StorageReview reviews Hitachi's 7K500 500GB
Hitachi's Deskstar series of drives have always been rather polarizing here at StorageReview as well as around the enthusiast community in general. One reason is sheer capacity and performance... Hitachi's (and formerly IBM's) drives have always been among the largest and speediest around. Another cause, however, is a legacy of troubles. Two iterations, the 75GXP and 60GXP, have been dogged by allegations of high failure rates.
Several families and several years have passed since the fervor over those two families hit a fevered pitch. As time moved on, the hubbub over those lines has died down... but Hitachi's commitment to remain on the bleeding edge of capacity and speed has not. Last year's Deskstar 7K400 reintroduced the firm's unique five-disc assembly and delivered first-class performance that until very recently vied for the SATA performance crown. A parallel ATA unit retrofitted for serial operation, the 7K400 incorporated a surprisingly robust (yet relatively unadvertised) implementation of ATA-4 tagged command queuing.
The manufacturer's first attempt at a native SATA drive design was the transitional Deskstar T7K250. Though it featured from-the-ground-up SATA construction and implemented SATA Native Command Queuing, the drive took a step backwards from the 7K400 when it come to capacity. Now, however, the firm is back in full-force with a new flagship, the Deskstar 7K500...
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