WD Scorpio Black vs Hitachi 7k320

Hey all, me again.
I was wondering which hdd you think you be better for gaming.
Battlefield 2 and Test Drive Unlimited.
Thinking of getting 3gb of ram.
Need to know which drive would be fast.
That is all!

 

If I'm not mistaken, HDD speed has little to no effect on the actual fps in games. It'll only reduce level loading times.

I believe the general conclusion between the two is that the 7k320 is a bit faster but louder and hotter. So a tradeoff as always.

 

What I'm looking for is reduced loading times .
I would rather take quieter and cooler though, since my laptop gets quite got.
I'm waiting for my birthday to come soon, 3 months 3 days.
Hopefully I will get the Scorpio and 3gb of ram.

EDIT: One other question, does the capacity of the drive affect performance? I have heard that the bigger the drive, the more dense it is so the data is closer together and easier to read, but I am not sure.

 

7K320 HD Tune, PCMark 05 and Vantage

WD3200BEKT HD Tune, PCMark 05 and Vantage....

'What Hard Drive Should I Buy?' thread. 5400 rpm, 7200 rpm or SSD.

 

Thank you Andy, after reviewing those results, I would say that the hard drives are about the same, the Scorpio being barely slower.

 

When looking at the PC Mark results Hitachi does have the edge when tested on the same machine but it's also noisier.

PS. I would ignore the HDTune results because they are often skewed.
PS 2. I'm not sure about those Vantage results because the difference seems to big. Maybe some setting was different...

 

Which one would you guys say is the cooler running hard drive?

My current hard drive (Fujisu MHY2250BH) seems to be pretty warm/hot.

 

Soundsgood, How hot does HD Tune say it gets after running the test?

According to Andy's benchmarks the WD3200BEKT is cooler.

 

a bit hot for a 5400rpm drive, but not too bad. it also depends on the system.

This a WD3200BEKT in a Sony FW at 42 C.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=22349&d=1218544774

 

No I don't know. What I meant was in general. For example: if there is a hot GPU in the casing it can increase the temperature of the HD.

 

Thanks for hijacking my thread

 

Ouch. You're right -- sorry about that! I'll delete my posts...

 

Nothing to worry about, a mistake is only a lesson learned. As for most people that read this thread, they will think next time "Oh maybe I should just create my own thread". After all, this community wasnt made for keyboard warriors, it was made to help others with notebook related inquiries.

 

i just put 2 new scorpio black 320GB drives into my notebook in RAID 0...
when using HD Tune to check the drive speed, what values would i need to look for to verify they are running at 3Gb/s ?

 

In HD Tune, INFO Page, bottom - ' Active' will tell you the current mode of the drive, not Supported or Standard.
And I don't think the Santa Rosa Platform supported SATA2, only SATA1. - Anyway, these are just theoretical figures, as in, there is no difference between the two, nor will there be for a long time as hard drives are still slow....

 

Go for the Hitachi.
Hitachi usually has better hardware controllers than western digital. I have been running on hgst for years, and have never had any problems.

I bought two hitachi 7k320's, and they are sitting on my bench at my other house some 800 miles away, so I will have to have my neighbor ship them up to me

The heat of the laptop really depends on the laptop. If I put the 7k320 in my laptop, I know it will never run above 38C or so, cause my harddrives are cooled by ebm Papst. In a different laptop, the temps may be much different depending on the location of the harddrive in relation to the cooling system.

as for noise, you cant trust anyone, cause everyone hears differently, and sometime people will say a drive is really loud, and you may think it is whisper quiet.

K-TRON

 

I never had a Hitachi drive, only other brands. But one thing that strikes me is the strong reputation Hitachi has. When people are asked what is the most reliable laptop hard drive brand, people most often answer Hitachi.

 

Well, I run the Asus, which is known for hot temps, my hard drive has been up to about 55c max, what would be the max temp I would want the Hitachi at?

 

Hitachi's specs say the maximum operating temperature for it is 55C and non-operating is 65C. I believe Seagate and WDC are a bit higher at 60C operating.

 

Well, I would like to try it out, but if it gets too hot, I cant return it. So I am kinda stuck on this one.

 

Judging by these results: http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&devID_0=365&devID_1=355&devID_2=367&devCnt=3, and the fact that some people had 42 C after running HD Tune (while 44-45 for Hitachi), I'm pretty sure the WD3200BEKT stays cooler than 7K320.

 

So what would you reccomend for me to buy.

 

Hey guys, Newegg dropped the price on the WD today by $10. And yesterday they dropped the shipping charge from $7.29 to FREE.

 

What drive do you have now?

 

I have the stock 5400rpm Hitachi

 

(160GB 5400RPM ?)
The WD3200BEKT (or the WD3200BJKT) would be a nice upgrade....
The Seagate 7200.3 has nice reviews as well.
If tight on budget, the 7K200 provides good performance as well, and is available for under $100.

 

I agree with Andy, the WD3200BEKT is a good choice. A good mix of performance, power consumption, heat and noise. And a 7k200 for $85 is a great deal.

 

I dont know about that Phil.
My brother just benched my 160gb 7k320 and it is pretty amazing. It was tested in a older pentium 4 system, so the benchmarks will be higher on a new system. From what my brother says the 7k320 is absolutely silent and it is only audible when his ear is less than an inch from the drive. It also runs really cool. I dont have pcmark scores, cause it was hard enough getting an 8 year old to figure out how to benchmark a harddrive with hdtune.
Their is nothing on the drive, so it may be slightly different after files are installed on it.



