Hitachi 2TB Harddrive Owner's Thread

Odditory, if JKDL_SP version 1.30 really doesn't work on 5K3000 & 7K3000, have you attempted to acquire a newer revision of the tool? HiTest in general is really a horrible application (fyi: highly recommended to make a backup of your system partition before installing, since it can mess up your system on uninstall). In any case, I doubt they discontinued the DOS tool since HiTest is Windows only.
 
odditory said:
BTW I'm updating the update tool instructions on that ServeTheHome thread you linked since the DOS tool JKDL_SP.exe doesn't work on the newer drives.
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Oh ok.. Hmmm Will have to see what fw the drives I get are.

Will you know when the latest instructions and tools for updating the fw180 -> 580 for the 5k3000 are up? I'd like to update all mine.

Thanks
 
Just received 3 5K3000 drives (for backup) all came with FW 580 and blue pcb. They also came in original hard drive manufacturer wrapping like ++++ always does :). All 3 work just fine and scan fin so far. Next month I'll be ordering 20 more for my array .
 
Got a blue pcb 5k3000 from newegg last month, dec 2010, in warranty until dec 2013
Got three green pcb 5k3000s, firmware 580, from newegg last week, jan 2011, in warranty until feb 2014.

Still not clear on the difference between pcbs.
 
if anyone is having trouble getting the dos flash tool to PASS, the drive needs to be listed as MASTER or the flash will fail.
 
I performed read benchmarks on all the drives I got in with HD Tune, and although they did vary wildly, there didnt seem to be a correlation with PCBs color.. Furthermore, the PCB color varied even from the same store and the same manufacture date (month). Almost seems random?
 
Cyberbeing said:
HiTest in general is really a horrible application (fyi: highly recommended to make a backup of your system partition before installing, since it can mess up your system on uninstall).
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Great. :rolleyes: I installed this on my WHS because that is what Hitachi sent me to update my 7k2000 drives. It never worked (finally got the dos tool to update them with), but I haven't yet uninstalled HiTest. Now you have me afraid to. What exactly does it do?
 
On my WinXP box, the uninstaller deleted some files which triggered a System File Protection dialog which was unable to be dismissed (since whatever it deleted wasn't found in i386), and it also failed to uninstall its low-level kernel drivers.
 
anyone have a 2tb 5k3000 working on a adaptec 1430SA??
EDIT: never mind, guy confused his cabling
 
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@odditory Where can I download the firmware for fw580? And the tool to update it?

I have a few fw180 Drives that Id like to update to fw580
 
unwire said:
Awesome - thanks for the link! I'm going to update all of my drives before throwing them in the array.

As promised, the success rates of my recent NewEgg vs Amazon 5K3000 purchases:

NewEgg:
- 1 DOA
- 1 had a big strip of bad sectors with HD Tune Pro Read Test
- 3 OK

Amazon.com:
- All 5 OK

I'm not saying its due to Amazon.com's superior packaging, but.. :)
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Out of 8 purchased from Amazon, after a stress test I had one that failed out of the array. I checked the SMART values and it had a large amount of pending sectors along with a growing reallocated sector count. Submitted a return to Amazon yesterday and they've already shipped me a replacement that'll arrive today.
 
So I was finally able to get the Hi Test utility working on a 32-bit Vista installation I had kicking around on an old laptop hard drive that I threw into a spare desktop. It didnt seem to work on any 64-bit installs of either Vista, Win 7, or Server 2003..

However, I just realized that I dont have the right firmware.. The old microcode is reported as ML6OA180 and I'd like to upgrade to ML6OA580 to match my other drives, but all I have is the ML0NR580 firmware file.

Anyone know where I can get the ML6OA580.BD file? I have ML0NR580 but I'm not sure if that is compatible, and I'd like to match the firmware to the other fw 580 drives exactly..
 
No idea...i have the same one that you have. Maybe you should try contacting Hitachi again.
 
Judging by the firmware name, I just realized that the compatible DOS tool will probably be called MLDL_SP.exe (MARINER-C ATA/SATA MICROCODE UPDATE PROGRAM).
 
