Reviews_slightly_ curious? on
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500

Posted 05/08/2007 at 10:57:47am

Author: "These results were slightly curious to us..."

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Yeah, they're pretty "CURIOUS" to me too.

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I don't know how MaxPC got the results they did, but StorageReview.com's results sure tell a different story about this drive.

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If you want an education about benchmarking hard drives, start here: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200111/20011109Renaissance_4.html

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SR's testing methodolgy is probably the most fastidious and well-designed anywhere, and they are widely regarded as the most authoritative hdd review site on the Internet.

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Google 'hard drive review' and see what comes up first...

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According to SR's "High-End DriveMark 2006" the T7K500 is the _BEST_ performing 7.2k rpm drive tested.

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NUMBER ONE!

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First place: Hitachi T7K500 Second place: Hitachi 7K500 Tied for third place: WD4000YR and WD4000KD The first Samsung shows up in ninth.

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(I'm excluding 10k and 15k rpm drives here, and duplications due to testing drives w/ and w/o NCQ.)

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In "Office DriveMark 2006" the Hitachi T7K500 is beaten only by Hitachi's own 7K500, and by a margin of less than 1 percent.

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The IO/S score turned out by the T7K500 in "High-End DriveMark 2006" beats the WD's by 9.5 percent, and the highest scoring Samsung by 24.5 percent!

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I'm don't mean to bash MaxPC in general, (I get their mag in the mail every month) but this article just plain sucks.

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Not just the erroneous benchmarks, but also the tone of the article sounds like the author has an agenda. For example, the author states the drive is 'unremarkable, and more than that, it's an under-performer.' As if he's just enumerated TWO problems and not one. Since when are hard drives "remarkable" aside from their performance?

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Another example: saying that the WD and Samsung "utterly destroy the Hitachi" by turning out benchmark results that are 9 percent better (results that are almost undoubtedly flawed). I'd reserve the phrase "utterly destroyed" for the Samsung getting beaten in a legit benchmark by 24.5 percent.

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Maybe MaxPC should get their hands on another sample and run their tests again.

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But maybe first they should go read SR's pages on hdd benchmarking so they can report something more useful than the 'utterly meaningless' sequential read figures that were probably used in this lame article.

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Cheers.