Testing Participants

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000

First goes the drive that was the first to appear on the market. It is the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.

The developer employed the time-tested (7K400 and 7K500) five-platter design. Thus, each platter of this HDD has a capacity of 200 gigabytes. This is the smallest capacity among the HDDs to be reviewed here. Well, it was more important for Hitachi to be ahead of its competitors on the market (and indeed, Hitachi was the single manufacturer of 1-terabyte drives for a few months) than to reduce the manufacturing cost of the product. Moreover, as I said above, a multi-platter design adds to performance.

You can read our detailed review of this HDD if you haven’t done that already. Next goes the server-oriented version of the 7K1000.

Hitachi Ultrastar A7K1000

It looks absolutely the same as the Deskstar.

According to the specs, the server version of the HDD features protection against vibrations, which is important for HDDs working in multi-disk cages. However, I couldn’t spot additional acceleration sensors on the Ultrastar’s PCB. They are the same as on the Deskstar’s PCB. Perhaps the point of Rotational Vibration Safeguard technology is in the algorithms the HDD’s processor uses to work with the acceleration sensors’ readings. If so, the Ultrastar differs from the Deskstar on the firmware level.

Next I will show you the upstart from Samsung. Why an upstart? Because this HDD jumped up as if from nowhere. There had been no hint of its coming, but the next moment it was right here. No one had expected this product from Samsung. Although not the first company to reveal a 1-terabyte model, Samsung produced it in a three-platter design! That was impressive compared with Hitachi’s five-platter one. This technological miracle was made possible thanks to 334GB platters from Showa Denko.