Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 inch 3TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gbps 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0S03086
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- 3TB Hard Drive Storage Capacity
- 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache and SATA III 6Gbps
- Designed to leverage new platforms and modern operating systems
- Halogen-Free Design
The Hitachi Deskstar internal hard drive kit delivers colossal add-on storage with high performing 7200 RPM speed in a standard 3.5-inch desktop form factor. With easy access to software drivers, no additional hardware is required to overcome the 2.2 TB limitations of Windows system and services*. The Hitachi Deskstar features a robust mechanical design that exceeds the industry standard for quality and reliability. Through a patented ramp load/unload design, the risk of shock damage is minimized by eliminating direct contact between the heads and disks, reducing wear and heat while improving overall drive reliability and power efficiency. Hitachi Deskstar 3.5″ 3TB internal hard drive kit includes easy access to software drivers designed to overcome the 2.2TB limitation of Windows system and services to provide full access to its 3TB capacity when using a single hard disk drive for data storage only. Works with 32bit and 64bit Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 operating systems.
Hitachi Hard Drive
Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 inch 3TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gbps 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0S03086
List Price: $ 373.89
Price:
Next level of hard drive size- 3TB Hitachi 64MB cache 7200 rpm SATA III,
Picked up this drive last week via Amazon/J&R. Cheapest price I have seen so far on this drive- was watching price for weeks all over the web -coming down. Paid $179.00 including ship & no tax. Drive would be going into replace 1 of 4 Hitachi 2TB 7200 rpm in a 2008 3.0Mhz 8 core MacPro.
Initially plugged drive into the external E-Sata port of a Highpoint E-Sata for Mac PCI 4 lane card with the bare drive sitting on my desk. Drive initialized fine by disk utility & formatted as GUID w/3 partitions. One a start-up partition- cloned to w/CCC & 2 separate data- disks- one used as scratch disk. Old Hitachi 2TB was running out of space- hard to believe right, given that there are 4 of them in the MacPro.
Anyway had the drive on my desk for several hours copying data to it/ cloning etc. Never really became excessively warm at all. I do routinely have bare drives on my desk similarly so I get to listen & feel how warm & loud drives actually are. This drive in my estimation is the quietest drive I have ever seen (except a SSD LOL). Even copying continuous to it -I had to put my ear to it really to hear anything.
Did not notice any real speed difference at this point since the highpoint e-sata bus is probably about 20% slower than the on board motherboard Sata bus. What I did notice was after copying & cloning all the partitions I had DiskWarrior rebuild the directories on the 3 partitions. Since I routinely rebuild similar partitions on the internal drives I have a good handle how long it would usually take on the Hitachi 2TB 7200 rpm current drives. Never saw directories rebuilt quite that fast. Not smoking, but noticeably faster. Maybe the 64 MB cache has something to do with it – don’t know.
Mounted in bay 2 -works fine, BOOTS fine. Temp about 3 degrees cooler than the 2TB Hitachi’s. Seems similar to existing drives. I bought drive primarily to add that extra 1TB to the previous 8TB sum of drives because I really needed that additional space in that mix of drives/partitions.
Ran some preliminary benchmarks w/Quickbench compared Hitachi 2Tb 7200 rpm 32MB cache 3 GPS w/the new Hitachi 3Tb 7200 rpm 64 MB cache 6GPS- both on the internal bus of MacPro- both partitioned w/3 approximate same percentage of individual drive sized partitions. The first & second partitions on the 3 TB drive has read & write avg transfer rates about 15 – 18% faster than the 2 TB, all things considered equal. The third partition on both drives have a nearly equal read & write avg speed. Overall it is a faster drive looking at it in this way.
Price per gig at what I paid for the 3TB is around .060 , price per gig on a 2 TB Hitachi around $100.00 plus tax is around .0545 per gig. Pretty close- I am happy. I can see replacing the other 2 TB Hitachi’s left in the MacPro eventually with the 3 TB version as the price drops.
Pro’s:
* Price comparable to 2 TB 7200 rpm (per GB price)
* Cool running & very quiet
* Larger -50% increase capacity over 2 TB drive & 64 MB cache
* 7200 rpm & SATA III
* No hassle, issues with next generation drive on the Mac
* IS BOOTABLE on Mac (contrary to amazon description-saw that description somewhere else,not true on MacPro, have not tried
raiding yet. Can’t speak for windows though-don’t know)
Con’s :
* None other than for those using Windows-issues w/drive size being recognized/used.
* Current & older external cases probably do not recognize 3 TB size- only seem to be able to address 2 TB- so I’ve read.
