500GB Hitachi P7K500 and WD5000AACS GP Compared

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:59 am

Tom's Hardware Comparison

No attempt at noise measurements. The P7K500 is generally faster than the WD5000AACS while using slightly more power.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:11 am

I already had a P7K500 and I'll get a WD5000AACS in the near future. This interesting read gave me a general idea about performance. Thanks for pointing me to this article because I rarely visit Toms.

KaOSoFt · Post by **KaOSoFt** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 9:32 pm

Hehe, I'm pretty happy with my two... What the...? I thought my Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 hard drives didn't have NCQ, since everytime I enable AHCI on my motherboard (look at my signature), the next time it reboots it just won't even detect them.

If someone can help me with this issue...

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 6:30 am

I believe that for Windows XP to boot with AHCI active, it needs to be enabled before the OS is installed. There are apparently some ways around this, but I haven't looked into them. You might try searching around online for more information about how the get Windows to work with AHCI.

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:03 am

Funny, THG still hasn't figured out that the Green Power is just a 5400rpm drive:

WD reduced the spindle speed from 7,200 RPM to somewhere in between this speed and 5,400 RPM, which results in a new record in power consumption

It took us about 3 minutes to find out...

SPCR's GP review wrote:We were able to confirm that our 750 GB Green Power had a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM by doing frequency analysis on a sound recording of it. Why sound? Sound is vibration; the pitch of the sound corresponds to the frequency of the vibration. Hard drives vibrate at the speed of their motor, so they produce a noise at the same frequency as their rotation speed. Our sample had a sharp spike at exactly 90 Hz (cycles per second). Multiplying that number by 60 (to get cycles per minute) yielded a measured rotation speed of 5,400 RPM.

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:14 am

I know mike, some people are slow

(mike is fast and silent, like a ninja)

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:57 am

Luminair wrote:I know mike, some people are slow (mike is fast and silent, like a ninja)

Well, my comment was not to self-congratulate

but to wonder how/why a huge enterprise like THG wouldn't have found a way to determine the HDD speed. I assure you there are lots of fast, smart people working at THG.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:40 pm

Haha... Ninja Mike. I think that's a new one for Scythe to use in their next revision.

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:18 pm

MikeC wrote: Well, my comment was not to self-congratulate

I agree, that is why I congratulated ninja mike myself

As far as I could tell at the time, nowhere on the internet except for spcr actually proved the speed of the GP! That shows the skill and rigor of spcr! Everyone else just quoted the manufacturer's docs. ninja mike is truly something to behold.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 6:00 am

Luminair wrote:As far as I could tell at the time, nowhere on the internet except for spcr actually proved the speed of the GP!

That is not true. The actual spindle speed was deduced prior from HDTach and HDTune results (see October 1, 2007 StorageReview). The nonsense "reported" by the big hardware review sites is inexcusible. That doesn't mean that you can't get good infromation from them though.

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:23 pm

Sorry, I actually knew that but forgot. Of course the two best topical sites got it right! Eugene and ninja mike take no prisoners, boyeeeeee

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:29 am

KaOSoFt wrote:Hehe, I'm pretty happy with my two... What the...? I thought my Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 hard drives didn't have NCQ, since everytime I enable AHCI on my motherboard (look at my signature), the next time it reboots it just won't even detect them.

If someone can help me with this issue...

Obviously there's something wrong with your system since I can enable NCQ with P7K500 on AM2 nForce4 board.

Btw, I DO anticipate SPCR P7K500 review. Is it coming to us?

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 4:58 am

loimlo wrote:Btw, I DO anticipate SPCR P7K500 review. Is it coming to us?

I do not expect SPCR to review any more 250GB/platter drives such as the P7K500 series or Samsung HD250HJ. I was surprised the P7K500 got reviewed by Tom's. The WD GP series is undoubtly slightly quieter and uses less energy, but these drives are great low budget alternatives to the more expensive and slower GPs.

Post by **MikeC** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:35 am

loimlo wrote:Btw, I DO anticipate SPCR P7K500 review. Is it coming to us?

We'd asked Hitachi for one a long time ago and they notified us a couple days ago to say they're finally sending one.

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:45 am

KaOSoFt wrote:Hehe, I'm pretty happy with my two... What the...? I thought my Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 hard drives didn't have NCQ, since everytime I enable AHCI on my motherboard (look at my signature), the next time it reboots it just won't even detect them.

If someone can help me with this issue...

Look no further - The original guide

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:50 am

QuietOC wrote:Tom's Hardware Comparison

No attempt at noise measurements. The P7K500 is generally faster than the WD5000AACS while using slightly more power.

The cache is incorrectly stated for the Hitachi as 8 MB -- should be 16 MB for two-platter version listed. Only the single platter P7K500 250 GB Hitachi has 8 MB of cache.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:13 am

Great! MikeC, thanks for confirmation! SPCR is the authority when it comes to silencing computer!

My P7K500 experience is very good. It runs much quieter and cooler than my aging WD 2500JS and 2500KS. I've no idea about performance because I only use it for files storage. Besides, I will get one 750GB or 1TB WD GP in the future depending on retail price since SPCR praised them so much.

One interesting thing: I can't tell the difference between AAM/Low-RPM on/off mode with P7K500. In the past, I could differentiate on/off with 7K80 and 7K160.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 2:14 pm

MikeC wrote:We'd asked Hitachi for one a long time ago and they notified us a couple days ago to say they're finally sending one.

Any news MikeC? I need a new little drive at the end of month, the 250GB P7k500 is interesting, but i'm waiting for SPCR opinion

Post by **MikeC** » Sun Jul 06, 2008 2:48 pm

_MarcoM_ wrote:
MikeC wrote:We'd asked Hitachi for one a long time ago and they notified us a couple days ago to say they're finally sending one.
Any news MikeC? I need a new little drive at the end of month, the 250GB P7k500 is interesting, but i'm waiting for SPCR opinion

Sorry, deep into sound room renos right now. The drive is here, but we're in no position to test right now.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:47 am

Patience, i'll wait...

500GB Hitachi P7K500 and WD5000AACS GP Compared

500GB Hitachi P7K500 and WD5000AACS GP Compared

Re: 500GB Hitachi P7K500 and WD5000AACS GP Compared