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Seagate 120GB SATA 7200.7 HDD |
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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Saturday, 16 June 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2
Thanks to eWaggle for the product sample.
Having had the opportunity to own and tinker with a few dozen hard drives over the years, I formed some opinions about the various manufacturers. Although a lot of this many not hold true in the present day market, in the past IBM's Deskstar (often referred to as Deathstar) series was infamous for high failure rates (I've had both a 75GXP and 60GXP go out), Maxtor made some of the slowest and loudest drives known to man, and Western Digital was the underdog. Meanwhile, Seagate quietly snatched up the majority of the SCSI market with their Cheetah drives.
The early ATA Momentus series was almost unheard of and it wasn't until the Barracuda arrived that Seagate got its slice of the pie. Of all the manufacturers, Seagate is yet to disappoint me. The updated Barracuda 7200.7 was the nail in the coffin. A combination of the best warranty in the industry (5 years replacement), the quietest widely available drives (note that Samsung's SpinPoint series is a bit hard to come by), low access times, high performance, and an impressive track record all make for a near perfect drive.
A while back we took a peak at Seagate's 200GB USB drive combo and were very impressed with its quality. Today we have a newer model up for evaluation, the 120GB SATA Barracuda 7200.7. Keep in mind this isn't the newest drive currently on the market; Seagate recently announced their 7200.8 series featuring native command queuing (NCQ) and lower 8ms access times. Supposedly this technology outperforms standard 10,000RPM SATA and PATA drives; even WD's Raptor may get a run for its money.
For those who still haven't upgraded to the ever-maturing SATA standard, the main benefits include smaller cables, lack of jumpers (since each drive is on its own channel), and a higher maximum transfer rate (150MB/s vs. 100MB/s for PATA), though even the 100MB/s ATA barrier is yet to be broken (in non-RAID setups). This particular drive is the ST3120026AS. It's a 7200RPM SATA model with 8.5ms access times and a pair of 60GB platters.
As you can see, the top portion is extremely polished and therefore has a mirror-like finish. This is one drive you won't want to hide. We'll be comparing it to a previously reviewed ST3200822A which is a PATA version of the drive. Unfortunately it won't be apples-to-apples due to the 200GB model using a pair of 100GB platters which should give it a slight advantage (even though both drives are rated at 58MB/s average sustained transfer rates). Also, both have the same 8MB cache, 7200RPM speed, and 8.5ms access times.
The bottom of the drive has a PCB with a 6ns Samsung cache memory module as well as renowned LSI Logic and Agere controllers. There are also 4 mounting holes for securing the drive to a rack from the bottom, a method first used in Antec's Sonata case. The PCB can be removed for maintenance via 5 hex screws.
The back of the drive is bare like it should be. Since the Barracuda 7200.7 uses a native SATA interface, no molex connector is present; instead you'll find a SATA power connector. Check to make sure your power supply has these. Next to that is the tiny data cable connector. As with all SATA drives, both plugs are keyed so cables can only be inserted one way. That said, here are the test system specs:
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (800MHz FSB)
- Soyo SY-P4i865PE Plus Dragon 2 V1.0 motherboard (native SATA controller)
- 2x256mb PC3200 Crucial DDR400
- Gainward GeForce3 Ti200
- Onboard audio and LAN
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200GB PATA HDD (master on its own channel)
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB SATA HDD
- Plextor 12/10/32A CD-RW
For benchmarking I used Futuremark's PCMark04, SiSoft's Sandra 2004 file system benchmark, and Simpli Software's HD Tach RW 3.0.1 long bench (32MB zones).
PCMark04 gave the PATA Seagate drive a 4419 score. Since this is a relatively synthetic benchmark, the values should only be used for comparison to other drives and not actual performance.
As expected, the SATA drive scored a lower 4231 with lower transfer rates across the board. Once again, this can be attributed to the less dense 60GB platters on the drive (as opposed to the 100GB platters on the PATA model).
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 June 2007 )
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