Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB SATA-II Hard Drive

**Doctor Feelgood**

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 500GB SATA-II hard drive raises the bar for those who subscribe to the theory that bigger is better... This is the first drive to come across our test bench with SATA300 speed, and it provides the largest capacity (500GB) and most cache memory (16MB) that we have seen to date. - The Review

efesar · Rated PG Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 3 Location: new mexico

I've been searching for a way to check to see if my NCQ is enabled, and a utility to enable/disable it. I've got 400 GB Seagate 7200.8's on an NF4 mobo. I tried various nVidia and Seagate utils. Can the writers of the article (or someone with this knowledge) help me out? Thanks.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:31:30 Post Subject:

Welcome efesar! Wave

The utility I used for the Seagate and Hitachi reviews published this week was actually provided with the Promise controller. They call it PAM, and you just click to enable/disable NCQ, and then reboot.

Hopefully someone with more nForce4 insight can chime in on that end of it for you...

efesar · Rated PG Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 3 Location: new mexico

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:49:50 Post Subject:

I asked for a pair of the Hitachi's but I imagine the price was prohibitive for a sample request like that ($800ish for two drives)!

I may be able to borrow one, we'll see, but nothing official will be coming from Hitachi.

I hope to get the Seagate's tested on a nForce4 RAID controller, since I have the pair, and the PCI bus was no doubt the bottle neck for their performance.

Next up... Maxtor SATA drives... Grin

jay2115 · Rated PG Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Posts: 1 Location: Arkansas

I wonder why many manufacturers do not include the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) statistic?

The author also encountered the smoke and mirror routine concerning warranty. I purchased a Hitachi/IBM DeskStar SCSI hard drive U160 type. When it failed I went to Hitachi's site and entered the drive serial number. The drive sn# came back as 'Not in Warrany' sold to, if memory serves COS or CSB or some such. Bottom line was the same it WAS NOT in warranty and it failed in 15 months of my purchase.

Caveat Emptor!!

martins · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 1

Hi,
would it be possible to get a better picture of the HDD controller from the drive (The 144-LQFP in the middle of the board) ? I wonder about the brand/model of this chip.
Regards,
Martin

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 08:14:02 Post Subject: Re: HDD Controller

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 22:24:43 Post Subject:

Here is the memory and what I assumed was the controller chip...

Ysean · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 2

I can't help but wonder why people even pump the bus protocol's bandwidth capacity when it rarely has any affect on actual throughput. All review sites do it. I just don't understand why. It almost makes me wonder if they understand the difference. There are 4 throughput #'s. Only 2 really matter. The interface (aka connector/controller) bandwidth and the sustained bandwidth. The talk of 3.0 Gb/s means nothing. It's SATA-II's signal maximum bandwidth. As SATA has only been implemented (from what I've seen) as a point to point connection, not in it's serial potential, this bandwidth is per device. No drive on the market can or will be able to come close to this throughput for years to come without some major innovation. The truly important information for performance is Native Command Queuing and sustained throughput.

Sorry for the rant being my first post. I don't read desktop related reviews much these days.

Cheers,
Ysean