Hard Disk Performance

As we promised, the Hitachi T7K250 drives are remarkably fast. In a RAID configuration, it completely outclasses a single Western Digital Raptor. In buffered read/write, and random read tests, even a single Hitachi T7K250 running on SATA-II is able to outperform the Western Digital Raptor 74GB.

The pair of Hitachi T7K250’s 250GB units will set me back $250 and a pair of 160GB T7K250 drives will set me back $200. In comparison, a retail boxed WD Raptor 74 GB is $250 and an OEM WD Raptor 74GB is $190.

Basically the decision tree is spending $250 for 500GB or saving $60 and getting a WD Raptor 74GB which is only 15% of the capacity… and slower.