Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
If you are looking for the single biggest desktop hard disk drive you can find, then you have found it. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 is the biggest hard drive on the market at this time.
Features
- 500GB storage capacity
- SATA
- 8MB buffer
One notable thing about this drive design is that it only comes in 500GB. Usually a single design will come in a variety of sizes. This disk has only 1.
Not that its a down point, with 500GB of capacity spread over 5 platters, its enough to satisfy even the most space hungry of users.
This humungous drive runs very hot, up to 62° C. However it does very well in tests and gets good points for access times and transfer rates. It boasts 48MB/s read/write transfer performance.
Its data transfer performance is the best amongst the Hitachi SATA drives, except for the T7K250 which has a higher maximum transfer.
It’s I/O performance puts it in the mid level of hard drives. Hard disks with NCQ outdo the levels reached by this drive, so it would be nice to see that added. It’s transfer bandwidth is high, but doesn’t really translate into much higher speeds overall.
Despite its very average figures, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 did very well in real world situations. It boasted actual file writing speeds that put it near the head of the class, and was the fasted in “XP startup” test.
Not only is this a very large drive, but it is a very capable one. It’s a great combination to see real world performance with large capacity. You won’t need to upgrade for a while.
In summary…
Pros
- Good real world performance
- Extra large storage capacity
Cons
- Runs quite hot