Reviews for Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 HTS722020K9SA00 200 GB Internal Hard Drive - Bulk

FAST FASTER FASTEST

Strengths: Huge improvement over 5400 GB 160 that came with my MBP. Quiet No negative impact on battery life.

Weakness: None

I bought this drive from ZipZoomFly. (Great Price $209 vs as high as 289). Arrvied within a couple of days. First I had to clone the old drive to the new drive.
Discovered a product called SuperDuper. There are two versions, freeware and a 29.95 version. I used the free version and it was great. Copied the whole drive in about 3 hours.
A bit of a struggle to get the MBP open but got good video instructions from MacSales.com. Thanks but their price was $50 higher.

Once installed I have been very pleased and amazed at the HUGE performance improvement. My specs are C2D 2.33MHZ, 3GB Ram. It was a dog with the 5400 but flies with the 7200.
Buy it NOW!

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Great upgrade to Mac Mini

Strengths: Drop-in replacement to Fujitsu 2.5" 5400rpm drive in Mac Mini, quiet, much faster, and maybe cooler.

Weakness: Wish the price was more in line with the 3.5" size with the same capacity.

After previously getting in and out of my Mac Mini a couple of times for RAM upgrades, getting to the HDD was easy. The old one slipped off the SATA connector and the Hitachi slipped in easily with every mounting hole matching perfectly. After a quick test, I put the case back together, booted with the OS disk and partitioned the drive. The installation of OS-X went at least three times as fast as the time predicted by the installer, and I was up and running in under an hour from the start of the project. After that, it was just a matter of moving my data back from the external drive.
I was using an external firewire drive to boot the machine and to store all of my videos before, but it was noisy and lagged when spinning the disk back up after a few minutes of being idle. It might have been faster when throughput was the main consideration, but the OS needs the disk fairly often, and the spin-up lags were aggravating when browsing and reading.
My mini is now back to its silent old self, but running much faster, and with no delays. The air coming from vent in the back even seems cooler than before - if that's possible.
I'm very pleased with this drive as an upgrade!

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Desktop performance in a notebook

Strengths: Fast, hardly any louder than my 5400 RPM drive it replaced, efficient.

Weakness: "Do not cover" hole location conflicts with MacBook Pro's design

This drive has given my MacBook Pro desktop-like I/O performance without any sort of sacrifice. I'm very satisfied.

For others looking to install this in a C2D MacBook Pro, be careful when doing so. The "Do not cover" hole on the top of the drive is located in the same place as where the MBP's Bluetooth module sticks onto the drive. You can't relocate it, so you need to add some sort of spacer (I used some thin slivers of foam) so that this hole on the drive is not completely blocked. It's a minor inconvenience which can't be blamed on the hard drive's design (Apple takes the blame here).

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This a drive will make your laptop become a desktop

Strengths: Huge capacity, fast, quiet and no negative energy-consuming effect

Weakness: None

With this huge capacity drive, now I can store anything I want to my new laptop. Musics, Movies and Hi-resolution photos, no matter what size of them, my laptop now always can handle them.
Secondly, 7200 RPM is a real noticeable improvement in my laptop performance. For instance, the VISTA hardware score for the hard drive has increased to 5.4 from 4.3.

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awesome upgrade

Strengths: Fast, big; fits right in a thinkpad T61

Weakness: it still costs a lot, but even then its cheaper than paying the manufacturers for it.

replaced the 100GB RPM SATA drive in my IBM thinkpad T61p with this one. Its a bit faster, though nothing incredible different, and I don't think the battery life changed. However, its BIG. if I had a 5400 rpm drive I'd say its a must-have upgrade. if you already have a 7200 then its not so mandatory, but I needed the space.

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Great bargain, but buy the 2-in-1 upgrade kit!

