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.
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Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Seagates claims are correct from an objecitve measurement, subjectively the drive was louder in our testing at full load with either read or write seeks. I added the subjective statement in this paragraph to convey what I was explaining further in the article. Thanks!! :)Questar - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Gary, I hate to nick-pick, but even the revised version doesn't read well. You start off with Seagate's claim that the .10 is quieter than the .9, you say you found something different, and then talk about the .10 compared to the other drives.You need to say the drive is subjectivly louder than the .9 (if it was).
Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Sorry about that, I had the WD 500GB statement in the sentence and not the Seagate 500GB, that was confusing, read it so many times that I missed it. It should read better now. :)
Zoomer - Friday, May 26, 2006 - link
Why don't you invite more people down to down some blind comparative tests?That would sort out some subjectivity. :)
ROcHE - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
Will you guys review more standard sizes? Like 320GB or so.I have seen the 750GB model reviewed only so far.
Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
We will in June, Seagate will be shipping press samples out later this month. I want to see the 200GB~320GB drive range just as much as everyone else. ;-)
ROcHE - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
It's already up for sale. ???Buy one and be the first to review :)
Gary Key - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link
I already bought the the additional 750GB, WD1500, and WD5000YS for RAID results. I do not know how much more the wife will let me spend this month. ;-) Anyway, Seagate is getting ready to ship two of the 320s out to us. Hopefully, I can get the review in before Computex. I am pretty much convinced this is the drive that will define the sweet spot in the market for performance, capacity, and price.
Zoomer - Friday, May 26, 2006 - link
From the spec sheet, the 400GB one seems promising to be a contender. It has a higher head to platter ratio. :)ROcHE - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
Can't wait to see the results.