A wonderful coincidence of supply and demand has emerged in the storage market! New technologies have pushed down the cost per gigabyte on 250GB-320GB drives, while capacity hogs like multi-megabit broadband and video editing continue gaining mainstream status.
Along with this favorable price/capacity ratio, improved performance and reduced noise have become bargaining chips in the highest-volume market segment. Additionally, gone are the dark days of one-year warranties, as manufacturers seek to instill confidence in their customers. This is the best buyers market we've seen in several years!
Drives vying for the "Best in Value" title are Hitachi's T7K250 250GB, Samsung's SP2504C 250GB, Seagate's 7200.10 300GB, and Western Digital's Caviar RE 320GB. We'll compare capacity, performance, and price to determine which manufacturer offers savvy SysOpt readers the most balanced mainstream drive.
| May 2006 Best Value Hard Drive Details: |
| Manufacturer | Hitachi | Samsung | Seagate | Western Digital |
| Model | T7K250 | SP2504C | 7200.10 | WD3200SD |
| Capacity | 250GB | 250GB | 300GB | 320GB |
| Interface | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 150 |
| Cache | 8MB | 8MB | 8MB | 8MB |
| RPM | 7200 | 7200 | 7200 | 7200 |
| Bearing | FDB | FDB | unspecified | FDB |
| Acoustic (db) | 28~36 | 25-28 | 27-30 | 28-33 |
| MTBF (hours) | 600,000 | 600,000 | unspecified | 1,000,000 |
| Start Cycles | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | unspecified |
| Op Shock (g) | 55 | 63 | 68 | 65 |
| Non-Op (g) | 350 | 350 | 300 | 250 |
| Start Current (12v+5v) | 1.9+1.2A | 1.9+0.65A | 2.8+0.72A | ~2.0+0.65A |
| Seek Power | ~11.4W | 9.5W | 12.6W | 9.5W |
| Idle Power | 6.2W | 7.5W | 9.3W | 8.8w |
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