Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K500 HDS725050KLAT80 (0A31613) 500GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 / ATA-7 3.5″ Hard Drive Bare Drive

Comments: As of right now, this is the largest drive you can buy. Smaller drives will give you more space for your dollar, but then you’d need more of them; which increases space, power, and noise.

Performance is adaquate. Fine for bulk storage but not sor something really disk-intensive.

Noise at idle is quite low. But the seek noise is a somewhat loud ‘tick’.

A good choice if you’re looking to get the most out of a limited number of drive bays. Otherwise it would be better to go with a 250 or 320GB drive.

Pros: Ignore the overall rating, just wanted to comment on the perception of “less than advertised” space. See other thoughts.

Cons: See other thoughts.

Overall Review: Windows calculates 465GB because it uses the *binary* definition of giga (1024^3)–not the *decimal* giga (1000^3). So the drive has 500*1000^3 = 500,000,000,000 bytes.

But when Windows converts bytes to gigabytes, it does so this way:

500,000,000,000/1024^3 = 465.66GB.

Pros: Excellent price. Great quality.

Cons: none

Overall Review: Bought this for my travelling xbox. Has taken a beating from getting moved constantly and still works great.

Pros: kinda cheap – but no bargain

Cons: This hard drive makes a very annoying and loud high pitch noise. It isn’t at all quiet. It is also very loud when it seeks.

Pros: Big, fast

Cons: Threw write errors, indicated SMART failure after ~ 9 months

Overall Review: I bought two of these back in Jan 07, one “live” one to have as a random 500GB spare. I just had to use the spare today, the live one threw some write errors, the bay indicated a SMART failure. I have about two dozen drives in use, 9 months is the shortest time I can remember any surviving, other than a DOA once. Poor reliability, in my book.

Pros: It’s great for storing DVD movies, and so preserving the original discs. You just play DVDs from the HD, esp. with Power DVD player. Using a TV out, you can play it on a large screen TV with the S-video connection, thru an AV selector, if you use several other peripherals on a network of DVD standalones, VCR, etc.

Cons: There’s not really 500GB. It has 465GB by Windows calculations. Windows also warns that the HD needs 15% free space to defragment properly. So that’s leaves a whopping unused 45GB approx. I want to use all the disc space for my DVD collection and rentals that I also download by decryptor thru G4TechTV and Doom.com I really need a terabyte (1000GB) or more HD.

Overall Review: Why can I not find a 500GB Seagate HD? I want to contunue using the Ultra ATA133 because one controller is enough. It has two connectors for a possible 4 hard drives.

Pros: none

Cons: none

Overall Review: I have two external drives I use to backup multimedia to.. I purchased 2 of these drives to replace 300GB drives I had filled up. After parititioning and formatting (which took an hour), I proceeded to copy 300GB worth of lossless audio files and some photos to these new drives. After reading all the reviews about them running hot I kept an eye on them during the process .. It took 40 hours each to copy the data to these drives and they got NO hotter than the Maxtor 300GB 5400rpm drives they replaced. In fact, they felt noticibly cooler to the touch. My external enclosures are from Acomdata, aluminum housing, and have no fan. I am very pleased with these drives overall and I do not see the temp problems with them that others have reported..

Pros: Works well, large capacity, good compatability. I didn’t have any problems with noise or heat. Low price per GB.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I’m using this HD in a Snap Server 2000 without any problems.