Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000: Terabyte Storage arrives on the Desktop
by Gary Key on March 19, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
iPeak Business Application Tests
Our iPeak Winstone benchmarks offer a glimpse into how well our hard disk drives will handle general office applications, media encoding, and graphics manipulation. While the business applications that are being tested tend to be more CPU bound at times, the performance of the hard drive can and will make a difference in the more disk intensive video and graphics applications where large media files are typically being edited.
AAs expected the WD Raptor drives finish at the top in our business application tests as their 10k rpm spindle speed and optimized cache play an important role in their ability to sustain high transfer rates, especially in the Content Creation benchmark where transfer block sizes are significantly larger and more random than in the Business application benchmark. We see our 7K1000 performing very well in these tests and finishing ahead of the other 7200rpm drives and even the older 8 MB cache equipped 74GB Raptor.
In fact, the 7K1000 is about 44% faster in the Business Winstone and 30% quicker in the Content Creation benchmarks than the Seagate 750GB drive. After reviewing the trace analysis files we determined that the 7K1000 handles small block sizes of data in non-sequential order significantly better than the Seagate drive. We did notice the drive slowed down slightly in the Business Winstone when it encountered large block sizes of data in non-sequential order. This surprised us slightly as we expected the increase in drive cache to 32 MB would have buffered this same issue we noticed on the Seagate 750GB drive. Overall, the drive offers a very balanced blend of performance across a wide variety of business and home applications.
iPeak General Task Tests
The iPeak based General Task benchmarks are designed to replicate utility based application tasks that typically are disk intensive and represent common programs utilized on the majority of personal computers. While the WinRAR program is very CPU intensive it will typically stress the storage system in short bursts. Our antivirus benchmark will stress the storage system with continual reads and sporadic write requests while the defragmentation process is split between continual read and write requests.
The 7K1000 performs extremely well in the Anti-Virus and Defragmentation test where its 32 MB cache benefits read operations with results that mirror the PCMark 2005 tests. This is especially true in the WinRAR tests where large cache sizes are very advantageous for improved times and we expected better performance from this drive. It did finish ahead of the other 7200rpm drives but simply could not keep up with the rotational and access speeds of the 16 MB cache equipped Raptors.
Our iPeak Winstone benchmarks offer a glimpse into how well our hard disk drives will handle general office applications, media encoding, and graphics manipulation. While the business applications that are being tested tend to be more CPU bound at times, the performance of the hard drive can and will make a difference in the more disk intensive video and graphics applications where large media files are typically being edited.
AAs expected the WD Raptor drives finish at the top in our business application tests as their 10k rpm spindle speed and optimized cache play an important role in their ability to sustain high transfer rates, especially in the Content Creation benchmark where transfer block sizes are significantly larger and more random than in the Business application benchmark. We see our 7K1000 performing very well in these tests and finishing ahead of the other 7200rpm drives and even the older 8 MB cache equipped 74GB Raptor.
In fact, the 7K1000 is about 44% faster in the Business Winstone and 30% quicker in the Content Creation benchmarks than the Seagate 750GB drive. After reviewing the trace analysis files we determined that the 7K1000 handles small block sizes of data in non-sequential order significantly better than the Seagate drive. We did notice the drive slowed down slightly in the Business Winstone when it encountered large block sizes of data in non-sequential order. This surprised us slightly as we expected the increase in drive cache to 32 MB would have buffered this same issue we noticed on the Seagate 750GB drive. Overall, the drive offers a very balanced blend of performance across a wide variety of business and home applications.
iPeak General Task Tests
The iPeak based General Task benchmarks are designed to replicate utility based application tasks that typically are disk intensive and represent common programs utilized on the majority of personal computers. While the WinRAR program is very CPU intensive it will typically stress the storage system in short bursts. Our antivirus benchmark will stress the storage system with continual reads and sporadic write requests while the defragmentation process is split between continual read and write requests.
The 7K1000 performs extremely well in the Anti-Virus and Defragmentation test where its 32 MB cache benefits read operations with results that mirror the PCMark 2005 tests. This is especially true in the WinRAR tests where large cache sizes are very advantageous for improved times and we expected better performance from this drive. It did finish ahead of the other 7200rpm drives but simply could not keep up with the rotational and access speeds of the 16 MB cache equipped Raptors.
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Justin Case - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
"Considering the importance of data integrity in today's systems"...? You mean like, in yesterday's (or perhaps tomorrow's) systems, data corruption was considered normal or acceptable?Gary Key - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
It was not meant to infer that data integrity was not or will not be important.Spoelie - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
No, but if you lost a hard drive before, the amount of data that would be gone is nothing compared to the amount of data you lose with current hard drives. It's always a BAD thing to lose data, but it's BAD² to lose data². So it's important² to keep data² safe ;pJustin Case - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
"Data integrity" and "drive failure" are two different things. Most data integrity issues are related to bad sectors and corrupted data (and that is why Hitachi chose to go with more platters and lower areal density - less chance of localized data corruption, but actually a slightly higher chance of "catastrophic" drive failure - namely a head crash or a dead motor). The article's author got _that_ part right.The problem was what came after it. It was just as important to "keep data safe" last year (or the year before that, etc.) as it is this year, so qualifying it as "in today's systems" makes no sense.
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
I changed it back to the original text. ;)
Griswold - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Looking at the benchmark charts, one thing that pops into the eye is that your world at AT, as far as HDDs are concerned, seems to revolve around Seagate and WD only.But theres quite a few other manufacturers out there that make good drives (that surpass many of the featured drives in one way or another) - this new Hitachi beast proves it.
Go ahead and test more Samsung, Fujitsu, Hitachi and even Excelstor drives.
Gholam - Thursday, March 22, 2007 - link
ExcelStor drives are refurbished IBM/Hitachi.Gary Key - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
We finally have agreements with Samsung and Hitachi to provide review samples so expect to see reviews of their drives ramp up quickly. We are discussing a review format for SCSI based drives at this time and if we can do it right then expect to see this drive category reviewed later this year. We will also be introducing SSD reviews into our storage mix in the coming weeks. While I am at it, our Actual Application Test Suite will under several changes and be introduced in the 500GB roundup. Thanks for the comments. :)
Final Hamlet - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Hmm. Only vendor I am interested in seeing him added is Samsung. They have quite a market share here in Germany.JarredWalton - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
My personal take is that for 99% of users, it doesn't really matter which brand you use. Seagate may win a few benchmarks, WD some others, Samsung, etc. some as well. In reality, I don't notice the difference between any of the HDDs I own and use on a regular basis. I have purchased Samsung, WD, Seagate, Hitachi, and Maxtor. Outside of the Raptors being faster in a few specific instances, without running a low level diagnostic I would never notice a difference between the drives. I suppose I'm just not demanding enough of HDDs?