Hitachi Hard Drive – new range of external drives

June 6th, 2007

Hitachi have unleashed a new range of external USB hard drives, with a 250GB portable and a massive 1TB, err, non-portable version. Smaller versions are also available with the 160GB portable rocking in at US$140. All the drives feature USB 2.0 connectivity with the portable versions sucking their power from your PC.

I decided to do a little head to head comparison of the 160GB portable against cheaper competitors to see what I was getting for my dollar.

So I lined the Hitachi up against the 160GB portable offerings from Western Digital and the sexy looking SimpleTech Pinifarina. All the figures are courtesy of bestbuy.com except where noted.

	Western Digital	SimpleTech	Hitachi

Price	$110	$140	$140
Data Transfer	480 Mbps	480 Mbps	480 Mbps
RPM	5400	5400	5400
Av Seek	12 ms	N/A	N/A
Height	0.6″	0.6″ *	0.7″
Width	3.1″	3.0″	3.4″
Depth	5.1″	5.25″	4.1″
Weight	3.7 oz	4.2 oz **	6.2 oz
Av Latency	5.5 ms	N/A	N/A
Cache Buffer	N/A	8 MB	8 MB

* Source Dell

** Source SimpleTech

So what’s the conclusion? Well, you have to admit that the WD wins on weight and considering you’ll probably be lugging one of these babies around in a laptop case that could be a deciding factor and with a $110 price tag too, how can you say no? The Pinifarina looks sleek and sexy but does that justify the extra $30 – probably only if it matches your PC! As for the Hitachi? Well, no cigar I’m afraid to say, the Western Digital beating it out on price and weight.