Hitachi Australia Deskstar 7K400 400GB

We have long been fans of Hitachi's Deskstar series of drives, because of their cool and quiet operation and also because of Hitachi's market-leading capacities. Indeed, Hitachi was the first vendor to introduce a 400GB desktop drive. Its current 400GB drive packs up to 62 gigabits of data per inch of space on its disk platters.

For this review we tested the 400GB HDS724040KLSA80 Deskstar model, in addition to the more mainstream 250GB HDS722525VLSA8. Both drives feature 8MB cache buffers, 7200rpm spin speeds and both have fluid dynamic bearings to reduce vibration and wear.

Our testing showed that the Hitachi drives are still devices to be reckoned with--albeit expensive ones.

In particular, the 250GB drive produced excellent performance results in our file transfer test, where it just outperformed a 250GB Western Digital Caviar. It was quite warm during testing, at 45 degrees, and it was noticeably audible during seek and read/write operations.

The 400GB drive was not as impressive in our tests, managing only 356MB per minute in our file transfer test. This is not at all competitive if you are looking for a very fast drive, and its working temperature was rather high at 44.7 degrees. Both drives have a three-year warranty.