Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit 0S03228
by Hitachi
Our Price: $259.99
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $225.51 (click here)
Category: CE
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: HitachiAudio: English (Original Language)
Format: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2012-01-28
Model: 0S03228
Color: N/a
Product features:
- 3-Year warranty
- Built on award-winning proven design
- Best-in-class power utilization and heat emission
- CoolSpin technology
- Quiet acoustics
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit 0S03228
Customer Review: Almost perfect...
Summary: 4 Stars
Ok, so I got two of these drives and received them yesterday. So far, I don't have SATA 3 nor UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS (basic input/output system) as I am using a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P with Windows 7 x64 Professional. The drives arrived in their original box and were well protected.
I first installed both drives and saw that during the POST (Power-On Self Test) they were showing with 3TB, yeah! I then reset the computer and hit CTRL-F which brought me into the RAID configuration where I was able to see the drives and set them up as a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) 1 (mirrored).
I then booted my system and ran the disk manager tool. Big surprise there, the drive was showing only 800GB. I restarted my conputer, went to the RAID configuration and deleted my former created RAID 1 and restarted.
As I am using an AMD chipset (790X), I downloaded and installed the AMD RAIDxpert ([...]) and started to create the array from the web interface of the software. Magically, I was able to recreate my RAID 1 using the full 3TB (also don't forget to enable the cache on individual drives from the utility).
From there, I had to go to the disk manager in Windwows to create a GPT (aka GUID) partition and used NTFS (New Technology File System) to quick format the drive. After a few seconds, I was able to use my new 2.72GB partition and ran some tests.
Some results:
Read full disk: min 45.5MB/s MAX 119.7MB/s AVerage: 88.9MB/s Burst 151.5MB/s
Write full disk: min 49.3MB/s MAX 117.0MB/s AVerage: 86.3MB/s Burst 129.6MB/s
For a drive of this capacity it is pretty good and more than enough for storage and streaming.
PROS:
High capacity
Quiet
Run cool
Price ($107 for a retail kit, sounds great!)
CONS:
Cumbersome to set up properly
Cannot boot on it unless you have a UEFI
Cannot use the full capacity unless using X64 OS (Vista, 7, 2008, MAC, Linux...)
RAID setting is a bit tricky
So far it looks like a winner to me or I am a lucky winner according to the reviews here ;o)
Further thoughts:
Right now I am running a full format of the drive which takes hours in order to make sure that my system really supports it and that there is no issues on the drive itself (bad sectors).
Why RAID 1? Well, when you have that much of your precious data on a drive, you don't want to wake up in the morning, turn on your computer and have all your data gone because the drive failed. Using a RAID 1 actually mirrors the data from one disk to another and keeps you up and running in the event of one of the drive fails. It is unlikely that two drives fail at the same time and if it does you would be out of luck. Updated RAID technology can help you if you have the $, the next would be RAID 10, which requires 4 disks and keeps you up and running in the event of 2 failed drives but also provide extra speed as data is read and write on two drives simultaneously.
As a side note, using RAID technology is not a good enough reason to not doing backups of your data. RAID doesn't protect against data corruption for instance and if your favorite powerpoint presentation is corrupted, you will have to retrieve it from your backup as it will be also corrupted on the mirror.
I will update this after a few more days spent with the drive. Keeping my finger crossed...
UPDATE 07/21/2011
So the full format went well however I ran into an issue down the road but it is not so much because of the drive but more because I haven't thought of doing it before hand.
First, you will need to upgrade your drivers (AHCI / RAID). For AMD CPU, you can go here ([...]) and select your operating system. Not doing so will work too however when you will try to upgrade after your RAID is created, your array might break and your data could be lost. I was also noticing that the drive will showup in RaidXpert as SAta I (1.5Gbps) rather than SATA III (6Gbps). Just download the file, run the setup and it will update both, the AHCI/RAID drivers (3.3.1540.13 or above) and the RaidXpert console (V 3.2.1540.17).
Second, restart your computer and create your RAID (or not if you don't need one). In the drive property in RaidXpert you should now see SATA III (6Gbps). When your array is created in RaidXpert, go to the Disk Manager and format using NTFS and GPT mode for the volume. If you select MBR, it'll create a 2GB partition and a 720GB one.
Other thoughts 2:
The new version of RaidXpert doesn't allow you to choose Write back caching and the Read cache status will be set to "no cache", not sure why but I can't changed it in the console. However, Windows enabled Write caching automatically on the disk itself as a policy so it shouldn't be a problem for performance. As a matter of fact, I have rerun the benchmark and are pretty similar beside the overhead on the CPU which is around 3% rather than 7%.
The new drivers grant you access to the SMART information which is nice as you can retrieve hard drive temperatures and disk health, which is nice to have.
I run 3 drives in my Antec 300: 1 SSD (T 30C/86F) and 2 Hitachi 3TB (T 28C/82.4F). The case has two 120mm fans intake blowing on the drives, one intake blowing on the GPU and two exhaust fans (one rear and one top). I am currently running these drives 24/7 in a 79F (26.2C) room. So we can say that the drives run pretty cool so far.
More Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit 0S03228 reviews:
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Description of Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit 0S03228
The Deskstar CoolSpin internal hard drive couples high capacity with innovative CoolSpin technology providing a greater level of power efficiency and quiet operation for energy-conscious, computers. Key to CoolSpin technology is an optimization of motor speed to provide an ideal balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics. The CoolSpin technology, along with other Hitachi power management techniques, gives the CoolSpin internal hard drive power savings of up to 29% over the Deskstar 7200 RPM internal hard drive.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories
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