First off I would like to say for anyone having doubts this is in FACT the latest version of this drive and I checked the numbers with the Hitachi web site after I received it so if you are worried about that have no fear.
Now before I sing the praise of this drive I will mention one concern and it has to do with noise.You can surely tell this drive is there as you can hear it working, for some like myself this is welcome as someone who has been computing for 23 yrs I like to hear my drive in action and have grown used to it.
With that said this drive offers rock solid reliability with excellent performance, so long as you do not mind a little noise. For just under $ 60 you get this in my opinion awesome drive with the added peace of mind that it came in retail packaging. This means factory sealed Anti Static bag and shock resistant packaging materials !!!
You would need to spend 80 to 90 dollars to get a Seagate Barracuda 1 Tb in a retail box and over 100 dollars to get a WD Caviar Black in a retail box.
At any rate if you need absolute silence the you will probably be disappointed with this unit and I suggest you look elsewhere. If you want both quiet and performance and it is a money issue, then I suggest you wait till you have the money for something more expensive like an SSD and then pair it with a low speed 5400 or 5900 RPM drive for quiet storage.
A good compromise would be to use a notebook 7200 RPM hard drive with one of the Silverstone 3.5 to 2.5 bay adapters which can be had on Amazon. The Hitachi 7200 RPM 500 Gb notebook drive is great I have one in my notebook so again I speak from experience. Notebook drives is where Hitachi is unrivaled in my opinion and their notebook drives run nearly silent while achieving near desktop 7200 RPM level drive performance.
Again this Hitachi Deskstar is an excellent drive and my Seagate Barracuda 1 Tb makes nearly the same amount of noise, yet to get a 1 Tb Barracuda in retail packaging costs 80-90 dollars while offering only a slight decrease in noise and no performance gain. A Western Digital Caviar Blue which my bother has in his machine is more quiet, yet does not have the same level or performance as this Hitachi Deskstar or the Seagate Barracuda from my testing using HD Tune Pro 4.60
If you want all out performance and bragging rites, then the only consumer grade drive which will flat out best this Hitachi is the Western Digital Caviar Black yet it uses nearly twice as much power, costs 89.99 and comes in a brown box. While it can be had in retail packaging it costs over 100 dollars for only a slight gain in performance, while using nearly double the energy.
THE BOTTOM LINE....
If you must have a silent drive then look to a notebook drive or SSD, otherwise suffer a performance penalty and buy a Caviar Blue or low speed low power desktop drive. If you must have the most powerful and best performance, then the WD Caviar Black is for you.
If you want the best of all worlds and don't mind a little hard drive noise, then this Hitachi Deskstar is for you. It offers performance that is on par or better than nearly every other drive, while consuming far less power than its competitors for offering nearly the same or better drive performance. It does this all with a best in class price point delivering it to your door in ( RETAIL PACKAGING ) with Amazon Prime for just under 60 bucks ! Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA II 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0S02860
This is my second Hitachi 1 TB Deskstar. This one replaces a 500 GB Western Digital that failed aged 20 months. The WD came in my Dell, so no warranty for me.
Onward to the Hitachi. This is a nice drive at a decent price. I have hopes that the reliability will be better than the more popular brands.
This drive is noisy when new. But it quiets down after a week or so.
Two other drawbacks. The retail box has mounting screws but no sata cable. Cheap.
Second, unlike the major brands, no migration software is included, nor can any be downloaded from the Hitachi web site. The Hitachi site refers customers to pay software such as Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image. Again, cheap. I ended up using Clonezilla, which is Free Software.
It arrived within 3 days upon I ordered it. Linux benchmark was showing it ran faster than WD's green and blue. The downsize were (1) it is a very noisy drive when READ/WRITE operation, and (2) there is a periodic humming sound, like every 5 seconds it max out then come down. It is annoying. Not sure if it is a defect or what?
I don't write many reviews, but I am writing this one because my experience with this product was different from many of the other reviews. Specifically, this drive is absolutely silent.
The drive produces no sound that I can detect. Even with the desktop case open there is nothing audible coming from the drive.
Pros:
- Best value in this class
- Retail package protects during shipment
- Completely silent even when stress-testing
Cons:
- None - 7200 Rpm - Hitachi - Sata - 1tb'
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