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Hitachi 7200RPM Notebook Drive versus the rest -- PART TWO Originally posted 07/04/03 by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist       CONCLUSION The Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 beat (or tied) the best of the other notebook drives in 4 out of 6 tests, making it the fastest notebook drive money can buy. If you're looking for a 2.5 inch wide, 9.5mm thick notebook drive for your PowerBook or portable FireWire case, this is as good as it gets. It's also impressive to see it do so well against one of the fastest 3.5 "desktop" drives. If you think a 3.5 inch drive enclosure will go faster on your FW400 port, you have another think coming. HOWEVER... ..."compact speed" comes at a price. The "bare" 60GB 7K60 is priced at $349 at TransIntl.com. The 180GXP "bigger brother" costs only $127 for a 120GB and $189 for the 180GB version (both with 8MB buffers).   SURPRISE, SURPRISE! I theorized that putting the 7K60 inside a PowerBook G4 would yield the same numbers at it would inside a FW400 case. I was wrong. Installed in a PowerBook G4/800, the 7K60's sustained READ speed was actually slower (34MB/s) but the sustained WRITE speed was faster (39MB/s). The Finder Duplicate was faster (33MB/s) as was the QuickTime Playback (24MB/s). On the other hand, a reader put one in their Pismo G3/500 and got only 25MB/s sustained READ and 29MB/s sustained WRITE. That's faster than the original drive but not as fast as the TiBook or FW400 enclosure. Stay tuned for a full report on running the 7K60 inside the PowerBook.   IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN PAGE ONE, IT CONTAINS MORE TEST RESULTS.   WHERE TO BUY Trans International and Other World Computing sell the "bare" Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 for putting inside an empty FireWire enclosure. But it's a waste of the potential speed if you don't use a FW800 enclosure like the MicroGB800 from Wiebetech. The 7K60 makes an awesome replacement for your PowerBook internal drive. Wiebetech now offers the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 in their MicroGB+ FireWire 400 enclosure. Other World Computing also has the 7K60 as an option in their FireWire On-The-Go enclosure.    TEST NOTES The tests were run with the test drives inside a Wiebetech FW400 enclosure. I connected them to both a Power Mac G4/1.42MP and Powerbook G4/800. I got essentially the same results. I tested the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 (and all notebook drives) using the MicroGB+ Oxford 911 based FW400 enclosure from Wiebetech. (I also tested the 7K60 using the Trans International Clear Oxford 911 based enclosure and got identical numbers). Other notebook drives tested included... Toshiba 60GB 5400rpm MK6022GAX with 16MB cache Hitachi 80GB 4200rpm Travelstar 80GN with 8MB cache Hitachi 40GB 5400rpm Travelstar 40GNX with 8MB cache Toshiba 40GB 5400rpm MK4019GAX with 16MB cache The 180GXP was tested in the Mercury Elite FW800 enclosure from Other World Computing. SEE "HOW WE TEST" for details on the tests reflected in the graphs.   RELATED LINKS Check out the 7K60 test results on XLR8YourMac.		Has Bare Feats helped you? Say "thanks"... with a donation.   Search this site powered by FreeFind   HOME PAGE SPEED TEST RESULTS by Category HOT DEALS on speed upgrades
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