HGST Travelstar 0S03563 1TB SATA Hard Drive Kit

I recently acquired a used ThinkPad T420 and bought this 1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 as an upgrade from the 500GB stock OEM drive. I have a lot of music, videos, and pictures so I wanted a fast, large-capacity HD to store it all without having to lug around an external HD and also leave me plenty of room for future growth. I've always been drawn to the IBM/Hitachi Travelstar line because of their good reliability record and first-class build quality so naturally, this is the first place I look when I'm shopping for a new laptop HD. Originally, I had my mind set on the Travelstar 5K1000 but when I learned there was a 7200-RPM version of that drive, the 7K1000, I decided to go with this model due to the better performance, especially since the price difference between the 5K1000 vs. the 7K1000 was only a few dollars.As of this review (1/8/13), the 7K1000 is the fastest, largest-capacity laptop HD money can buy. Best of all, it comes in a standard 9.5mm high package, meaning it should fit in the drive bays of most regular laptops (many high-capacity laptop HDs come in thicker 12.5mm high packages that don't fit in today's slimline laptops). I should warn you, however, that it might not fit into ultrabooks, which usually accept only thinner 7mm high drives. Being a high-performance 7200-RPM drive, I expected the 7K1000 to be a little noisier and hotter than a slower 5400-RPM equivalent but to my delight, I found the drive to be very quiet, hardly any louder than the 5400-RPM Travelstar 5K500.B I have in my other ThinkPad. Short of putting my ear directly over the laptop's HD bay, the 7K1000's seeking noises are virtually inaudible. It also runs pretty cool for a 7200-RPM drive, hovering around 30*C even after copying my ~60GB music collection onto it. I also looked at the power-consumption specs for both the 5K1000 and 7K1000 and the difference is only a small fraction of a watt, meaning a minimal hit to battery life (which could probably be offset just by making the screen one notch dimmer). The jury is still out on long-term reliability as my 7K1000 only has 8 hours of use on it but so far, so good. I've had good luck with the 5K500.B I bought back in 2009 and I'm hoping this one will serve me just as well.UPDATE 2/14/13There seems to be some confusion about this drive, as I have since discovered that there appear to be two different versions of this drive, one with a 16MB cache and the other with a 32MB cache. However, I have reason to suspect that the 16MB-cache version is actually a 32MB unit in an incorrectly-labeled box. Having noticed this discrepancy, I e-mailed HGST directly about this issue and gave them the exact model and serial number of my specific drive (which came in a box that indicated the drive had a 16MB cache) and they informed me that my drive actually has a 32MB cache. I then brought up the technical-specification page on the HGST website ([...]) and confirmed that the model number of my drive (HTS721010A9E630) matched the model number on the HGST site, which indicates this drive indeed has a 32MB cache. I suspect initial shipments of this drive may have been packaged in old boxes left over from the previous-model drive and thus show incorrect specifications. This is only my own personal speculation and I may be wrong, but hopefully my findings should help clarify some of the confusion.As long as I'm updating this review, I might as well give a reliability update on my 7K1000. My drive now has ~70 hours on the clock and no issues yet, aside from a slowly-increasing Ultra ATA CRC Error Count, which I suspect may be due to a weird fluke in the T420's BIOS rather than a problem with the drive itself as it predictably goes up 1-2 points each time I start the computer and does not increase further (even after copying ~100GB of files) until the next boot. Other than that, my 7K1000 seems to be working perfectly.

I have 3 of these for my laptop which I clone regularly and store. Its the best solution to the backup problem. Since I started this, I have not actually had to use a backup drive, but if that day comes (again), with a screwdriver I'll have an exact copy of my hard drive from the last clone. This is about 100 times faster than using backup software.As for the new programs and data that appear in the interim, I use an online backup service. That way I can sync up or simply retrieve my data from the internet, but I only need what's happened in the last month or so. The drives have survived lots of travel, the usual bumps, drops, and all the radiation that airport security can dose them with. The 7200 RPM is a huge step up from a 5200 RPM Drive and you will notice the performance difference. It's not like an SSD, but the cost/performance of these drives is better as far as I'm concerned, and at Amazon's price you can own several and solve the backup problem using cloning. On my system I use the eSata port with a cable that powers the drive and interfaces to it. If you don't have eSata you can do the same thing with USB but USB 2.0 is a bit slower. On eSata the drive will clone in less than 2 hours. On USB 2.0 it will take longer, but will finish before morning.If you use Windows you must be careful when cloning your system drive - you can't just leave it connected after you clone it because Windows will detect a duplicate copy and think you are trying to do something other than simply protect your system and data. After the clone just disconnect the drive before you reboot and put it back in the box, and its all good.If you have a laptop, a few of these drives will give you piece of mind, performance, and lots of storage. They are also inexpensive enough to allow you to try out other operating systems like Linux. If you don't have much data, this drive is big enough to hold Windows and several virtual copies of Linux - or to dual boot. If you want to keep Windows as your host operating system, you can run Virtual Box and run linux as a virtual machine, but in actual fact your system will be far faster if you do exactly the reverse - make your host system Linux and run Wndows in a virtual window. The reason is related to disk usage. Windows is not a very good time sharing platform even simply running it's own native applications (everyone who runs acrobat and MS OFFICE has seen this) but Linux fixes those issues, keeping your system responsive even under heavy load. Again, all of this is made possible by having inexpensive, reliable hard drives and HGST/Amazon deliver.