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Reviews for Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541616J9SA00 160 GB Plug-in Module Hard DriveSATA/150 - 5400 rpm - 8 MB Buffer - 2.5" - MPN: HTS541616J9SA00
By member:
welson75
- Nov 4, 2006
high capacity SATA 2.5" driveStrengths: large capacity, PMR technology Weakness: not much faster than previous generation I bought this drive to replace a 60GB Fujitsu drive (5400rpm) that came with my Dell E1705. Unlike a previous reviewer who also had an E1705, my laptop recognized the drive properly as 160GB (actually 149GB due to different conversion... 1000MB/GB vs. 1024MB/GB) without need to run any additional software or configuration. Ghost was able to copy my old drive's content onto this Hitachi without any problem. The drive booted the computer with the same configuration just a tab faster than before, but not by any significant amount, though I didn't time it with a stopwatch. Other than that, the drive is definitely a bit more noisier than the Fujitsu, as I can hear the drive much more than before. 75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
jpotter0
- Nov 27, 2006
Big ProblemStrengths: Capacity Weakness: Reliability I have had ths drive four months and it has failed twice. The symptoms are that the immediately after the POST the computer hangs up with a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. I am told that this is due to a faulty Master Boot Record, but it can't be fixed by FIXMBR. The fix requires reformating the disk. Given the time it takes to move 100+ GB around this gets old fast. I had a clone (my original 80 GB drive, but it was 3 months old the first time. The disk is completely readable if you can find an alternate way to boot up. But the process is back up the data, reformat the drive. Clone the image onto the drive. Then find all the files that were changed/added since the image was made. This is not to mentiona ll of the time trying to find a solution that didn't involve a complete reinstall. - Jim 33% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
tatnai
- Aug 27, 2007
Great laptop hard driveStrengths: superior performance and low power consumption Weakness: none Bought this drive for my MacBook 13". I swapped my 60GB 8mb cache 5400rpm drive for this one. I've been using for less than a day and have noticed a definite difference in the following: Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
tengst
- Dec 14, 2006
Travelstar HDStrengths: Big, good speed Weakness: none so far I've used the 7200RPM 60GB drives for years, but 60GB just isn't big enough for my notebook anymore. I purchased the new 7200RPM 100GB drive for another notebook and it worked great, but it also just wasn't big enough. I was worried that the 5400RPM 160GB (this drive) would be noticeably slower but I was pleasantly surprised between the SATA technology and the perpendicular recording method. I see no significant degradation in speed for almost all of what I do (and for some things, I'm afraid nothing would be fast enough). Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
sokoloff
- Oct 28, 2006
Alot of capacity for a reasonable priceStrengths: Small. Same maker of the OEM drive in my Dell. SATA interface and not the Ultra ATA-150 listed on the title (give the part # is actually for the SATA drive). Great price when compared to others... Weakness: Trouble cloning from original drive. Kept wanting to not be recognized as a 160GB drive but rather an 80GB requiring a download tool/program from Hitachi to reallocate it. When Dell asked for over $400 for their equivalent SATA 2.5 notebook drive, I went hunting for a reasonably priced alternative. The truth is that I got the drive for under $150 from Buy.com and when I removed the original drive from my new E1705 notebook, it turned out that the drive in my notebook was the same Travelstar series drive, only half of the capacity...so, how bad could it be if I located the same series drive as the OEM one? The problem was in the cloning process for the upgrade...the drive did not want to be recognized as a 160GB drive but rather an 80GB. Could have been Dell's fault due to proprietary software or it could have been the drive itself, I do not really know. But after downloading a utility from Hitachi, we were able to reallocate the partitions to recognize the full capacity of the drive. Unfortunately, that meant doing a fresh reload of all DVDs that came with the computer...given that I just got it, there was not much to risk except the software preloaded with the unit...I will report later on the functionality of it. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top 
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Playstation 3 Replacement!
Strengths: Works great!
Weakness: None yet
I bought this drive as a replacement for my 20GB Seagate that came OEM in my Playstation 3. My idea was to put in this drive, reserve 10GB for 'Other OS' option in the PS3 (for installing Linux at a later date) and put the remainder as the disk system for the PS3. I am planning on turning my PS3 into a music server with ~50GB of MP3's and possibly a media center extender / video capture / DVR functionality.
Anyways, the procedure was flawless. I removed the bottom of the PS3, popped out the drive tray, carefully removed 4 screws to remove the old drive from the tray, and slapped in the new 160GB drive and reassembled. PS3 prompted me to reformat, and then I chose to repartition again, leaving myself the 10GB partition for Linux that I mentioned earlier.
So far so good, everything works great, and the drive is doing exactly what I need. I can't comment yet on reliability since I haven't had it long, but at least it functions as designed.
100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?