Laptop 7200rpm HD: Seagate Momentus or Hitachi Travelstar?

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NACZ3

Gawd
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Mar 5, 2004
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Does anyone have any experience with these laptop HD's from Seagate and Hitachi?

I'm upgrading my Latitude D600 laptop through work and have been looking at upgrading to a 80 GB 7200 rpm 2.5 inch drive in the Seagate Momentus (5 yr warranty) or the Hitachi Travelstar E7K100 (does anyone know of any differences between the E7K100 and 7K100 as I can only find that it has improved power management).

Links:

Seagate: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101597

Hitachi: E7K100
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100524-5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145099

7K100
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100524-2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146047

Since it's for work, reliability is number one as I'd hate to transfer my stuff over and have a HD crash down the road. I haven't used an Hitachi drive or Seagate in quite a while for my home setup.

Hitachi gets good reviews on Newegg but I don't base a lot on those as I've seen a 4 star/eggs rating on the Hitachi with a con of "dubious quality" or on a graphics tablet that had a 5 star/egg rating with a DO NOT BUY after the rating.

For my home system, I usually stick with Western Digital as I've had excellent reliability from them and in the one instance where I had a hard drive noise problem with a 2 year old 120 GB drive, their customer service/RMA service was great. However, WD doesn't offer any 7200 rpm 2.5 inch laptop drives that I can find.
 
All 7200 laptop drives have a heat problem, regardless of manufacturer. Just keep that in mind. There's no such thing as a reliable HD. You need data stored in 3 locations to be 'safe'. Sounds like an exaggeration, until your main drive fails and you find out your backups weren't running and you didn't check regularly - big oops.
 
I realize the heat issue and I do have automated network backup that I run at work. I'm looking at what would be the better of these 2 drives.
 
Actually, in SR's Notebook drive roundup, two 5400RPM drives topped their power consumption charts, Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 and a Fujitsu unit.

Personally, I would prefer hte Hitachi drive. Really, they are very close, and the extra 2 years of warranty on the Seagate may tip the balance the other way.
 
NACZ3 said:
(does anyone know of any differences between the E7K100 and 7K100 as I can only find that it has improved power management).
Click to expand...

One is for enterprise/server use (think blade server) and the other for laptop use.

Hitachi recommends to not use the server drive in a laptop as it is not as highly shock rated, and to not use the laptop drive in a server as it is not rated for 24/7 use. (I think the E7K100 is the server one)

But I am not sure if there is really much difference between them.

==>lazn
 
I've personally upgraded the HD in my Inspiron 9300 to a Hitachi 80GB 7K100 and haven't noticed any real battery life difference from the old hitachi 5k60. The heat issue is a non-issue for me, even though i leave the laptop on about 20 hours a day folding. It's upside down under a poorly insulated window in the frozen north most of the day :p
 
Lazn_Work said:
One is for enterprise/server use (think blade server) and the other for laptop use.

Hitachi recommends to not use the server drive in a laptop as it is not as highly shock rated, and to not use the laptop drive in a server as it is not rated for 24/7 use. (I think the E7K100 is the server one)

But I am not sure if there is really much difference between them.

==>lazn
Click to expand...
The E7K100 and 7K100 are similar in terms of active power draw and thermal profile, however the E7K100 does not have the advanced power management features to preserve battery life during periods of inactivity.

Also, the E7K100 may not be built to the same rugged shock and thermal tolerances that a proper notebook drive is.
 
Thanks for the info on the E7K100. Saved me from making a mistake on getting that one. Hitachi's site isn't very clear on the intended purposes of the E7K100 vs the 7K100. I had interpreted it as maybe being a newer version of the laptop use drive but was mistaken. Thanks again.
 
I'm a laptop tech and from working with laptops exclusively for years I can say that the Hitachi is your best bet. I only use Seagate drives for the desktop and server use, but in the 2.5" world, Hitachi is king. I haven't came across many of the newer Momentus drives, but their older offerings seem to not be terribly reliable or resistant to shock.
 
Thanks to everyone who posted. I just ordered the Hitachi 80GB 7K100 from Newegg along with a Vantec Nexstar 3 2.5 inch enclosure to use for my old drive.
 
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