Hitachi GST Deskstar H3IK20003272SP (0S02861) 2TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: 3 year warranty, so when it does die, you can pay $10 to ship it back to Hitachi and get a replacement in a few weeks. Save the box!

Cons: Beware! You will not receive this hard drive. Hitachi is substituting another drive, Newegg part number N82E16822145473. I just bought 2 of these, and each drive has 3 different part numbers listed: 0F12115 and HDS723020BLA642 printed on the drive itself, which match the other Newegg part number, and 0S02861 printed on the box, which matches the description on this part. As another reviewer pointed out, the 2 different models are the 7K2000 and the 7K3000 (no the bigger number isn't the better drive, but that's what your getting). This is clearly a bait and switch scam being perpetrated by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Oh, by the way one of the drives I just bought was DOA...

Overall Review: *** This is not Newegg's fault. *** Hitachi is fraudulently mislabeling the boxes. Newegg has no way of knowing what is inside. HGST/WD: don't bother responding to tell me you are "sorry to read of [my] drive experience" and to call tech support, like you did on the others reviews that pointed this out. You have been caught red handed. Fix your ****.

Pros: The others have not died yet.

Cons: Normally have good luck with Hitachi 2tb drives, but not this time. 2 out of 15 DOA concerns me, and makes me wonder how long the others will last. Now get the great fun of dealing with the manufacturers RMA process.

Overall Review: Disappointing outcome from a vendor I have grown to trust.

Pros: I just received and installed this hard drive today and the product sticker on the drive itself lists a model number of: HDS722020ALA330 which is the same product number as the Deskstar 7K2000 on the Hitachi website. Under the product number it says, Type: DK7SAA200 The drive came in a sealed retail box and was packed tightly with peanuts in a newegg packing box. The drive is made in Thailand by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Thailand) Ltd. From the Hitachi website as to how to read the Deskstar model number: HDS722020ALA330 = 2TB, 32MB buffer H = Hitachi D = Deskstar S =Series prefix 72 = 7200 RPM 20 = Full capacity—2TB 20 = Capacity this model, 20 = 2TB A =Generationcode L = 26.1mm z-height A3 = Interface, SATA 3Gb/s 3 = 32MB buffer 0 = Reserved The drive is silent in an iMac 24 inch Intel. I'm currently recording live TV via an Elgato EyeTV unit attached to my iMac and the hard drive temperature is 135 degrees with iTunes currently playing

Cons: The drive doesn't have the set in cutouts or insets of a standard drive on the bottom I think because this might be a five platter design so I placed my hard drive temperature sensor above the drive height of 26.1mm or 1.0275 inch which was no problem for a 24 in Intel iMac but may provide a space issue for other computers or I'm guessing you can always side mount your temperature sensor if that little sensor bump makes a difference.

Overall Review: The retail box shown on a certain well known website that begins with the letter "A" that sells a whole bunch of stuff is the same as the one that I received. The hard drive is running at 1,576 rpm's at 135 degrees with an ambient room temperature of 76 degrees while recording live TV and playing a different movie on iTunes and converting a Flash file to a MP4 file at the same time with CPU usage at 63% User - 10% System - 27% Idle The drive is rated at: 5 watts at 400 mA 12A 850 mA This drive is replacing a WD Black Caviar 1TB which ran about 12 degrees higher in temperature with the same type of CPU load. Side note: The original Apple OEM iMac hard drive was also a Hitachi branded drive. Hope this information helps as I also couldn't find any information on the listed model number of H3IK20003272SP.

Pros: From all the Hitachi HDD reviews, I was expecting to get a drive that ran very hot and had average performance. New Egg must have shipped me the wrong drive then! The drive I received is very zippy and doesn't run hot at all! My idle temperature is 31C and after a 6 hour long read/write load test, it peaked at 35C. In comparison, my 1 TB WD Caviar Black idles at 33C and peaks at 37C in the 6 hour load test, installed in the same test bay. Data transfer tests were also very fast. Using a 2GB sequential write, I averaged 135 MB/s read/write. 512K random was 55 MB/s read/write, and 4k random was .6/1.2 MB/s read/write. This makes it the second fastest drive I've seen at sequential data transfer. In the same test, my 1 TB WD Caviar Black scored a 125 MB/s sequential, 60 MB/s read/write. and .5/1.4 MB/s read/write. I think the Hitachi equals the WD Black in all around performance.

Cons: Heavier than most drives; maybe a problem if you have flimsy trays in a HDD backplane. No SATA cable included in the retail package.

