Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB: Size Does Matter
by Gary Key on May 18, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
IPEAK Business Application Tests
Our IPEAK Winstones benchmarks offer a glimpse into how well our hard disk drives will handle general office applications, media encoding, and graphics manipulation. While the business applications that are being tested tend to be more CPU bound at times, the performance of the hard drive can and will make a difference in the more disk intensive video and graphics applications where large media files are typically being edited.
As expected, the WD Raptor places first as its 10k RPM spindle speed and optimized cache play an important role in its ability to sustain high transfer rates, especially in the Content Creation benchmark where transfer block sizes are significantly larger than in the Business application benchmark.
The Seagate 7200.10 outperforms the 7200.9 by 9% in the Business test and 8% in the Media Content test. These scores are consistent with Seagate's claims that the 7200.10 should outperform the 7200.9 by 10% on average. The WD RE2 500GB drive makes a very strong showing in these benchmarks; obviously it continues the performance trend set by the WD RE2 400GB product. The RAID 0 performance of the Seagate 7200.10 is very good with drive performance increases of 36% in the Business test and 37% in the Content Creation test but still not enough to match the WD Raptor.
IPEAK General Task Tests
The IPEAK based General Task benchmarks are designed to replicate utility based application tasks that typically are disk intensive and represent common programs utilized on the majority of personal computers. While the WinRAR program is very CPU intensive it will typically stress the storage system in short bursts. Our antivirus benchmark will stress the storage system with continual reads and sporadic write requests while the defragmentation process is split between continual read and write requests.
The Seagate 7200.10 RAID 0 combination scores first in three of the four tests with the WD Raptor close behind while the Raptor takes three of four tests in the single drive category. The Barracuda 7200.10 finally surpasses the WD RE2 and posts excellent scores in the very drive intensive antivirus and disk defragmentation benchmarks but falls up to 26% behind in the file decompression test. The Seagate 7200.10 outperforms the 7200.9 by 8% in the WinRAR tests, 8% in the defragmentation test, and 15% in the AVG antivirus benchmark that continues a steady pattern of improved performance for this series.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
View All Comments
Larso - Monday, May 22, 2006 - link
Well, you usually plot dB on a linear axis, taken for granted that the interpreter knows the exponential nature of decibels (+10 dB sounds like doubling the loudness). But since our ears/brain also interpret sound levels in an exponential fashion, its not _that_ misleading...
If you really want to show the soundlevel in a linear fashion, you would have to measure loudness in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sone">Sone
- Gary: Sorry if I've missed it, when you measured the loudness, was the drive secured to the case with screws, or was it suspended softly? It would be interesting to know how much of the noise was due to vibration, and how much was actual noise emission from the drive.
Perhaps some kind of soft suspension would make the drive noise more bearable, subjectively?
Gary Key - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link
The drives are suspended via soft rubber bushings in the drive cage in order to equalize the test results between drives (as much as possible). This drive will create an additional low pitch vibration when attached directly but nothing like the sound a Raptor produces when attached directly, subjective opinion of course. :)
TonyB - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
how soon till we see 1TB hard drive. 7200.11?Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
We should see a 960GB drive by Q4. We will see the 1TB+ drives in 2007, maybe earlier depending on how well the new 200GB plus platters test out. Also, if Hitachi or WD press Seagate on the issue in Q4 I am sure it be out early. ;->Zaitsev - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Page 4 reads, "we decided the make the switch at this time as the performance."I enjoyed the article, Gary.
"I would much rather show the benefits of RAID 5, 0+1, 10 in a separate article"
I think that's a great idea, and am looking forward to it.
Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
The link highlight on the word "applications" right before "we" is hiding the semi-colon somewhat. I will see if we can edit the hyperlink to correct this. :)
Thanks for the comments. We are trying to head in a more technical direction in the storage section. We have some additional audio/video tests coming along with application timer benchmarks that should lighten up the presentation. Also, we did not report WB99, IPEAK Access, Disk Bench, IOMeter, or other benchmarks yet, still gauging what information is valuable, interesting, and required.
JarredWalton - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Actually, he was referring to the word "the" - fixed now, as it should have been "to". :)Zaitsev - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Sorry about that. I will be more clear next time. :)Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
I will wear my glasses next time.... LOL
peternelson - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Hi,
I can understand why you want to test sound levels as close as 5mm.
However, to someone quickly looking at the results charts without carefully reading the text they might think your db(A)@5mm are comparable with db(A) measurements taken at more conventional distances like 1 metre away.
To avoid such errors being made when comparing BETWEEN reviews, please clearly label the audio charts not just "db" but "db(A)@5mm"