Customer Reviews

Hitachi 1 TB 16MB 7200RPM SATA Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 0A38016

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

First some quick specs about the drive that Amazon doesn't have listed.

The drive itself is a Deskstar 7K1000.B, SATA 3.0Gb/s interface, runs at 7200 RPMs, and has a 16mb buffer. This is an OEM drive, so for those who don't know what that means, it means that it doesn't come in a retail box, or with cables, screws, a manual or anything, just the drive nicely packaged up in an anti-static bag and some foam. And Amazon does a much better job shipping OEM drives then other companies do, but that's beside the point.

I bought this drive as a replacement for a 160GB Seagate that crapped out on me, yes it mechanically crapped out on me.

The drive is a whole like quieter then the Seagate EVER was. Almost zero clicking and chatter. And you really can't tell the difference between the drive at idle and spinning at full speed, really impressive.

And of course the 1TB worth of storage space. I've only used up 200GB worth of space for the system and all of my junk, so it will definitely be a while before I need to upgrade and add more storage.

At less then $90 how can you go wrong?

Pros:
Price makes it less then $.09 a GB.
Speedy.
Tons of storage space.
Quiet, no clicking or chattering.

Cons:
None.

I purchased the Hitachi 1 TB 16MB 7200RPM SATA Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 0A38016.
This is Hitachi's second generation 7K1000.B at 1 TB capacity and is called HDT721010SLA360.
According to a review at Tom's Hardware that lead me to purchase this model:
"The 7K1000.B ... is based on three platters instead of five. It still utilizes Serial ATA/300 and the same 7,200 RPM spindle speed, but the cache capacity was reduced from 32 MB to 16 MB, which didn't hurt performance at all. To the contrary, the Deskstar 7K1000.B is one of the fastest and most balanced hard drives available today. It pairs great performance with power efficiency."
[...]

I have used this drive for about a month with no problems. I formatted it HFS+ and placed it inside an OWC Firewire enclosure for use with my Mac.
Amazon shipped this particular drive in a safe, fully foam enclosed packaging. Note that because it is an OEM product it does not come with cables, manuals, software, or screws.
Overall, after a month of usage, I would recommend this drive.

Extremely cheap price wise.
1TB @ under $100
Have been happily using mine for four months now.
Not a single problem.
Noise levels are low.
At least nothing can be heard over my noisier fans...
Reliable product.

I would recommend this to a friend.
And I'll probably buying a second one.
1TB is so little ;)

For the record:
I have an old Seagate(purchased jan 2008) 250GB/8MBcache/7200rpm.
I can't really tell the difference between them (apart from the size obviously.

Hello,

I have had two of these for over two weeks now. Plugged these into my new 2-bay DNS-323 NAS (had to flash it to 1.07 specifically to address these drives) and put all my media on it. Ran the built-in UPnP server, limited results (trying TwonkyMedia).

But, the drives are humming along fine, and seem like they will provide service for a long time.

One of the earlier reviewers said that Tom's Hardware notes that having a 16MB buffer did not affect performance when compared to a 32MB buffer. That was my only concern then. I can't tell the difference for practical purposes even if I tried!

Good luck.

You really can't beat these prices, and the drives seem to be reasonably fast and quiet. Long-term reliability will take a while to assess.

Mainly I wanted to let potential buyers know that Amazon has solved the shipping problems they were having. Maybe they listened to customers. Maybe they got tired of having to pay for replacement units due to defective packaging. But the drives now arrive snugly inserted into a pair of deep, plastic holders, one on each side of the unit, that isolate it very effectively in the middle of the box. And as I ordered several of them, these boxes were inside yet another box. They could have suffered a lot of abuse without a problem shipped this way. Thanks for fixing the problem, Amazon.

Quiet and Fast Drive. Managing 40MB/sec SATA copy speeds. As my main Hard Drive, running temps around 47 C. As my 2nd Drive It's running at 33 C. I purchased 2 of these.

Very pleased. Amazon shipped them pretty quick. Received in 5 days with Super Saver Shipping.

I got this HDD (Hard Drive Disk) a few weeks ago and installed it in a Antec MX-100 3.5-Inch USB Aluminum Enclosure for SATA Hard Drive.

Since getting it, I backed up a computer on it. I have also backed up all my pictures I had on a smaller HDD. Last evening, I started backing up my itunes on a USB 1.0 port from an old computer so I knew it would be slow. It's been running non-stop for 14 hours and is barely warm to the touch. Granted, a fan was blowing on it with cool air from the outside, but to me, this shows that the HDD does not overheat.

The tough part of this HDD is that it does not show up on your "Computer" link in Windows Vista. If you have a problem, it is not your fault, nor is it Hitachi. It is just how the HDD comes: blank. Therefore, you will have to partition it.

This is how I made it work:
Right Click Computer,
Open Disk Management,
Right click on HDD (the name will change depending on the HDD),
Format.
You'll have to choose the type of format/partition.

Enjoy the HDD.

Worked great while it lasted- drive failed after 8 months.
Giving it two stars though because even due to random freezes / I/O failures all data was able to be successfully extracted.

Last week started experiencing random I/O delays where system would freeze while HDD LED was on solid.
Initially figured it was a driver glitch / something wrong with the SATA controller on the motherboard.
Turned it on this morning and BIOS reported drive SMART failure- hooked it up to a nearby Linux system and read SMART codes from the drive.
Total power on hours: 3849 ~ 160 days

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: Hitachi HDT721010SLA360
Firmware Version: ST6OA3AA
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is: Thu Mar 4 12:49:00 2010 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.

Hello All,

Received the Hitachi SATA hard drive today, Saturday (early, not expected till Monday)! Kicked daughter off computer (responsible for 45% usage of the existing hard drive's 80GB capacity).

1. Shut down the PC
2. Installed the SATA hard drive
3. Connected the power/data cables
4. Booted up into the PC BIOS
5. Set the drive setting for the SATA interface to "Auto"
6. Saved-exited and allowed PC to boot up

... "Cannot find hard disk...F1 to Retry, F2 for Setup..."

7. Shut down the PC
8. Disconnected power/data cables from old IDE hard drive (only device on IDE interface)
9. Removed the IDE hard drive
10. Changed IDE hard drive jumper settings from "CS" (Cable Select) to "MS" (Master)
11. Re-installed the IDE hard drive
12. Connected the power/data cables
13. Booted up successfully into WinXP!

Used WinXP's disk management to:

14. Initialize SATA hard drive
15. Create an extended NTFS partition
16. Create a single logical partition, final usable size 931.50GB

Very quiet, very fast hard drive. Very happy, indeed! Good luck.

Well, years ago IBM turned over the keys to the shop for their storage manufacturing to a 'joint venture' with Hitachi, but essentially Hitachi has carried the flag ever since. (No mention of IBM anymore, anywhere).

The 1TB drive is a solid performer. At under $100 these days, it causes some initial concern... Would it be a DOG performer? Would it get HOT? Would it fail after a week or a month? Am I missing something?

Well, let me say, NO, NO, NO and NO! This is just a solid SATA drive, great SATA 300 performance, quiet and well built. Been running for awhile now and not a single hint of a problem.