* MacPro’s currently only SATA II (there are PCI Express 2.0 E-Sata 6 gbs cards out there. Had an NewerTech – sent it
back-way slow-nothing but trouble with it. I would be surprised if they are really any faster with this drive. I think one
would need a high end PCI Express 2.0 E-Sata card with Intel processor on card to see any speed gains with the SATA III
drives. But that’s just my opinion- not one based on any real testing.
Bare Feats did this drive against other 2TB drives on the MacPro internal current bus 3 gbs.
It would be interesting to see if any high end PCI Express 2.0 E-SATA cards w/ 6gbs interface could harness the faster 6gbs interface on the new 6 gbs drives. Or if it’s just numbers game with not much difference in spinning drives performance unless you raid them. Which you already could do with existing drives anyway.
Bottom Line,
Primarily bought drive for significant increase in storage capacity as well as still a 7200 rpm speed & form factor & comparable price per GB. Next generation interface & 64 MB cache are plus’s. “It ain’t no SSD ” – but hey look at the size & price. Works for me.
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|Great drive at a bargain price !,
First off I would like to say for anyone having doubts this is in FACT the latest version of this drive and I checked the numbers with the Hitachi web site after I received it so if you are worried about that have no fear.
Now before I sing the praise of this drive I will mention one concern and it has to do with noise.You can surely tell this drive is there as you can hear it working, for some like myself this is welcome as someone who has been computing for 23 yrs I like to hear my drive in action and have grown used to it.
With that said this drive offers rock solid reliability with excellent performance, so long as you do not mind a little noise. For just under $ 60 you get this in my opinion awesome drive with the added peace of mind that it came in retail packaging. This means factory sealed Anti Static bag and shock resistant packaging materials !!!
You would need to spend 80 to 90 dollars to get a Seagate Barracuda 1 Tb in a retail box and over 100 dollars to get a WD Caviar Black in a retail box.
At any rate if you need absolute silence the you will probably be disappointed with this unit and I suggest you look elsewhere. If you want both quiet and performance and it is a money issue, then I suggest you wait till you have the money for something more expensive like an SSD and then pair it with a low speed 5400 or 5900 RPM drive for quiet storage.
A good compromise would be to use a notebook 7200 RPM hard drive with one of the Silverstone 3.5 to 2.5 bay adapters which can be had on Amazon. The Hitachi 7200 RPM 500 Gb notebook drive is great I have one in my notebook so again I speak from experience. Notebook drives is where Hitachi is unrivaled in my opinion and their notebook drives run nearly silent while achieving near desktop 7200 RPM level drive performance.
Again this Hitachi Deskstar is an excellent drive and my Seagate Barracuda 1 Tb makes nearly the same amount of noise, yet to get a 1 Tb Barracuda in retail packaging costs 80-90 dollars while offering only a slight decrease in noise and no performance gain. A Western Digital Caviar Blue which my bother has in his machine is more quiet, yet does not have the same level or performance as this Hitachi Deskstar or the Seagate Barracuda from my testing using HD Tune Pro 4.60
If you want all out performance and bragging rites, then the only consumer grade drive which will flat out best this Hitachi is the Western Digital Caviar Black yet it uses nearly twice as much power, costs 89.99 and comes in a brown box. While it can be had in retail packaging it costs over 100 dollars for only a slight gain in performance, while using nearly double the energy.
THE BOTTOM LINE….
If you must have a silent drive then look to a notebook drive or SSD, otherwise suffer a performance penalty and buy a Caviar Blue or low speed low power desktop drive. If you must have the most powerful and best performance, then the WD Caviar Black is for you.
If you want the best of all worlds and don’t mind a little hard drive noise, then this Hitachi Deskstar is for you. It offers performance that is on par or better than nearly every other drive, while consuming far less power than its competitors for offering nearly the same or better drive performance. It does this all with a best in class price point delivering it to your door in ( RETAIL PACKAGING ) with Amazon Prime for just under 60 bucks !
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|Working great in my Synology NAS,
I have three of these installed in my Synology DS1511+ NAS and I couldn’t be happier. The temperatures all run 38-41 degrees C under small loads, and are fairly quiet. Quiet enough that I have the box in my room running while I sleep. I am able to maintain a very fast transfer rate to them in Raid 5 (about 80-90MBps for larger files). I can’t say enough great things about these drives. And if their service is anything like when I had to warranty swap out one of my 2TB Deskstar drives, if the time comes to replace one of these I’ll have no fear.
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