HDD by stefan @ 2013-04-08
The Travelstar 7K1000 from HGST is a speedy and silent HDD that should fit in most laptops (has a height of 9.5mm) and offers 1TB of storage at our disposal. The drive features Advanced Format and also best-in-class shock tolerance.
At first we would like to thank HGST for offering a sample of their latest Travelstar 7K1000 2.5-inch Mobile HDD for testing and reviewing.
"HGST, (formerly Hitachi GST), offers reliable protection when you need it most, whether you want storage that's personal, portable, tough or high performing.
Mission
Deliver the industry’s best customer experience through innovation, product breadth, quality and operational excellence.
Description
HGST (formerly Hitachi GST and now a Western Digital company) provides a wide range of products that includes hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, and innovative external storage solutions and services that store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data."
Our HGST Travelstar 7K1000 sample has shipped as a bare drive, without any accessories:
The 7K1000 has a height of 9.5mm and on its top we can see listed lots of extra information; like on all 2.5’’ drives, we must avoid putting pressure on the top side of the drive. The Travelstar 7K1000 comes with two 500GB platters and features Advanced Format, which increased the physical sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes (4K):
Here we can learn of its total storage capacity, the rotation speed, the power rating, supported SATA standard, firmware version and many more:
On the side of the drive we will see the mounting holes:
On the back we have the SATA Data/Power ports:
Here is also a look on the bottom side of the drive:
CPU : Intel I5 3750K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard : ASRock Z77 Extreme6
RAM :GeIL PC3-17000 2133MHz 8GB EVO Leggera
Video : Sparkle X560 Calibre
Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
Out of the box, the drive arrives unformatted:
Here is a snapshot of the total reported free space by Windows 7:
With the help of AIDA64, we can extract more information regarding the drive:
The new Travelstar 7K1000 1TB HDD from HGST has not only proven as having the best performance compared to the drives we have tested in the past, but it is also silent and does not induce vibrations to the chassis when operating (something we have seen at the older 7K500 model version).
The 1TB model comes with two 500GB platters and implements the AF (Advanced Format) technology, by increasing the physical sector size from 512bytes to a more efficient 4096 (4K) byte sector size. This technology also provides 512-byte emulation at the drive interface for backward compatibility with legacy applications.
The 7K1000 also features Hitachi TrueTrack, which is a series of significant servo technologies that enhance hard disk reliability, increase robustness of the drive against shock and vibration and eases system integration. This feature is really useful when the drive is used in most mobile computers/applications.
HGST recommends this drive for applications like Notebook PCs, External Storage, Compact Desktop PCs, Gaming PCs or SFF video devices. Considering the drive performances, we think that using the 7K1000 for External Storage would be a waste since for this application most 5400RPM drives would suffice (data transfer from one computer to another, regular backups).
The 7K1000 is also priced fair so it can be found online for about 75 Euros.
We would like to thank again to HGST for making this review possible!