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If performance isn’t the most important factor you look for when buying a hard disk, the Hitachi Deskstar 5k3000 looks like a great middle ground. It’s almost identical to the range-topping Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000; both use the newer SATA3 interface and have massive 3TB capacities. The only two differences between them are the spindle speed and amount of cache. The 5k3000 has a 5,400RPM spindle speed and 32MB of cache, which on paper makes it slower than the 7k3000 with its 7,200RPM spindle and 64MB cache.
As we expected, file transfer speeds were certainly slower than the 7k3000; it managed 87.3MB/s write and 120.3MB/s read speeds in our large file test. Smaller files were slower still, writing at 74.5MB/s and reading at 75.5MB/s, but these are still very reasonable scores for an ultra-high capacity disk. It took 37 seconds to load Crysis, almost seven seconds slower than the 7k3000.
The overall performance gap between the 5k3000 and 7k3000 is around 10-15 per cent, which although not significant is still enough for us to recommend the faster disk. The meagre energy savings that come from using a 5,400RPM disk aren’t enough to justify the otherwise unexplained premium of £44 on top of the price of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB.
