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Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D review

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Verdict

Superb speed and an excellent price make this the best option when it comes to hard disks

Review Date: 23 Jul 2012

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £65 (£78 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
5 stars out of 6

Performance
5 stars out of 6

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Hitachi has been swallowed up by Western Digital, but part of the agreement means it’ll have to remain an independent firm for at least two years. That means some healthy competition in the hard disk market and, crucially, that drives like the Deskstar 7K1000.D will keep appearing on the market.

Our 1TB sample has a SATA 6Gbit/sec connection, runs at 7,200rpm, and includes 32MB of cache – half the amount used by the majority of high-end hard disks.

That didn’t seem to matter in our tests, though. A large file write speed of 333.2MB/sec is the best we’ve seen from any hard disk, with the Samsung Spinpoint F3 scoring a result of 302.5MB/sec. A large file read speed of 161.6MB/sec is excellent – only one other drive, Seagate’s Barracuda XT, has run through that benchmark faster.

In our small file tests, the Hitachi’s write score of 158.4MB/sec was middling – the Samsung’s 165.2MB/sec score is the best we’ve seen - but a read pace of 30.6MB/sec was faster than every other drive we’ve tested.

Our final benchmark, the third-party AS SSD tool, also saw the Hitachi return good results. The Hitachi’s 186.6MB/sec sequential write speed is the best we’ve seen, outpacing the Samsung by more than 40MB/sec. Its 187.6MB/sec score in the sequential read benchmark is, again, the quickest we’ve recorded.

You might expect to pay a little more to net this kind of performance, but fortunately that’s not the case: for 1TB of super-fast hard disk storage you’ll have to cough up £65, which works out at 6.9p per gigabyte. That’s comparable with the Samsung, which costs £62.

In short, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D is a superb all-rounder. Let’s just hope that, once that two year period is up, Western Digital lets Hitachi keep making drives like this.

Author: Mike Jennings

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Comments

User comments

Excellent price?

My last hard hard drive purchase was the Samsung Spinpoint 1TB for £34. Thats what I call a bargain, paying more than double for this drive does not seem like an excellent price.

By jamesv1001 on 23 Jul 2012

@j

You've not heard of the floods in Thailand then which drove disk prices up to astronomical levels and from which they are now starting to fall. They have a way to go though and I wouldn't hold my breath for £34 for 1TB.

By JohnHo1 on 23 Jul 2012

Price is reasonable but...

£81.99 for a 2TB Samsung F4 Ecogreen HD204UI (aka Seagate Barracuda Green label according to label on latest batch). I have two of these in separate computers. Okay it isn't 6Gbit/sec but it is still quick enough. Yes prices are still slightly over the odds due to flooding but that excuse is really starting to wear thin. The floods were a long time ago so manufacturing should be back up to speed by now. It is just the wholesalers and retailers milking it as long as they can. Just look at the stock levels on any of the sites for hard drives.

By mr_chips on 23 Jul 2012

Yes Im aware of the floods, but Im also aware, as Mr Chips said of manufacturers profiteering over an event now long in the past. Also call me deluded but I dont see the floods as my problem financially speaking, and am loath to pay a premium to bale out said manufactures who were hit. Yes its supply and demand which is basic economics but I have the luxury of being able to hold off on drive purchases so will wait until prices return to normal (however long that takes).

By jamesv1001 on 24 Jul 2012

@jamesv1001

Actually it is your problem financially-speaking. The prices will never return to what they were for a long, long time (if ever). If you saw the devastation the floods caused, it will take years to rebuild them.

And even then, when they do, manufacturers will not put all their eggs in one basket as they did before, perhaps spreading manufacturing across the world which will raise costs.

You might find yourself waiting a very long time...

By mrmmm on 25 Jul 2012

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