Home > Consumer Reviews > Hitachi 7K250 250GB DeskStar Internal Hard Drive

The Deskstar series hard drives have been around a long time. They are commonly found in most IBM branded systems and are known for their great performance abilities. Today we will take a look at one of their latest drives that takes into account high capacity and some of the fastest transfer speeds that we have ever seen! The Deskstar 7K250 250GB Serial ATA hard drive is one incredible drive. Accompanied by the almost silent operation, an 8MB buffer and a 7200RPM spindle, the 7K250 is a choice drive for anyone looking for performance without all the noise.
(full review @ bytesector.com)

I've used this drive for a good 2 weeks straight inside my NAS(Network Attached Storage) utilizing ext3 partition. From what I can tell and the access time, it is quite a strong if not better performer than comparable drives from Maxtor.

The greatest thing about the drive is how quiet it runs. The drive runs even quieter than my CPU fan! The sound level does compare to Maxtor drives since they both use similar fluid bearing technologies.

Came with a three year warranty, but here is the drawback. From my knowledge, since Hitachi acquired the IBM Storage division, they no longer perform advance RMA's on drives. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, this is where the manufacturer sends a replacement out to you first before you send the defective item back(Given that you provide a credit card to assure them the return of the defective item).

If you purchase any Hard drive for the purpose of storing critical data or as your primary(only) hard drive, it becomes rather convenient, if not absolutely neccessary, to do an Advance RMA so you avoid as much downtime as possible. I have another Hitachi drive I've performed an RMA on and the replacment did not come for 2 WEEKS AFTER THEY RECEIVED THE DRIVE! Luckily this was not a critical drive, but had it been my only drive, this would have been a major inconvenience.

Aside from the change in warranty issue on Hitachi's part, the drive performs the way it was intended and in my opinion still is a good product. If warranty support were better, it would have made it a great product.

Pros:
-Great Performance
-Extremely quiet
-Three Year Warranty(Retail Package)

Cons:
-Slow warranty responce
-No Advance RMA available. (As of the date of this review)