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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yacoub - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
I've been curious how much help drives would get from a larger cache. What if smaller drives came with, say, 64MB of cache?JarredWalton - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Looking at the 750GB Seagate with its 16MB cache, there are definitely areas where the 32MB cache helps. Basically, with the larger capacities you need more cache to effectively handle all the data. Realistically, I'd say there's about 0% chance we'll see 64MB cache on smaller drives. When we're running 2TB drives, however....atomicacid55 - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
I wish that the T7K500 could be reviewed in this. After all, that's the current challenger to the 7200.10, and if you read STR, the consensus is that it's an overall faster drive than the 7200.10. Every drive manufacturer tends to set its own trends in performance, and I personally believe it's more useful to have a comparison of the 7K1000 with its sibling rather than only against other brands.Gary Key - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Hitachi is finally sending us a T7K500. We will have a 500GB roundup with the latest drives from WD, Seagate, Samsung, and Hitachi in April.dm0r - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Never thought a 7200 RPM drive could be very competitive to a 10000 one...Thanks to its 32 Mb Cache.Loved the acoustics test, it shows a very quiet drive.With this new drives coming to the market, Western Digital will have to think about its raptors Overpriced drives and low its prices.Very good review.A question: How many Hitachi drives will be lauched with Perpendicular recording like this and what capacities?
Justin Case - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
Higher areal density means more data can be read per rotation, so it could even be faster in terms of STR. But 7200 RPM drives will still have higher latency than 10k models, of course. The only way to overcome that would be to add more heads (ex., 2 per platter).bkiserx7 - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
...wonder what a perpindicular raptor will do one day?crimson117 - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
Attack prey from right angles?cruzer - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
On page 10, "As stated in the article, we believe leaving AAM and NCQ turned provides the best experience with this drive."Do you mean turned on or off?
tuteja1986 - Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - link
I really want 3 of them for raid 5 setup :)