Customer Reviews

Hitachi Deskstar 0A34915 HDS721010KLA330 7K1000 1 TB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive

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

 

 

This is a great Terabyte disk, but note that the 7K1000 has documented compatibility issues with some early first generation SATA controllers. I hit this on a VIA 8237 controller. Hitachi note issues with the VIA 8237A chipset, Marvell Gen 1 series and the Sierra Logic SR-1216 chipset, but there may be others. Unfortunately Hitachi don't provide any workarounds. There are no jumpers to set a lower default speed and even their Feature Tool won't change the default SATA mode for this drive. Sigh.

This shouldn't be an issue with any recent controllers. After I replaced my elderly VIA 8237 controller, my experience has been very good. The 7K1000 seems to be delivering both the promised high performance and low noise.

By default the Automatic Acoustic Management is set to maximize performance. Even then, the seeks are relatively quiet. I used Hitachi's Feature Tool to optimize for quiet seeks. This has a mild impact on seek performance, but now the seeks are almost inaudible. (This is in a Hush ATX fanless PC where the disk is the only audible noise.)

The drive also ships configured for write caching for better performance. Depending on how concerned you are about things like sudden power failures you may want to disable that. I was happy to leave it on.

Overall, despite my initial compatibility woes, I'm giving this five stars. As promised the 7K1000 is vast (a Terabyte!), fast and very quiet.

I purchased one of these for an internal back-up drive for a friend's computer. I'm a believer that internal back-ups make a lot more sense than an external drive for multiple reasons that include faster transfer speeds over SATA than USB 2.0, less wear and tear on the drive, etc...

This drive did the job until about a month ago when it developed the all too common 'clicks-of-immanent-death.' Never a quiet drive by any standard, it became crazy loud once it developed a problem. It sounded like a rabid squirrel chomping on nuts. The drive continued to work long enough to get a replacement and transfer over the data, but died soon after. Many who have owned this drive for more than a year are experiencing this same problem (check newegg reviews). It appears that this set of hard drives has well documented reliability issues.

Still a good value since you can find these very cheap these days, but be aware that they are prone to problems.

If you want a more stable drive, get this one's replacement: HDT721010SLA360. It is cooler, faster, and more energy efficient. It also costs about 30-40% more.

I put four of these drives in my Mac Pro. Two of them weren't even be visible for formatting in Disk Utility and had to be replaced. The ones I have gotten working have been working continuously just fine.

The drive is wonderfully large, fast, and so far, very reliable. However, it can, at times, be extremely noisy as it seeks and writes. Despite being placed in an insulated enclosure, I can hear it working in the next room. I am using it as an external DVR drive and thus the noise is often irritating.

Pretty easy to install, reasonably quiet, works fine. Not sure what more you can ask for from a hard drive apart from reliability, and it hasn't failed yet.

Worked fine fro one year then it froze up needed a spanking then it worked for a while I've got to order the same one to fit in my raid (Granite) not very happy with the reliability