Hitachi Harddisks Thread (5K3000, 7K3000, 7K2000)

[Patrick]

I can at least comment that my ~34x 7K2000's have been flawless some with well over 18 months of use at this point. It is the big reason I keep purchasing Hitachi drives.

 

[Metaluna]

Hey Piglover, hope you know I am not trying to rain on your parade and I appreciate you sharing your experiences. As we know, the manufacturers aren't providing a wealth of info on RAID applications.

I do know that bad sectors are not a reason for a disk to drop from an array. That is what the parity drive and RAID card are for - they get reallocated and the array continues as if nothing had happened.

Seems to me that neither of these policies is ideal. I agree that the drive should not be dropped, but any bad sector should also be reported immediately so that the drive can be either replaced or watched more carefully (I'm not an expert on hardware RAID so I don't know what kinds of logging/escalation to the admin is common). At least, that's if you believe that old Google study that found that drives with even one reallocated sector were far more likely to fail within a short time than drives with no reallocated sectors. It's still better than dropping the drive though, which essentially throws away all your redundancy (or half of it, for RAID6) and puts your array in danger.

 

[lifespeed]

Seems to me that neither of these policies is ideal. I agree that the drive should not be dropped, but any bad sector should also be reported immediately so that the drive can be either replaced or watched more carefully (I'm not an expert on hardware RAID so I don't know what kinds of logging/escalation to the admin is common). At least, that's if you believe that old Google study that found that drives with even one reallocated sector were far more likely to fail within a short time than drives with no reallocated sectors. It's still better than dropping the drive though, which essentially throws away all your redundancy (or half of it, for RAID6) and puts your array in danger.

The reallocated sectors are noted in the SMART info, and are available for viewing at any time. I don't think a few reallocated sectors are any big deal. If they are consistently increasing on a disk, then one should swap it out.

But the disk should not drop out of the array for this. It is considered business as usual, to a certain extent.

 

[halkx]

Hi, just a quick question regarding 7K2000's big brother the A7K2000: I have some of them and I was wondering if I could find the equivalent firmware to 3MA to flash them...Any info on this?

 

[halkx]

I can at least comment that my ~34x 7K2000's have been flawless some with well over 18 months of use at this point. It is the big reason I keep purchasing Hitachi drives.

Let's hope that WD doesn't screw up heavily when they get their hands on Hitachi technology...(highly likely they will...)

 

[lifespeed]

Let's hope that WD doesn't screw up heavily when they get their hands on Hitachi technology...(highly likely they will...)

Just bought a couple more 5K3000 - 0S03230 so I can have a matched set of 6 drives before WD borks everything.

 

[halkx]

That's a good decision on your part... I have 15 7K2000's working happily and I have started gathering 7K3000's (2 3TB ones for the time being...)...

 

[nitrobass24]

WD isnt going to spend time messing with current hardware. They will only mess up future products.

 

[lifespeed]

WD isnt going to spend time messing with current hardware. They will only mess up future products.

No, but they could discontinue them in favor of their own garbage offerings with deliberately-hosed RAID functionality.

 

[kryptex]

Used the JKDL_SP.EXE included in the OP. Basically I flashed to 3EA then 3MA, pulled the drive to insert it into my array. Couldn't add the drive to the array, but noticed the size was reported as 1TB. Tried the drive in the machine I flashed it with and one other, both came up as 1TB in the BIOS. RMA'd the drive and got a new 3MA in return, attempted to upgrade another drive to 3MA and was successful, drive showed 2TB. Flashed a few more one at a time till I was satisfied everything was working, then continued to flash the rest of the array.
Guess it was just some weird fluke.

Just upgraded a 7k2000 from 20N and another from 28A, both to 3EA, then to 3MA, everything worked out just fine. (P/N:0F10311)

The 20N and 28A firmwares have AAM available, but when set to AAM=128, seeking is very slow (18+ ms average random seek), the drive being really quiet. When AAM is set to 254 or disabled (for any firmware, be it 20N/28A/3EA/3MA), average random seek = 13.3 ms, which is great for a 5-platter drive (but NOISY !)

