[wirawan]

I have been wanting to get a 500 GB internal drive for laptop, and I want to know user experience of the Hitachi drives. I have the following in mind, actually: 5K500.B drive

Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" 500GB 5400RPM SATA II 8MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0A57915
See http://www.amazon.co..._pr_product_top
or http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822145257

Apparently Hitachi consumer segment is not as large as WD or Seagate but from my reading, Hitachi has its own reputation of goodness:

- The drives come with 3 year warranty which is getting rare nowadays.
- the 5400 RPM drive seems to be one that is best in terms of power/performance balance (I don't need superfast drive but I care for power savings for laptop battery operation)

If anyone has opinion for or against this product, please speak up!

I also need clarification for some product numbers floating out there:

The official product guide from Hitachi gives "HTS545050B9A300" as the model number and "0A57915" as part number. However there is another part number out there that I could not trace in Hitachi's website:

part no. 0Y30055
http://www.amazon.co...0729325&sr=1-25

The description page also says "5K500.B" drive but why is the part number different?


Also, anyone would comment on the ultrathin version of 500 GB drive (Z5K500)?

http://www.storagere...hts545050a7e380
http://www.amazon.co...K/ref=de_a_smtd

This says "0J11285" part number.



Wirawan

[continuum]

SR just reviewed the WD Scorpio Blue thin next to the Z5K500...

http://www.storagere..._7mm_wd5000lpvt

And there appears to be not much of a performance difference between the regular 5K00.B and the Z5K500, per:
http://forums.storag...post__p__266988


At least among its contemporaries a few years ago, 5K500.B looks fine. By today's standards the Scorpio Blue thin, as you've already read in the SR review, is definitely faster.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010

All current 5K500 production should be 5K500.B model, the older models are long since out of production.