Four Hitachi 7K1000 Terabyte Drives
If they came any bigger we’d need
a corral, not a caseT
here are two big reasons LG’s GGW-
H10NI Super Multi Blue (reviewed
on page 75, $1,200, http://www.lge.com) is
an obvious choice for this year’s Dream
Machine. The fi rst is versatility. The Super
Multi Blue reads Blu-ray and HD DVD
discs, so we’re free to watch any damn
movie we want. Obviously, we’d loveit if the drive could also write to both
formats, but since consumer-priced HD
DVD burners don’t exist, we’ll gladly
settle for the Super Multi Blue’s superior
Blu-ray burn speeds—reason number
two. Spec’d at 4x, this burner can fi ll a
single-layer BD-R disc in less than half
an hour, versus the competition’s typical45-minute run.
The LG drive’s 8x DVD+R burn speeds
aren’t stellar, which is why we’re using
our mobo’s sixth SATA port to run Asus’s
DRW-1814BLT (reviewed August 2007,
$50, http://www.asus.com). The 18x DVD drive
affords us single-layer burns in less than
six minutes.LG GGW-H10NI Super Multi Blue and Asus DRW-1814BLT
Next-gen optical supremacy without any sacrifi ces
SEPTEMBER 2007MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC 33
STORAGE
S
o why did we go with Hitachi’s mighty
7K1000 drives (reviewed July 2007,
$400 each, http://www.hgst.com) for the
Dream Machine? For the answer, we need but
a word: terabyte. At the time of our rig’s con-
struction, Hitachi was the only player to have
a fully functioning terabyte drive on the mar-
ket. And once you’ve enjoyed the sweet taste
of 1,000 gigs, you just can’t eat elsewhere.
More than that, the 7K1000’s perfor-
mance is almost as impressive as its size. Its
speeds stomp that of every competitor, save
Western Digital’s 10,000RPM Raptor drive.
Still, the Hitachi 7K1000 holds its own against
that tiny roadrunner. We’re rocking two of
them in a RAID 0 confi guration for maximum
performance, with the other two fl oating as
independent drives—perfect for backups, or
approximately 3 billion lolcat pictures.OPTICAL DRIVES