7k320 is winning in my books
The seek time is surprisingly less with the one platter configuration, and that probably helps push it ahead of the WD for application loading

K-TRON

 

Wow... only 87 Fahrenheit? That's the coolest I've seen.

 

Yeah man, that 7K320 is wicked !! I'll probably buy if for my next D630

 

Well it was benched right after startup, so its temp is low cause of that.
Its also in a desktop now, cause my brother doesnt have a laptop. My brother shut the fans off when doing the test, to get the true sound and temp of the drive.
Expect the temps to rise when its in a sealed environment over longer peiods of time

K-TRON

 

Ya, I guess I will get the 7k320. Just dont want it to get hot in my system. Right now the hdd is at 49c after finishing gaming, so I should be fine. Night all.

 

I've had the 7k320 for almost 2 months and Im very pleased with it. I recently upgraded from a t7500 to a t9300 and so now the system fan's are rarely heard from my lappy's gotten much quieter and cooler. Which has given me a even better chance to listen for or in this case not (i agree with k-tron) the 7k320 is silent. The 7k320 is quicker, cooler and quieter than the 7k200 which i upgraded from. I use my laptop day in day out, so all i have to base my opinion on is ownership not guessing. IMO you can't go wrong with the 7k320. Hitatchi makes top of the line quality products

 

I think you are right, seek times lower because of one platter. By the way, is that Vista 32 bit or 64?

I'm just going by Andy's reports who tested them both and said the WD was quieter and cooler, and the OP has a hot laptop.

Maybe the one platter 160GB is quieter or maybe Hitachi has impoved the firmware on later revisions. It's an interesting choice between the WD or Hitachi. In the end I don't think it matters much what you choose.

 

Quieter and cooler is certainly important for some of us!

Which is why I'm also considering the Fujitsu MHZ2320BH 320GB 5400rpm.

 

The HD Tune results for the Fujtsu MHZ2320BH are good, but I just came across two German reviews that are not so positive about it. The real world performance is not as good as the competing 320GB/5400rpm drives, according to these reviews.

Hitachi 5K320 and Seagate Momentus 5400.5 ST9320320AS do better in the same reviews.

 

Ohh... thanks for that!

 

hi there, K-tron HDtune was for 7K320 160 GB one-platter. Will temp and noise results for 7K320 320 GB be the same or in what way diffrent?
the onlything i know is that the 320 GB drive should be faster in theory..

 

Temps and noise are fine with the 7K320 320GB (acceptable).
Its quick but the performance difference between the WD3200BEKT, 7200.3 and the 7K320 is negligible, so in the end it all depends upon which manufacturer you have faith in, which drive is the cheapest or available as a Deal and which manufacturer provides the best after-sales support. All 3 HDDs are blazingly fast.

The 320GB drive should have better Read/Write times due to the increased data density (but only when the data density is significant), but as the 160GB has a single disk/platter, it should have lower access times.

 

I don't know Andy, the one professional review I've seen of the Seagate 7200.3 was quite disappointing. I would not put it in the same category as 7K320 and WD3200BEKT.

The fact that the WD3200BEVT even outperforms the 7200.3 in many benchmarks is a bad sign. It's propably caused by the relatively high acces times of the Seagate 7200.3 that are also shown in HD Tune.

 

Yeah, I've normally seen very high access times on almost all Seagate drives, when compared to WD and Hitach drives of the same class/RPM/size. But they normally seem to have much higher R/W times.

 

What about heat? Didn't you guys say that the WD3200BEKT runs cooler than the 7K320?

 

Well, it depends upon the notebook's architecture itself.
The difference in temps isn't that great, I believe. Just about 3-4*C, maybe.

(BTW I tested the WD3200BEKT in my Acer 3680 - and idle temps were about 40*C, and I tested the Hitachi 7K320 in my extremely overclocked Dell D630, with CPU temps hovering at 60-65*C, and the idle temp of the Hitachi 7K320 was 45*C, at least I believe the HDD was idle. )

I like WD because of their good customer support, and never had a problem with Hitachi drives either, so I guess both are good and much more well-established in the data-storage market.

 

While I agree 4 C is not much, it can feel like a big difference if your laptop is 40 or 36 degrees.

 

If the WD is 4C cooler than the Hitachi, the WD is the one for me.

 

How about the Seagate 320Gb 7200 rpm vs WD 320Gb 7200rpm?

Sorry for hijacking.

 

WD comes out tops. Many benchmarks here.

 

Well, performance isn't always everything. Those benchmarks also show the 7200.3 having a decided lead in better power consumption.

 

Interesting Phil, cause Tom's hardware chart shows otherwise.
I'm not really sure now.

 

The Seagate 7200.3 shows slightly higher R/W rates in some HD Tune benchmarks than the WD Black. But the Seagate also shows higher access times than the WD, when benchmarked in HD Tune.
All these synthetic benchmarks don't count much (and they do get pinged during benchmarking due to the background services and processes), since all 3 drives will perform similar.

I would look at a much more Real-World Benchmark such as the Windows XP Startup Test.

(And it seems the Seagate 7200.3 is the best out of the three in terms of idle and max power consumption)