There is no intermediate setting for the AAM, the seek performance is either 13.3 ms, for AAM>128, or ~18 ms for AAM=128. It would have been nice to have an intermediate, silent seek with ~15ms...

Regarding APM, it is disabled by default on all Hitachi 7k2000 drives (no head parking). I've tried to set APM=128 to all drives, but on firmwares 20N and 28A I couldn't manage to do it (with FTool 2.12 / 2.15). On 3EA/3MA firmwares, APM =128 works very well (head park after 2 minutes, lowers temp by ~5 deg).

It seems that for 7k2000 there is no way to set both APM and AAM at the same time/for the same firmware.
20N and 28A allow for AAM modification, but no APM change.
3EA and 3MA allow for APM setting, but no AAM available...

Note: On one of my 28A drives I see 49 reallocated sectors, they appeared after about 6500 hours... Anybody, any experiences with increasing reallocated sectors on 7K2000 ? (This drive was never in a RAID array)

 

[kryptex]

I'd like to know if there is anyone who managed to set APM=128 (80h) (or anything else than "Disabled") for Hitachi 7k2000 with firmware 28A ? Ftool doesn't keep it @ 128 after a cold reboot, it is always set back to Disabled.

For firmware 3MA, however, setting the APM works flawlessly in Ftool 2.15, but I don't want to update the firmware to 3MA, because I loose the possibility of setting AAM (which is still available in 28A).

 

[kryptex]

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 !

 

[kryptex]

I can't manage to set SATA II (3.0 Gbps) on the 7k3000 2TB drive (default setting SATA III = 6.0 Gbps). Is it even possible ?
It doesn't work with an older SATA II-to-USB bridge...

 

[ptcruisergt]

Kryptex, there's an unofficial Hitachi Feature Tool (FT216M2.iso) floating around the 'net which should allow setting the SATA speed lower. I've used it to set my 5K3000's to 1.5Gbps for some older VIA SATA controllers that won't properly negotiate speed. One potential gotcha, I'm not certain if it works setting it back to 6Gbps.

Also, there's newer firmware than 580 for several months now.

 

[kryptex]

Thanks ptcruisergt. I will not use this custom made FTool 2.16... I may not be able to revert to SATA 6Gbps.
Regarding the firmware, where did you find newer than 580 for 7K3000 2TB ? I searched everywhere, I see only people mentioning 5C0, but for 5k3000, not 7k3000. Some hints would be appreciated.

 

[ptcruisergt]

There was mention of 5C0 firmware for 7K3000's on a couple non-english forums. Coolaler was one of them.

 

[kryptex]

There was mention of 5C0 firmware for 7K3000's on a couple non-english forums. Coolaler was one of them.

I've already seen that, but no sign of actual firmware file to download and update my 7k3000 (Firmware=580). I don't believe that the files are already out there. Did you flash your drive ?

 

[ptcruisergt]

No, sadly, haven't found the firmwares anywhere for download. I'm not even sure if a flasher has been found, besides HiTest *shudder*.

 

[kryptex]

It would be really interesting to see a comparison of the 7K3000 2TB, firmware 580 vs 5C0, in terms of performance (seek times, noise, etc). The avg seek times of the 580 firmware are quite bad, when compared to the 7K2000 drives: 15.7ms vs 13.2ms.

It seems to me that the 580 FW on the 7K3000 has a built-in AAM from the factory (not modifiiable by the end user... I've already tried), to keep the noise down. However, it DOES affect performance, 15.7ms looks quite bad for a 3-platter 7200 rpm drive... Maybe 5C0 is better (I'd trade a 13ms seek for an increased noise, since 7k3000 drives w. FW=580 are virtually SILENT)

I don't think that 3 platters at full seek (e.g. ~13ms) would rattle so badly as the 5-platter 7k2000...

 

[schnittendieb]

Hi Guys,

there i can get these Hitest 2.23 app and the newest 5C0 F/W for the 2TB 5K3000 drives? There are no hits on google etc.

Thx.