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So I heard back from Hitachi Support regarding the upgraded firmware for my 5k3000 drives with the ML60A180 firmware, and they sent me the ML0NR580 firmware as an upgrade. Its still unclear how ML0NR580 relates to ML60A580 (which exists on my other 5k3000 drives), but I've asked Adrian to clarify and will post his response.
 
Unable to wait for Hitachi's support to get back to me regarding the confusingly named "ML0NR580" firmware update they sent me, I went ahead and updated my 5k3000 w/ML6OA180 using the ML0NR580 firmware with hopes that they were compatible and would not explode.

The result upon upgrade - ML6OA580! Which means that the ML0NR580 actually upgrades the firmware to ML6OA580.

I wasn't able to get the JKDL_SP.exe DOS tool to recognize any of my 5K3000s so I had to use Hi Test windows app. It did not work on either Server 2008 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, or Vista 64-bit. However, it did work on Vista 32-bit and Server 2003 32-bit. So it might be compatible only with 32-bit OSes.
 
Just to add a data point to recent topics: I have one 5K3000 I got from Amazon 2-3 weeks ago, and two I just got from Newegg this week. All three show 3 year warranties (expiring December of 2013 for the one from Amazon, and February of 2014 for both from Newegg, consistent with their build dates in all three cases). The two from Newegg I've tested with Hitachi's DFT, and checked the SMART data, and those are both fine. I didn't check the one from Amazon before putting it in my server, but have had no issues (in the past week that it's been installed). I can't check SMART data on it, as the controller it's on doesn't pass it. In my case, the Newegg packaging was far better than Amazons, but I got two at a time from Newegg, which may have helped.
 
In terms of performance in a RAID for a home media server, is it worth the $20/drive for 7200rpm vs 5400rpm? I'm thinking of getting 3 of these drives right now, expanding up to 5 or 6 in a RAID 5 down the line. Throughput is probably not going to be the limiting factor, but if the 5400's aren't suitable for RAID, then it might be worth the difference

I'm also confused about which e-tailer seems to be better: Amazon or Newegg. Sounds like a very mixed bag
 
To the question of 7200 vs 5400 being worth the extra $?? I don't think so for home media streaming use. The 5400s supposedly run cooler, which is a plus, though in actual experience, I don't find a huge difference in my case (I have 11 7200 RPM and 2 of the 5400 RPM drives). This might be because of where they are located (i.e. maybe in a hotter part of the case), so YMMV. If I was building new now, I'd go for the cheaper drives.

re: vendor, both have good return policies, you just have to roll the dice. Personally, I think Amazon makes returns easier, but that might just be me.
 
Not worth it going to 7200rpm drives. Platter densities are so high right now that you'll be limited by your network connection first, then whatever HBA you are using, and not your drives. With a handful of drives, even a 10gbit ethernet connection is easily saturated.
 
No not worth it at all especially when using raid, like blue fox platter densities are so high now that even single drive performance is more than adequate for streaming the occasional movie.
 
I am curious how the 3tb 5400 drives perform in RAID6, with 2 or 3 high bitrate video streams coming off of them, with an Areca 1680 controller. Any stuttering? It is under high seek conditions that the 7200 drives shine.
 
What do you consider high bit rate? If you're talking blu-ray rips, a 10 year old hard drive can handle that as you only need ~50mbit stream per at best. That's a whopping ~6mb/s. The SDHC card in my camera and phone could do that. :p If high bit rate to you is raw 2k footage, well, that isn't a problem either with a bunch of drives.
 
Blue Fox said:
What do you consider high bit rate? If you're talking blu-ray rips, a 10 year old hard drive can handle that as you only need ~50mbit stream per at best. That's a whopping ~6mb/s. The SDHC card in my camera and phone could do that. :p If high bit rate to you is raw 2k footage, well, that isn't a problem either with a bunch of drives.
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Yes yes, but I have seen sata drives, that on paper can handle multiple bluray and higher video bitrate streams with ease choke under multiple streams, not for lack of sequential read speed, but rather slow seek rate.
 
