Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000: Terabyte Storage arrives on the Desktop

Actual Application Performance

Our application benchmarks are designed to show application performance results with times being reported in minutes / seconds or seconds only, with lower scores being better. Our graph engine does not allow for a time format such a 1:05 (one minute, five seconds) so this time value will be represented as 1.05. While these tests will show some differences between the drives it is important to understand we are no longer measuring the pure performance of the hard drive but how well our platform performs with each individual drive. The performance of a hard drive is an integral part of the computer platform but other factors such as memory, CPU, core logic, and even driver choice can play a major role in determining how well the hard drive performs in any given task. Also worth noting is that new features of Windows Vista - specifically SuperFetch - can further reduce the measured performance differences between hard drives.

Game Load Test

Our Sims 2 - Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the initial portion of the game. Our application timer starts when the game icon is initiated until the neighborhood menu appears.


The results are basically the same as our IPEAK results as the WD Raptor series continues to lead all drives although the performance differences are not as drastic once we take into account the entire platform. We notice the Hitachi drive scoring better than the other 7200rpm drives and the drive seemed just as fast as the Raptors over the course of game play, something we generally did not find with our other top performing 7200rpm drives.

Game Level Load

This test centers on the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections. We run Battlefield 2 and measure the time it takes to load the Daqing Oilfields level. Our application timer begins when the start single player icon is initiated and ends when the join game icon is visible.


The WD1500ADFD Raptor continues its pattern of being the best available drive for the gaming enthusiast and our subjective opinion also matches the test scores although we are openly debating this statement now. Of course it is easy to debate our continued love affair with the Raptor as the difference in load times between the WD1500 and the 7K1000 drive was only one second so it appears we are getting close to finally having a Raptor killer in the large capacity 7200rpm drives. We firmly believe the areal density and 32 MB cache advantages of the Hitachi 7K1000 make up for the rotational and random access advantages of the Raptor in our gaming tests.

AnyDVD 5.9.6

Our next test has us utilizing the "ripping" function of AnyDVD to copy the Office Space DVD file from our source drive to our test drive. Our DVD features 29 files totaling 7.55GB of data and is an excellent test for determining the write speed of a drive.


Our Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB drive scores extremely well in this test due to exceptional read times with large data blocks in sequential order, something its larger sibling does not handle well. This is one of the few tests where our 7K1000 does not finish ahead of the other 7200rpm drives but it does improve upon its performance when compared to the IPEAK results. The 7K1000 still manages a top five finish while finishing 15 seconds ahead of the Seagate 750GB drive.

Nero Audio Encode

Our last test has us utilizing the audio encoding functions of Nero to convert our INXS Greatest Hits audio files in MP4 format to a high quality variable rate MP3 file for our portable player. Our test features 16 files totaling 137MB of data and is an excellent test for determining the read and write speed of a drive.


The test results show once again the amount of time a fast hard drive like the WD Raptor can save over the course of audio or video file manipulation session. In this case, the WD1500ADFD finishes just ahead of the 7K1000 where it handles small block sizes in sequential order slightly better due to is rotational speed advantage.