HITACHI CINEMASTAR 7K1000

Introduction

Hitachi's CinemaStar line of Hard Drives is designed specifically for AV applications.  Specifically, its firmware improves integrity and optimizes QoS in streaming applications, minimizes acoustics for quieter operation, lower power consumption, and cooler temperatures.  It carries a 3-year warranty, in a low-duty-cycle, 24x7, non-mission critical operation.  Hitachi mentions that the drive can support up to 10 SD/HD streams, and we'll see if the test numbers support that claim...

The testbed used is comprised of the following components:

The operating system is Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.  Hitachi's CinemaStar 7K1000 specifications:

So here we go.  These are the test results of the CinemaStar 7K1000 in single-drive configuration:

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Now let's see some RAID-0 benchmarks:

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones, RAID-0

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones, RAID-0

ATTO Benchmark, RAID-0

RAID-0 scores are just astounding.  Good enough to stream a couple dozen HD movies at once perhaps!

RAID-1 scores below.

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones, RAID-1

HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones, RAID-1

ATTO Benchmark, RAID-1

The numbers are looking good so far.  Here are the links to the original 7K1000 and the current best-of-class 7200RPM drive, the Samsung F1.  There is just no beating the F1, but the CinemaStar does improve on the original 7K1000 in write speeds. 

Subjective observations are as follows:  We did notice that the drive run cooler to the touch over longer periods of time, even while streaming a few DVD rips stored in it.  There were no perceptible dropped frames even with the addition of two downloaded HD clips to further saturate bandwidth.  Man, this drive truly is optimized for AV.  And because of that, we did not test it as a boot drive or anything else.

For its innovative implementation for its targeted application, quiet, cool performance, the Hitachi CinemaStar 7K1000 gets a 94% score!  Had it broken the 100MB/s mark in single-drive configuration, it would have received the 100% score.