Final Thoughts & Conclusion

The Hitachi 7K1000 drive has proven it's speed to me. Through a series of benchmarks in both Linux and Windows, this drive has proved it's dominance over other offerings. When compared against other drives through the Sandra Suite, it comes out on top against other SATA II drives. RAID0 still beats the 7K1000's single drive performance, however.

Performance in Linux actually appeared to be a little higher than in Windows, and I'd like to attribute this fact to the 64-bit version of Windows Vista, but I can't be sure without further testing. Sufficient to say, we should see equal hard drive performance in both Linux and Windows.

Despite the performance differences, the margin between the numbers isn't too large. The Hitachi 7K1000 is a solid performer in Linux or Windows, and would make a terrific addition to any system. Of course, with that much storage, users will want to make sure they back up that data. In that case, order two and put them in RAID0!

Pros

• Fast at 7,200RPM
• Relatively Quiet
• Plenty of storage!
• Cheap at $.22 per gigabyte

Cons

• Lots of space with no backup! (I'll take 2!)
• Heavy