Just bought 2x 7K3000 2TB drives (HDS723020BLA642). I've done some tests and I will share some observations here (in comparison to 7k2000 2TB)
1. Made in China vs. Thailand
2. Blue PCB flipped, with ICs facing inwards. Casing on the bottom looks a bit cheap, ... (it's only an impression)
3. SATA 6.0 Gbps vs 3.0 Gbps
4. 64 vs 32 MB cache (though CrystalDiskInfo, Everest and HDDScan all report 32 MB... don't know why is that)
5. 3 x 667 GB platters (the ONLY drive with 667 platters and 7200 rpm, as of 2011-08-10)
6. MUCH more quiet (3 vs 5 platters) ! VERY quiet drive, actually. Excellent !
7. Almost no trepidation
8. Quite nasty, short beeping sound when booting, right after the platters are fully spun up, and the heads are moved onto the platters
9. Temperature 10 degrees lower ! Excellent !
10. 10-20% Faster in linear read
11. Random access time quite slow... 15.7 ms vs. 13.3 ms (maybe that's why seeks are quiet)
12. No AAM setting (maybe there is a kind of AAM set by default at the factory, causing the relatively slow seeks...
13. Can't set SATA to 3 Gbps from Ftool (it doesn't seem to recognize the 3 levels: 1.5, 3.0 and 6.0 Gbps)
14. SATA 6 Gbps seems to fall back to 3 Gbps on an eSATA ExpressCard 1.0, as it should, no problems here.
15. There doesn't seem to be any jumper to set SATA 3 Gbps manually...
16. APM Disabled by default, similarly to 7K2000. Have to check whether APM=128 can be set and if it works !
17. Firmware 580, the latest I believe (drive manufactured in Dec-2010)
18. Native 512-byte sector size, Hitachi didn't went with the crowd and didn't change to 4 KB for its 3.5" drives
Feel free to comment on any of these ! (Especially if someone has faced the issue written at number 8)
*Note: After a few extra tests, it is just AMAZING how QUIET these 7K3000 2TB drives are ! (noticeably quieter than Hitachi 7K2000, Seagate 7200.11 1.5 TB, or Samsung F3, 1TB). Sometimes I can't even hear the seeks !