I gotta give Hitachi a big thumbs down for their end of line test quality for the 2TB 7K300 drives. I bought 5 from Newegg last week. They arrived pretty well packed and one of them has bad sectors right out of the antistatic bag. :mad:

I didn't realize Hitachi put OCZ in charge of their QA department. :eek:
 
Stereodude said:
I gotta give Hitachi a big thumbs down for their end of line test quality for the 2TB 7K300 drives. I bought 5 from Newegg last week. They arrived pretty well packed and one of them has bad sectors right out of the antistatic bag. :mad:

I didn't realize Hitachi put OCZ in charge of their QA department. :eek:
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The same here. One out of four died within a week.
 
Turns out a second of the 5 2TB 7K3000 drives is bad. I tried to do an old school full format of the drive and it got stuck at 0% and started the ol' whir, click, whir, click routine. Now, that's all it does when powered up. Go Hitachi!
 
Currently i have 8 hitachi's 5k3000.
1 of the drives, after 2 months of use, in the last 3 days has come up with an sector repair error on the hd.

Not happy..
Safe to say nearly all the drive are the same, no one manufacturer is perfect.

Regs John
 
These 2TB 7k3000's are trash. I ordered 5 from from Newegg. 2 were bad. I RMA'd them to Newegg. They sent 2 replacements. One of them was bad.

So, out of 7 drives from Newegg 3 of them have been bad. Now I get to request another RMA, and try to get Newegg to eat the return shipping this time. :mad:
 
Stereodude said:
These 2TB 7k3000's are trash. I ordered 5 from from Newegg. 2 were bad. I RMA'd them to Newegg. They sent 2 replacements. One of them was bad.

So, out of 7 drives from Newegg 3 of them have been bad. Now I get to request another RMA, and try to get Newegg to eat the return shipping this time. :mad:
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I blame newegg and/or the shipping. All the Hitachi hdds i got from frys have been good so far.
 
Agree, ordered many 7K3000s, both 2TB and 3TB, not a single DOA drive, but none ordered from newegg.
 
Stereodude said:
So, how come Samsung, Seagate, and WD drives don't have problems withstanding Newegg and the shipping?
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No one said they dont.

A quick search on [H] and you will see that there is a pervasive long standing problem with neweggs packers and HDDs.
 
Newegg has gotten better, but there are failures from every drive manufacturer from newegg.

I remember some of my first drives ordered from them were static bag, one layer of bubble wrap, floating in packing peanuts.

I just ordered 7 drives from newegg, and last time they were packed much better, so I'm hoping that they come through ok. I know I'm going to be running diag tools before I use them. Never done that before, just installed them and started to use them, but I'm getting more and more paranoid seeing failures.
 
nitrobass24 said:
No one said they dont.
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Well, I am saying they don't. I haven't had these sorts of problem with the Samsung, Seagate, and WD drives ordered from Newegg.
A quick search on [H] and you will see that there is a pervasive long standing problem with neweggs packers and HDDs.
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These 7 Hitachi drives have been much better packed than most HD's I've gotten from Newegg and they're still unable to withstand the shipping.
 
I have 10 2TB hitachi drives from newegg (5 7k3000's 5 5k3000's) - one was DOA, but I think that was because the shipping department was using it as a doorstop/hockey puck. To be fair I sent the pictures to newegg and they immediately overnighted me a new drive and emailed me a calltag for the old one at no charge, which is all I could have asked for (well, given that I got a bum drive in the first place)

P1010415small.jpg


Otherwise no problems/dead sectors, etc. all anecdotal of course though..
http://www.behardware.com/articles/788-6/components-returns-rates.html
BeHardware, in their return rates stats for this year have Hitachi at the lowest. More useful would be some that broke down the drives by models though.
 
I'm comparing buying a set of 4 of the 5k3000s to a set of WD Greens.

I've heard these are better in that they don't have RAID-stuff stripped out like the WDs do. What "RAID stuff" do people mean? All I'm aware of is TLER being gone on the WDs - do the 5k3000s still have Time Limited Error Reporting or has it been removed in a firmware?

Do the 5k3000s have AAM? I skimmed through a few pages and have seen varying reports.

These drives seem to be louder/hotter (marginally) than the WD Greens so I'm curious what their benefit is (I'll set aside the whole "WD quality sux!" argument because both lines of drives have DOAs).

Thanks for the feedback - appreciate it.
 
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