Round-Up: Comparison Testing of 22 Hard Disk Drives

Hitachi DeskStar 7K250: Former Champ

Since the 7K500 made its debut, the 7K250 is no longer the most current Hitachi drive, yet still stands out from the pack. With up to three disk platters each holding nearly 90 GB in unformatted capacity, the vendor is able to offer total capacity of 250 GB; versions with 40, 80, 120, 160 and 200 GB are also available. These other models use fewer platters, and sometimes also use parts of one platter.

All SATA versions are equipped with 8 MB cache, but UltraATA/100 models in this family typically include only 2 MB of cache. All share the same rotational speed of 7,200 RPM, and their noise output is a little more audible than that of the DeskStar 7K80 or the Seagate drives.