Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 - 1 TB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive, HDS721010KLA330

List Price: $429.99 Discount Price: $235.00

Features:

• 3.5-inch external drive with 750 GB capacity for Windows XP and 2000
• 32 MB cache buffer; 7,200 RPM for fast read/write abilities
• Best-in-class power management and thermal emissions
• Includes shock protection
• 3-year limited warranty

Customer Reviews:

This is a great Terabyte drive, but note potential compatibility issues [Posted on 2007-05-25]
This is a great Terabyte disk, but note that the 7K1000 has documented compatibility issues with some early first generation SATA controllers. I hit this on a VIA 8237 controller. Hitachi note issues with the VIA 8237A chipset, Marvell Gen 1 series and the Sierra Logic SR-1216 chipset, but there may be others. Unfortunately Hitachi don't provide any workarounds. There are no jumpers to set a lower default speed and even their Feature Tool won't change the default SATA mode for this drive. Sigh.

This shouldn't be an issue with any recent controllers. After I replaced my elderly VIA 8237 controller, my experience has been very good. The 7K1000 seems to be delivering both the promised high performance and low noise.

By default the Automatic Acoustic Management is set to maximize performance. Even then, the seeks are relatively quiet. I used Hitachi's Feature Tool to optimize for quiet seeks. This has a mild impact on seek performance, but now the seeks are almost inaudible. (This is in a Hush ATX fanless PC where the disk is the only audible noise.)

The drive also ships configured for write caching for better performance. Depending on how concerned you are about things like sudden power failures you may want to disable that. I was happy to leave it on.

Overall, despite my initial compatibility woes, I'm giving this five stars. As promised the 7K1000 is vast (a Terabyte!), fast and very quiet.

Works great but too noisy [Posted on 2007-11-29]
The drive is wonderfully large, fast, and so far, very reliable. However, it can, at times, be extremely noisy as it seeks and writes. Despite being placed in an insulated enclosure, I can hear it working in the next room. I am using it as an external DVR drive and thus the noise is often irritating.

Good for 1 year [Posted on 2008-06-12]
Worked fine fro one year then it froze up needed a spanking then it worked for a while I've got to order the same one to fit in my raid (Granite) not very happy with the reliability

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