 am

Hi All

First thought about the Seagate 7200.7, but was taken back by the worries people had on this site. That's why I took a risk and bought the Hitachi 7K250 120GB SATA drive instead. This was a great move, the drive is almost completely silent ! and a great (no noise) improvement over my two old 80 gigs Maxtor and IBM drives.

No complaints here.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 11:11 am

saaur wrote: That's why I took a risk and bought the Hitachi 7K250 120GB SATA drive instead. This was a great move, the drive is almost completely silent !

I would be very interested to hear if your new Hitatchi drive has done away with the annoying reset noise.

In order to tell if you drive does this, you need to make sure that there is no disk activity for about 10 mins. Personally my Hitachi resets after 5 mins of none/light disk work. It also resets when the machine is only booted into the BIOS screen.

If anyone else knows the answer to this, I'd be happy to hear it, as I am looking to purchase a pair of new drives in the next 3-6 months.

sir_constantine · Post by **sir_constantine** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:33 pm

I bought a 120GB Hitachi 7k250 8MB cache two weeks ago, and here are the results :

With AAM activated, the seeks are more silent than my BarracudaIV 60GB with AAM on.
Without AAM activated, the seeks are noiser than the Barracuda with AAM, but quieter than the Barracuda without AAM.
Obviously, it's more peformant than the Barracuda, but in real-life you don't feel a very big difference. Perhaps that's because I've got a lot of RAM, though.
It makes a constant high-pitched whistling, which really is not very loud though, so you may not hear it depending on the position of your PC relative to your desk, the position of the disk within the case, etc. The two Barracudas I have don't do that.
It runs at the same temperature as the Barracudas : 30°C at idle, with a case temperature of 25°C. I have (for now) two 8412N/2GLE@12V for intake, so they probably contribute a little to cool it down, plus one Antec (from the SX830 case) fan at 5V blowing directly on the three disks. Perhaps if I removed the fans, there would be a difference...
It makes a very strange noise every 15mn or so, a bit like a mosquito passing nearby, only louder (louder than the seeks), lower pitched and more melodious It lasts 2sec and is a bit annoying, but I can live with tha t:?. I'll have to, anyway. I guess it's the infamous reset noise. It doesn't seem to be related to disk activity, but don't quote me on that !

Overall, I would not have bought it if had known about the drawbacks, but if you're prepared to do some work to hide the whistling and the reset noise, then it's a very good drive.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 3:51 am

Thanks for the info.

It sounds like Hitachi have not, as yet, managed to curtail their reset noise. I am surprised that it whines/whistles, becuase I thought the fluid bearing was going to sort that out. It looks like Samsung will be getting my cash in the near future.

Ppl who read this website must think that we are all mad. We don't like Western Digital, Maxtor, Hitachi and the new Seagates.....

Let's hope Samsung pleases us all!

sir_constantine · Post by **sir_constantine** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:20 am

Yeah, you're right about us looking crazy. Undervolting fans and CPUs instead of overclocking, benchmarking keyboards, HDDs and even monitors on their noise instead of performance sure seems counter-intuitive.

The thing I said about the whine may be misleading. It's hard to explain exactly, sometimes fridges or freezers do such a noise... It sounds more "elecrical" than due to the rotation of the platters. It's quite faint.

As for the reset noise, it sure is audible. It's both funny and annoying.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 6:51 am

Yeah, the reset is definately both funny and annoying.

Turning AAM on means that the drive seeks quieter at the expense of speed. With AAM, when the drive resets, it "knows" it should be silent, so it makes an effort to reduce the noise. However, on my drive, all that happens is it last longer!

crypt0r · Post by **crypt0r** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:11 pm

If the reset noise is infact related to hard drive activity, someone could easily code a program that would write to a 1 byte file every 5 minutes or so to keep the drive away from idle state.

luminous · Post by **luminous** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 2:17 pm

The drive reset is slightly more complex than being able to write 1 byte every 5 minutes. I dont pretend to know how it works, but I do know this:-

If I do doing a virus scan of all the files on my D drive the drive will still reset. D Drive has about 1000 files on it, mp3 and divx. Repeatedly scanning the drive seems to have no effect on the drive reset.

The drive appears to check if anything is accessing it every x minutes. If something is accessing it at that instant it does not reset, otherwise it resets.

I made a window's schedule event to scan my IBM drive once every 5 minutes, the drive still resets.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K250

Hitachi Deskstar 7K250

Re: Hitachi Deskstar 7K250

reset noise