{"id":463,"date":"2022-10-28T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bananahdd.nl\/?p=463"},"modified":"2023-04-17T00:09:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-16T22:09:54","slug":"hitachi-deskstar-p7k500-hdp725016gla380-160gb-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bananahdd.nl\/index.php\/2022\/10\/28\/hitachi-deskstar-p7k500-hdp725016gla380-160gb-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 HDP725016GLA380 160GB (2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Deskstar P7K500 was released alongside the CinemaStar P7K500 in October 2007. The lowly HDP725016GLA380 was the smallest capacity available at only 160GB, with this particular model being a Deskstar variant.<\/p>\n

According to the datasheet provided by Hitachi, these fall under the Gemini family of drive designs, which is fortunately hinted at on the drive itself.<\/p>\n

These are rock solid drives and never fail to impress in terms of performance and reliability.<\/p>\n

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It’s a real Deskstar.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
  Drive Attributes<\/strong><\/em>\r\n  ----------------------------------------\r\n  Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 HDP725016GLA380\r\n  ----------------------------------------\r\n  Capacity      160GB\r\n  Mfc Date      2010-01\r\n  Format        3.5\"\r\n  Interface     SATA\r\n  Platters      1\r\n  Heads         2\r\n  RPM           7200\r\n  Protocol      Serial-ATA\/300\r\n  ----------------------------------------<\/pre>\n
Being the smallest in the line-up, this drive only has one platter with two heads. The highest capacity drive in the P7k500 family was the HDP725050GLxxxx<\/span>\/HCP725050GLxxxx (suffix values differ), with 2 platters and 4 heads.<\/span><\/p>\n
Many of these drives can be found in their CinemaStar variants, which were commonly found in DVR’s, at least in a lot of European sub-vendors (anecdotally, at least). The top plate design is recognisable from a mile away.<\/p>\n
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Deskstar.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
With these drives, Hitachi was still proudly touting the ever-famous Deskstar branding directly on the drives. Aside from that, these labels are much unchanged from the usual Hitachi label design during the time.<\/p>\n
From my personal knowledge, the P7K500 series were the last to be contracted to ExcelStor. After this, ExcelStor soon went bankrupt. Seemingly, ExcelStor were only allowed to produce these in 160GB or 250GB capacities. Of course, Hitachi would never provide their highest capacity drive designs to external manufacturers, thus why ExcelStor never produced any of Hitachi’s highest end\/highest capacity drives.<\/p>\n
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Nothing special.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Remaining with the strikingly classic green PCB colouring, the backside of these is nothing special. The two IC’s being represented as buffer RAM and the main controller IC. Most functions concerning drive logic was fully integrated by this point.<\/p>\n
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Up close and personal.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
There’s no information concerning the main logic IC, which is to be expected with such a fully integrated IC design, alongside these chips not being off the shelf. Hitachi remained with a spindle motor header, as opposed to pressure contacts, unlike vendors such as Western Digital during this period.<\/p>\n
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Thanks, Hitachi.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I’m not the most familiar with recognising drive family designations, but this one is made pretty clear! It’s a Gemini.<\/p>\n
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ExcelStor’s involvement.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
This is fortunately confirmed in the P7K500 datasheet, alongside demonstrating ExcelStor’s limitations in terms of drive production. HGST’s GSP plant was later sold to Toshiba, during the transition of HGST being integrated into Western Digital. I’ve attached the specifications & datasheet below, if you’re curious to read more about these drives.<\/p>\n
For a drive I previously used in a server environment for a little over a year, it remains to be incredibly reliable. I expect it to last many more years in service. However, given the capacity, it doesn’t currently have much use anymore.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a few extra files, for the curious:<\/p>\n
Hitachi P7K500 Datasheet & Specifications (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n
Hitachi Deskstar Product Overview (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n
Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 Product Overview (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n
If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here:<\/p>\n