Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B Review

[dietcokefiend]

The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B is a new eco-friendly notebook hard drive that aims to reduce your notebook's power consumption. This model line-up offers halogen-free production, improved signal processing, and optional encryption for better security. In this review we put the 5K500.B head to head with some of the latest notebook hard drives to measure speed and power consumption to find out if you should replace your drive with a new Travelstar.

Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B Specifications:

• Up to 500GB Capacity
• 400G Operating Shock / 1000G Non-Operating shock
• Altitude-sensing Thermal Fly-height Control (for improved soft error rate)
• Up to 875Mb/s media transfer rate
• 1.4W read/write power / 0.5W low power idle
• Optional Bulk Data Encryption
• Retail Price: $89

Performance
Notebook storage options keep getting faster and more power efficient as newer technologies like Solid State Drives (SSDs) come to the market, forcing hard drive companies to increase the speed and efficiency of their own drives. Hitachi managed to increase data transfer speeds on the 5400RPM Travelstar 5K500.B drive into the range usually reserved only for 7200RPM drives. They were also able to lower power consumption levels, which help to increase battery life on your notebook or netbook.

In our first run of HDTune comparison benchmarks we can see that the 5K500.B edges out both the Western Digital Scorpio Black and Blue drives in peak and sustained transfer speeds. The one area that the Travelstar falls behind in is access time. When we add the OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD into the equation the tables are turned and the Travelstar is easily outpaced in all categories.

500GB Hitachi 5K500.B 5400rpm HDD	30GB OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm HDD	500GB WD Scorpio Blue 5400rpm HDD

In ATTO the Hitachi Travelstar still holds the lead against both Western Digital hard drives, but trails behind the OCZ Vertex.

 

500GB Hitachi 5K500.B 5400rpm HDD	30GB OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
320GB WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm HDD	500GB WD Scorpio Blue 5400rpm HDD

Heat and Noise
Noise from the drive was minimal, even exposed during our benchmarks without any sort of insulating plastic around it. Some motor hum could be heard with your ear stuck next to the drive, but even head seeking noise was barely heard. Contrast this to a drive like the Seagate 5400.5 that you can hear clicking from a foot or two away and the Hitachi is better than whisper quiet.

Heat and power consumption go hand in hand with notebook hard drives, since the drive has to dissipate any power it consumes as waste through its metal body. Heat output was normal in our tests, staying at an average of 40C indicated by the internal temperature sensor. Direct readings from our IR gun measured the surface of the drive at 39-40C.

Power Consumption
Power draw of a hard drive directly affects the battery life in a notebook or netbook. When you consider that most power efficient notebooks and netbooks draw between 6-9 watts in low power modes, you realize that a one watt difference can increase battery life by 11% to 17%. The Hitachi Travelstar had the lowest idle power consumption, just above the OCZ Vertex. Peak power consumption during heavy disk access was also lowest compared to spinning drives, but still above the OCZ Vertex.

Hard Drive	Power Idle/Active
OCZ Vertex 30GB	0.41/0.76W
Hitachi 5k500.B 500GB	0.66/2.31W
Seagate 5400.5 250GB	0.85/2.31W
WD Scorpio Blue 500GB	1.00/2.68W
Hitachi 7k320 160GB	0.85/2.71W
Seagate 7200.3 320GB	0.95/3.03W
Seagate 7200.2 120GB	1.00/3.51W
WD Scorpio Black 320GB	1.00/3.51W

Conclusion
It is easy to think that as hard drive manufacturers produce newer and faster drives, that some might start reaching a point where all become close to equal. What we found in this review is some companies, specifically Hitachi, are able to produce a notebook drive that consumes less power, put off less heat (because it consumes less power), and still maintain very fast transfer speeds. As notebooks and netbooks continue to aim for longer battery life any advantage in power consumption is a huge plus. If you save half a watt of power switching to a newer drive, that might mean you gain 30 minutes of battery life on a notebook like the Lenovo Thinkpad T400 or ASUS Eee PC 1000HE that is extremely power efficient. Overall we were impressed by the Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B, living up to its claims of faster transfer speeds and lower power consumption.

Pros:

• Very fast peak and sustained transfer speeds
• Low idle and active power consumption
• Quiet operation

Cons:

• Seek access times are higher than Scorpio Blue and Black drives

[MidnightSun]

Hmmm. The transfer speeds are much faster than my Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM drive (about 20MB/s difference), but the access time is a full 3 milliseconds slower. I've been hearing many [different] things about what factor actually affects performance the most, so I'm not sure whether I should choose to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive or 5400RPM drive when the time comes.

