and on a semi-related note, I'm not too happy with Hitachi as of lately. Less than two years ago I bought a pair of 1tb usb external hitachi.
About two months out of warranty, one started showing slow io on certain ranges of blocks. Sold very cheaply to a friend that was desperate for backup storage. A few months later the other one started doing the same thing. Removed hard drive. Surprisingly, the slow IO corrected itself, and was reproducible when reinstalled in the enclosure. I have no idea how an enclosure causes slow blocks, but this was definitely doing it.
Bought a nice OWC enclosure and placed the hitachi drive in it and used it that way. Then yesterday, unpleasant sounds accompanied trying to read a file off the drive, and IO errors sprang forth.
So they don't seem to be able to make a reliable enclosure or a reliable drive atm. Slowly all my hard drives are morphing into WD's...
