Testing Participants

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100: HTS721010G9SA00

Hitachi Travelstar 7K200: HTS722020K9SA00

Of course, the newer 7K200 series has inherited most of its technologies from the 7K100 series: iridium-magnesium-chromium heads, thermal fly-height control, parking on a ramp for protection during reboots, and the power-saving features HiVERT and ABLE. What is really new in the new series, the recording density per platter has doubled. The amount of cache memory has doubled as well, reaching 16 megabytes. The other HDDs in this review have only 8 megabytes of cache memory. We’ll see if the 7K200 can put these innovations to good use and deliver the 22% performance boost promised by the manufacturer (relative to the 7K100 series).