Choices, choices.

But, as always, great review and data.

[siLc]

Good review. When is Hitachi going to offer 500GB and derivative smaller 7200rpm drives?

[dietcokefiend]

Hmmm. The transfer speeds are much faster than my Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM drive (about 20MB/s difference), but the access time is a full 3 milliseconds slower. I've been hearing many [different] things about what factor actually affects performance the most, so I'm not sure whether I should choose to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive or 5400RPM drive when the time comes.

Choices, choices.

But, as always, great review and data.

I think it all depends on your needs. This drive is sooo close to reaching the point of "good enough" compared to my 7200.2, and coming in at almost 5x the capacity the storage is the big factor up against speed. It is hard to say what it might be like going from a 2 generation old 7200rpm to a brand spanking new 5400rpm. I have almost 2 years of use on the current drive, only about 2 weeks on the Hitachi.

Oh and if anyone noticed this review marks the first use of a new custom toy in the office for HD power readings

[flipfire]

Kevin show them advanced state of the art HD power reader

The power consumption rated by the manufacturer is a little off compared to the actual tests you did.

1.4w is kind of hard to believe. I know some hitachis required 2 USB ports to power.

[MidnightSun]

It is hard to say what it might be like going from a 2 generation old 7200rpm to a brand spanking new 5400rpm. I have almost 2 years of use on the current drive, only about 2 weeks on the Hitachi.

Oh and if anyone noticed this review marks the first use of a new custom toy in the office for HD power readings

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking. Perhaps I should just wait a year or two, and then bite the bullet and get a 128GB SSD - their load power usage and speed is just stunning.

Haha I almost asked how you got the power readings for the hard drives. The Seagate drives seem to have quite a bit higher power usages...

[Phil]

Hmmm. The transfer speeds are much faster than my Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM drive (about 20MB/s difference), but the access time is a full 3 milliseconds slower. I've been hearing many [different] things about what factor actually affects performance the most, so I'm not sure whether I should choose to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive or 5400RPM drive when the time comes.

In general, acces times become more important when the drive needs to read or write many small files. Like booting Windows or opening applications for example.

Sustained transfer speeds are more important for larger files. For video encoding for example.

For day to day use, acces times are quite important. In your case, I don't think you'll notice a performance improvement if you upgrade to Hitachi 5K500.b. When Scorpio Black 500GB comes out, you might.

Also, 7200 rpm tends to show more improvement in multitasking situations.

[John Ratsey]

The power consumption rated by the manufacturer is a little off compared to the actual tests you did.

1.4w is kind of hard to believe. I know some hitachis required 2 USB ports to power.

These full load and idle power measurements are consistent with my own observations using the procedure described here. However, something I noticed while checking power consumption while running HD Tune is that the power used by the 5K500.B during the sequential read test was a lot less than during the random read (and near to Hitachi's claimed value) whereas the WD5000BEVT's power requirement did not change significantly during the various stages of the HD Tune test. Kevin: Can you check this with your super-duper test rig?

Haha I almost asked how you got the power readings for the hard drives. The Seagate drives seem to have quite a bit higher power usages...

I have tested the 5400.6 and it has slightly higher power consumption than the 5K500.B. However, some of the older Seagates used a lot more power. See Tom's Hardware.

By the way, I have installed the 5K500.B in my E6400 to replace the WD5000BEVT which had clocked up over 2000 hours. My initial impression is the the 5K500.B does offer increased battery time. It is also relatively quiet: In a quiet room I can sometimes hear a faint ticking noise from the head movement, but nothing like the pecking chicken noise made by some HDDs.

John

[Luke1708]

Is there any online place where i can get it and which provides international shipping? I do not live in the U.S

[dietcokefiend]

These full load and idle power measurements are consistent with my own observations using the procedure described here. However, something I noticed while checking power consumption while running HD Tune is that the power used by the 5K500.B during the sequential read test was a lot less than during the random read (and near to Hitachi's claimed value) whereas the WD5000BEVT's power requirement did not change significantly during the various stages of the HD Tune test. Kevin: Can you check this with your super-duper test rig?

During the random test it was lower than the sequential read. It was around 2.02-2.10watts during that part.