The 500GB Deskstar is the smallest Hitachi drive on test, but it comes with an enticing range of specifications. There’s a 16MB cache – more than some rival drives at this price – and the 7,200rpm spindle speed is standard among modern disks.
Alas, those specifications failed to translate into stellar performance; the 500GB Deskstar found itself at the bottom of our results table. Its read speed of 78.9MB/sec was beaten by all but four of the hard disks this month, and the write speed of 65.3MB/sec was equally disappointing.
Access times of 19ms and 15ms for reading and writing files didn’t stand out, and the burst speed of 223.8MB/sec was outpaced by most of the other hard disks on test as well.
There’s one saving grace – value. At £36 and 7.7p/GB, this is one of the cheapest drives on test. Spend £5 more, though, and you could invest in a faster 500GB or 640GB drive, leaving the Deskstar as one to consider only if your budget is very strict indeed.
Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 500GB |
| Hard disk usable capacity | 465GB |
| Hard disk type | Mechanical |
| Cache size | 16MB |
| Spindle speed | 7,200RPM |
| Seek time (ms) | 19ms |
| Cost per gigabyte | 7.7p |
Noise and power | |
| Idle power consumption | 7W |
Performance tests | |
| HD Tach burst speed | 223.8MB/sec |
| HD Tach random access speed | 18.5ms |
| HD Tach average sequential read speed | 83.2MB/sec |
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