Overall Review: I see lots of complaints that this drive is hot, but my real world tests show different. I test each drive starting at room temp of 25C and let them idle for 1 hour. Then I do a 6 hour load test of reads/writes. The peak temps from my various drives idle/loaded are: 500 GB WD Green (5400 rpm) 30C/33C 500 GB Samsung (7200 rpm) 29C/31C 1 TB WD Green (5400 rpm) 29C/33C 1 TB WD Blue (7200 rpm) 31C/35C 1 TB WD Black (7200 rpm) 33C/37C 1 TB Samsung (7200 rpm) 29C/31C 2 TB Hitachi (7200 rpm) 31C/35C Clearly my Samsung Spinpoints run the coolest, but my Hitachi didn't test any hotter than my WD Blue drive, and was cooler than my Caviar Black. I would definitely buy this drive again!

Pros: Retail packaging, YAY! These drives are pretty fast, i'm glad i didn't buy the "green" drives. They replaced a couple of dead Samjunk "ECO" drives that were in RAID 5. I use these to keep my music and videos safe. Here is a crude bench mark of 2 of these in RAID 1: Transfer rate Minimum - 60.7MBps Maximum - 123MBps Average - 96.2MBps Access Time : 11.5 ms (faster then my 1TB caviar black drive)

Cons: This retail drive doesn't come with an SATA cable, but at least you get screws. but at $90 each (when i got them) i cant complain. you still get the screws.

Overall Review: NEWEGG IS GETTING ON MY NERVES! I ordered 2 drives, 1 came from CA the other from NJ. The one that came from NJ was packed in the worst way imaginable. Just the hard drive in a large card board box. If this was an OEM drive, i wouldn't even open it, I would send it right back. Since they were in their retail box, i decided to give it a go. So far so good. (knock on wood) I used to have a RAID 5 (3 x 1TB drives) for my media. one morning i turn on my computer, and while the RAID controller is initializing, it says that there is a problem with two of the drives. I quickly backed everything up on another drive. 1 hour later, 2 of the 1TB drives in the RAID just die. Lesson here is back up your RAID, even if it is 1 or 5 or even 6.

Pros: I have thirteen (13) of this HD's 3Gbps predecessors (HGST Deskstar HD32000 IDK/7K (0S00164) 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives) running since November 2009 in a RAID6 configuration with not one HD going out on me (RocketRAID 4321 SAS RAID Controller + Areca ARC-8020-16 16-Port SAS Expansion Controller Module). I decided recently to max-out the enclosure (15-bay hot swap) from 22TBs to 26TBs by adding two more, but the 3Gbps HDs weren't available anymore. So, I purchased two (2) of these 6Gbps versions. They work GREAT! After a few days of a live RAID expansion, the drives run inclusively with the older models without any issues. I continue to get 300MB(ytes)ps+ file transfers and expect them to last as long as the continually-working older HDs in the system! I ordered three (3) more of these HDs for possibly more expansion and/or spares. Can't beat $110/HD at the time...

Cons: NONE, whatsoever!!!

Overall Review: These 6Gbps HDs do work in a 3Gbps SAS system without any problems. Again, the only reason I had to use them in this system is due to the discontinued 3Gbps models of the same HD family (HD matching is very important in RAID systems...)

Pros: price

Cons: According to Hitachi, this line of Retail Kits offer up to 6.0gb/s performance only on the 3tb and 4tb units. The 1tb and 2tb units (this one being 2tb) offer up to 3.0gb/s. In other words, this is a SATA II HDD not truly a SATA III. If you want SATA III you should buy a 7K3000 bare drive.

Overall Review: This is still a good quality HDD and I have always had good luck with Hitachi drives. If they were more forthcoming concerning the SATA performance rather than burying that information, this drive would rate 5 eggs in my mind. I deduct 2 eggs for their deceptive marketing practice

Pros: I put this drive into an external enclosure to use for back ups/transfers. Works well, it's pretty fast via eSATA.

Cons: This thing is LOUD. Maybe it's just the fact that I have it external so i hear it more, but when it is thrashing it sounds like someone is shaking a metal box full of marbles. I owned a lot of IBM drives back in the day, before Hitachi bought out their drive unit. They were crazy loud too, I guess I hoped Hitachi would have been able to make them quiet by now.

Overall Review: Good, cheap drive with decent transfer rates, I wouldn't use it for an external enclosure if you are concerned about sound though!