Strengths: read below

Weakness: read below

I am not commenting on the drive itself, since I have not yet installed mine. My purpose for writing the review is to tell you to not buy the barebones drive. I'm assuming that is what this product is. I'm not supposed to give a commercial endorsement, and there is only one seller currently listed in Pricegrabber for the upgrade kit, so I guess if I mentioned them, it would be an endorsement. Don't buy the bare drive, the upgrade kit is a much better buy... You might even say a... Best Buy ;) ! Search pricegrabber for 0A55575 and you will find the product I'm talking about. It is the Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" Internal Hard Drive 2-in-1 Notebook PC Upgrade Kit. I bought it for $169.99, which is within $2 of the lowest price on this bare drive at the time that I write this review. Why is it so much better? You get the same hard drive (Part number HTS722020K9SA00, same as listed in the title of this product page), plus you get Apricorn EZ Upgrade Hard Drive Upgrade Kit. Search Pricegrabber for EZUPS . This kit alone sells for $40 or more. It includes Apricorn EZ Gig II for Windows, which doesn't help me on my Mac. The huge deal to me is that it includes a 2.5" hard drive enclosure with a USB cable, and an auxiliary power cable that also plugs into a USB port (in case it isn't getting enough power through the primary connection, I guess). You use this enclosure for the transfer, but you then have the bonus of having a portable USB drive with your old hard drive in this enclosure when you are finished with the transfer! How cool is that?!!! I just bought a new Macbook. I was all set to buy the MBP, but thought... "I'm going to upgrade the 120 gig hard drive in it anyway, and that will void the warranty, and I don't really need the better graphics or other bells and whistles of the MBP over the MB", so... I saved the $700, and bought the MB. I can spend that savings on the hard drive upgrade, RAM upgrade, and a Time Capsule, and probably still have $100 left over. As much as I fell in lust with the MBP at the store, I'm happy that I resisted. This solution makes more sense for me, I'm not really a power user.

Anyway, from all of the positive reviews on this hard drive, I'm looking forward to getting mine in my new Macbook (my first Mac, by the way). I wanted to give my two cents worth, and point you toward the better value of the 2-in-1 kit.

joe

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Z

Strengths: From boot to shutdown it be a whole lot speedier

Weakness: None

Great price used Acronis to image once I swapped it out for my old Hitachi 75gig 5400 rpm drive I saw my Compaq really wake up

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Mac Laptop Upgrades

Strengths: Speed!!!

Weakness: Louder than previous drives

I installed two of these drives. One went into a MBP replacing a 100 GB drive and the other into a MB replacing a 120 GB drive.

In both cases I saw HUGE speed increases. From startup to shutdown, application launch and close, browsing, editing (photos and video)... the list goes on.

I would consider this a very inexpensive way to extend the life of any computer, granted that it supports the higher speeds (check with manufacturer).

In the past I only ever did memory upgrades, but now I insist on this type of upgrade.

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Excellent HDD

Strengths: Size, compact, lightweight, speed due to 7200rpm and 16MB cache

Weakness: hardly any...

I would recommend it to anybody who wants to replace their laptop HDD. Buy an imaging set from Apricorn - bougt mine for $15 - and replace your old HDD. You cannot beat this.

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Amazing little drive

Strengths: Extremely fast, not too power-hungry, relatively quiet and quite affordable

Weakness: Maybe a tiny bit louder than old 120 GB Fujitsu 5400rpm

Just got one of these drives and replaced the OEM one in my MacBook Pro 2.2Ghz. It's noticeably faster. It's the same temp as the old drive but maybe a tiny bit louder. I'm extremely satisfied. Upgrading from a 5400 RPM this thing is a beast.
Plus, I'm running Vista in boot camp. Compared to the old drive, the Vista installation is much faster and boot up times sank dramatically. Much needed upgrade for all notebook users!

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By member: Draugrs - Oct 30, 2007

Worth the upgrade

Strengths: This drive is fast and extremely quiet. I do not hear the drive at all. It always produces little to no heat. It greatly enhanced my Windows Vista install on my Dell Inspiron E1705.

Weakness: None so far...

This drive impressed me and has gone beyond my expectations. I work with a multitude of video, graphics, and photographs with intense programs and this drive keeps up to pace. I had a 5400 Fujitsu drive that originally came with the laptop. It seemed that drive caused a lot of heat and noise during my work. This drive is extremely quiet, I don't even hear it, and there is little to no heat coming from the area of my HDD now. I wish I would have purchased the drive some time back. I recommend this drive to anyone that uses their laptop extensively as I do for a performance boost.

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Excellent Drive!

Strengths: Fast, quiet, runs cool, Great performance and lots of storage space.

Weakness: none

It runs very fast, and is the best available hard drive.
great amount of space for a laptop, I used this drive to replace the 80GB 5400RPM hard drive, and the performance difference is phenomenal when it comes to disk operations, upwards of 100% increase in overall speed. The sata interface is perfect especially with the 16MB buffer.
I would buy another one, highly recommended!

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Great drive

Strengths: Large capacity, Very Quick drive.

Weakness: Slightly louder and more vibration than a 5400 or 4200 RPM drive.

Fast. Windows XP pro boots in half the time of my old 5400rpm drive,
about 45 seconds. It did make a difference,
my computer is now at least 2 times faster and more efficient, even the battery life is still good. Great Drive !

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Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200GB SATA150 HTS722020K9SA00

Testseek.com has collected 5 expert reviews for Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200GB SATA150 HTS722020K9SA00 and the average expert rating is 95 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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