[Eugene]

The Travelstar 7K200 extends Hitachi's performance-oriented notebook lineup to a capacious 200 gigabytes and ups the buffer to 16 megabytes. Historically, the firms drives have led the pack when it comes to performance. Does the 7K200 continue the trend? Let's take a look!

Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 Review

[continuum]

Holy. Freaking. Crap.

Awesome numbers for a notebook drive. Drool. I wonder how much faster it installs ArcInfo/ArcView on the Dell Latitude D630 I have on my desk compared to the stock 7200rpm drive...

(probably not much, but hey, every bit helps )

[Olaf van der Spek]

Does anyone know why the idle power draw is so much higher than it's predecessor? It's the same two platters at the same 7200 rpm, right?

[muzicman82]

I've been using TravelStar drives exclusively since they were IBM. I've never had one fail. The first was a 10GB that came with a Dell Inspiron 8000. Then, came a 20 GB, 30 GB, then a 60 GB, then an 80 GB. Now, I'm on a Dell XPS M1710 laptop, with a 100 GB 7K100. I will be ordering a 7K200 within the week, unless someone can convince me otherwise.

Of the 6 TravelStars I've used, none has EVER failed. I have DeskStars in my desktop, and they too have been very reliable.

Nice review.

[Encyclia]

I picked one of these up and rebuilt my Vista Ultimate laptop (Toshiba M5) on it. The old drive was an 80GB 5400RPM SATA 1.5 and it was a dog. The 7K200 has pretty much transformed my machine. I keep waiting for it to get slow like it was with the old drive, but it hasn't happened yet.

My Vista 'Experience Index' rating on the old drive was 4.1. The 7K200 is rated by Vista as 5.4.

[rabident]

How would this compare with the Samsung or SanDisk SSD drives? I would think the SSD drives would be the top performing laptop drives based on specs.

[Sheppy99]

Which is likely to be the most reliable between the Seagate 7200.2 200GB & this Hitachi Travelstar 7K200. I am building a laptop for DJ work so it needs fast seeks and extended usage in an environment occasionally effected by vibration.
I read on the net about Travelstars & the "click of death" not what you want in the middle of a gig!!!!

[Steve Swing]

The Article says: ..."Models featuring both 3.0 Gb/sec and 1.5 GB/sec interfaces are available."

Why can't I find the 3.0 Gb/sec HTS722020K9A300 part number drive anywhere?

Has anyone seen it for sale not already in a notebook?

Please post details and links if you have.

[vince16]

Do you plan to compare 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 with 200GB Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ?

[Encyclia]

Eugene, are there plans to add the 7K200 to the performance database?