Hitachi Travelstar 5K320 320GB HDD Benchmark

Just wanted to post my HD Tune results for the new Hitachi Travelstar 5K320 320GB 2.5" SATA drive.

(Thanks K-TRON for telling me how to run the HD Tune benchmark!)

How do these results look?

 

That hdtune looks really nice. I am glad that Hitachi made a very competitive drive for the samsung and western digital 320gb 5400rpm drives.
The price of the new hitachi drive is also very promising. I would gladly spend a few more $$$ to get the hitachi over the samsung and western digital.

I am glad you like your new harddrive.

K-TRON

 

So far so good! I've got 120GB 7200 RPM drives on the DV9700T and the Vostro came with a Western Digital 120GB 5400 RPM drive. It just feels like programs are loading faster and it's a big difference with the 320GB drive, imo. I need to load up my games that are so hard drive dependent and give that a shot tonight.

I got my 320GB drive from Buy.com and using the $10 Google checkout, my total was 135.99. I used the budget shipping that's free and I wasn't expecting the HDD to arrive for a couple of weeks because of what their Web site says.

BUT! I ordered it late Monday night, it shipped Tuesday and arrived Thursday so that was a nice surprise.

 

How noisy is the drive?

 

I'm not hearing a thing unless I put my ear on the laptop. I'm not noticing any heat change either. The laptop still runs really cool.

 

It's a bit slower than my WD 320/5400 (HD Tune attached), but it I might get one for less noise. My WD makes frequent low volume clicks and clunks which are audible at 2'.

 

Thanks for that benchmark! I was looking for some benchmarks to compare mine to yesterday.

I was about to buy the WD drive because I was starting to read some bad things about the clicks and clunks of the Samung but then the Hitachi came out just in time. I just waited a couple of weeks for more places to get it and the prices to come down a bit.

I haven't done anything really intense on the drive yet like gaming so I hope I'm not speaking too soon about the noise. I've spent the last couple of days doing a clean install, putting drivers on, adding programs so I can give you a more up-to-date report on any noise or heat after I get some gaming in (hopefully this weekend). I would hate to give you false info! But for now, just doing all that I mentioned above, no noise coming from my Vostro 1700 at all.

I don't know what manufacturer's drives my HP DV9700T 120GB 7200 RPMs are running but those things are noisy and hot on that system.

 

Below are some HD Tune comparisons between an Hitachi 5K320 and the 250 GB Fujitsu it replaced in my Vaio SZ79GN.

I also ran tests on the 200GB Hitachi (7,200 rpm) in my SZ28GN, and a 320GB Samsung HM 320JI (5,400 rpm) in my son’s XPS 1330.

While the access time of the 7200 rpm Hitachi is understandably the fastest, the 5K320 is impressive (especially it’s Burst Rate!) particularly when you remember its low power consumption (1.8W read/write power and 0.55W low power idle).

All tests were done with HD Tune configured for “accuracy” – but the specs of the PC’s are all somewhat different so we may not be comparing the drives on a level playing field, and I don’t know to what extent this may have affected the results. The SZ79GN has an Intel T9300 (@2.50GHz) with 2GB RAM running on Vista Business; the SZ28GP has an Intel T2500 (@ 2.00GHz) with 2GB RAM but running on XP Pro and the XPS 1330 has an Intel T7700 (@2.40GHz) with 4GB RAM running on Vista Ultimate.

 

Shall we say that the performances are the following?
320GB (5,400rpm) roughly equals to 200GB (7,200rpm)
250GB (5,400rpm) roughly equals to 160GB (7,200rpm)
160GB (5,400rpm) roughly equals to 100GB (7,200rpm)

?

 

That's a good approximation, at least in terms of data transfer rates.

7200rpm should always win on access times while 5400rpm should win on power consumption (for a given generation).

Something to watch out for is to compare the family more than the headline capacity. Samsung, for example, are shipping 160GB on one platter, so the performance should be the same as a 320GB 2 platter HDD and much faster than a previous generation 160GB on two platters. This aspect is something which is easy to check if buying a bare HDD but an unknown when buying a notebook.

John

 

Id like to share my HDtune for the 3.5" WD 640gb I have at home, it uses 2x320gb platters and is on sale for 109$ at newegg.com maybe you cant use it internally but it should make a killer external drive for those interested.

I can remember I had high 80's for average and over 120mb/s for max.

Its nice to compare to say the Raptor drives to see the trend continues even in desktop sized drives that data density can make a huge difference in raw transfer speed on large files.

 

richarddd asked about noise and now that I've got all my programs and files on it, I do hear it going from idle to spinning. I never heard the drive it came with, which was a WD Scorpio 120GB 5400 RPM drive. It does seem to stop and then start spinning again frequently but if I'm listening to the radio on the Internet even at a low volume, I don't hear it. I wouldn't be able to hear it if it was docked for sure. It's low but there.

I decreased my power settings from High Performance to Balanced and that didn't seem to stop it. But I haven't gone into the BIOS yet to see if I can tweak it anymore.

Still running cool and fast, though!

 

Just an update on the noise. I don't usually sit in silence but I am this afternoon and I could hear the drive stopping and starting every few seconds. Not loud but it would stop and start.

I remembered reading something about changing the acoustics in the BIOS so I hit F12 on a reboot and changed it to "Quiet." Didn't hear a thing. All is quiet.

But since "quiet" says it will be a little slower and I got this drive for speed, I wanted to give "Performance" a chance even though it says it will be a little noisier.

Rebooted, hit F12, changed it to "performance" and I still hear nothing. It's like it's on "quiet" but I've verified it's on "performance." I'm not sure what mode "Bypass" is but it was causing the drive to spin every 10 seconds or so, stop, then start again. It wasn't incredibly noisy but to hear it stop and start was getting on my nerves just a bit since I had said before that I couldn't hear anything. That noise only started once I put more of my programs and files on, btw. I couldn't hear it with the slightest sound on (like music or TV), though.

But now, all gone and whisper quiet!

 

Yikes. Just got one of the WD 320's off eBay for what I consider a steal @ $87 before shipping. Brand new OEM sealed static bag. There is a page on tomshardware.com that has all the modern day and even some legacy if you enable "show all drives" that allows you to see nearly every drive on the market today with various benchmarks all together and you change the benchmark with a drop down menu. this is how I learned of the dominance in speed the WD Scorpio has. this page doesn't go into detail on any one drive so this clunking is new to me. but WD will hear from me for sure if mine gets annoying.

I thought I would share the page with you guys since it helped me narrow down to a "T" what drive I was going to upgrade to. I linked the laptop chart page to the tomshardware logo. Just click it.



What will be real scary is when the 7200 RPM versions of the new series of drives come out. But not the price.

Well for now, until it arrives, my speed lies with my Desktop 320GB drive.

SMZ

 

hey rtrdogs - is it still working for you? This drive is $100 at newegg right now (after rebate) with free shipping. I am looking for some speed but most importantly, quiet. I have a Seagate now that clicks every second when processing is idle. Drives me nuts when I am not listening to music.