Hitachi is first to introduce a 500 GB, 5400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive for entertainment ... more
power-house notebooks, sleek desktop PCs, external storage devices and other advanced mobile applications. Travelstar 5K500 uses a three-disk design to deliver up to...
Postage & Packaging: £4.39 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: Quite, low power consumption, high capacity Disadvantages: Expensive
I have been using a HitachiTravelStar for a long time now, I have had not problems with it and I have given it a good run for the price I paid for it.
I originally started out with the 80gb model of this hard disk. I had absolutely no problems with it. (I now have the 100gb model as the laptop it was in was broken in a car accident).
I had the 80gb model for a year and never gave me any trouble. It was:
· Fast
· Reliable
· Quite
· Super low power consumption
· Had a quick spin up time
· Very quick seek time
· Standard 5 year warranty
· Very helpful warranty/customer support
Hitachi's customer warranty claims support is like no other that I have come across before. You go onto there website, fill out a warrant claim form; package the device (hard disk in my case) in the way they require. Once you have sent it to them ...
Advantages: Easy Install - a dummy cna do it, I did! Very fast and quiet in use. Disadvantages: None I can tell
Being fairly hardware illerate, I put off replacing the HDD on my Dell Inspiron laptop as long as I could. Once it started to take 25 minutes to boot up and generated about 15 red alerts in the Windows XP event log, I thought "I am really going to have to go for it".
I had an IBM 60 GB HDD in place, which was noisy when spinning, set the fan off incessantly and was constantly giving me Blue Screen of Death (BSODs).
I started by internet researching and using the Dell forum to suss out the right disk to replace mine with. Taking a recommendation from a forum member, I looked first of all at the Travelstar 7K80 but decided to go for the newer version. I replaced a 60GB 5400rpm HDD with a 80GB 7200rpm HDD.
I spent a day copying filed to CD, all my docs, pictures, music, software downloads, license/registration numbers etc ...
Advantages: Fast, high capacity storage. Well built, looks good. 2 year warranty, No fan. Disadvantages: No fan.
Freecom before as they've always looked a bit cheap and nasty so this would be an interesting experience. The box did feel reassuringly heavy though, a good start.
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# What's in the Box?
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Apart from the drive, the box contained a small light external PSU, a USB lead and a CD with some backup software.
The case is made of extremly solid and heavy aluminium with a silver plastic front piece with a sexy blue '400GB' light (yes, you can have sexy lights. Really.) at the front just to prove how big it was. The finish is excellent and I have to say, if this is anything to go by, I'm converted to Freecom. Unlike the picture here, my unit has the aluminium finished in matt black which looks really nice on top of my black PC. It's also surprisingly compact - not that much bigger than a hard drive at 20x11.5x4 cms ...
Product Information for "Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 400 GB" »
Performance
Drive Transfer Rate
300 MBps (external)
Internal Data Rate
96.9 MBps
Seek Time
12 ms (average) / 20 ms (max)
Track-to-Track Seek Time
1 ms
Average Latency
5.5 ms
Spindle Speed
5400 rpm
Reliability
Non-Recoverable Errors
1 per 10^14
Start / Stop Cycles
600,000
Manufacturer's product description
Travelstar 5K500 uses a three-disk design to deliver up to 500 GB of capacity. This drive is extremely energy-efficient, with a power profile nearly identical to its 2-disk predecessor and Travelstar 5K500 performance is the highest among 2.5-inch 5400 RPM drives in PCMark testing. The 5K500 is well-suited for “slim” desktop PCs delivering high capacities in space-saving enclosures. Designed to help consumers enjoy their high-definition movies, music, photos and games on the go, Travelstar 5K500 delivers the features, design innovations and technologies that enhance the entertainment experience. The 5K500 provides the advantages of a desktop with the portability of a notebook. Travelstar 5K500 is Hitachi's fourth-generation mobile drive to use perpendicular magnetic recording technology to deliver breakthrough capacity and reliability. Today's full-featured notebooks include premium speakers for enhancing a user's audio experience. These speakers can inadvertently cause vibrations within the system enclosure. To mitigate any adverse impact on system performance, the Travelstar 5K500 is the first mobile drive to feature Hitachi patented Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology. RVS serves as an "early warning" system for the drive, enabling it to sense a possible disturbance in advance and take the necessary steps to stabilize the drive head and maintain performance.
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