Seagate 7200.9 500GB: Mouthwatering Benchmarks
by Purav Sanghani on October 24, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Test
Our test bed specs have been laid out below. Since our test bed has remained untouched from our look at Seagate's 400GB Barracuda article, we will include our results of the drives that we looked at then.
Our test bed:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2Ghz)
Giga-byte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Western Digital WD1600JS
NVIDIA 6600GT SLI Edition (single 128MB card)
1GB (512MBx2) Corsair XMS4400
Our motherboard is an nForce4 based board that features support for the SATA II standard, up to 3Gbps/sec SATA transfer rates, and NCQ and TCQ.
We used the following nForce platform drivers in conjunction with our testbed:
nForce4 Chipset Driver 6.66
Nvidia graphics driver 71.89
Windows XP SP2 w/out further updates
More details about each individual test will appear in the section of the review dedicated to that particular test.
The 7200.9 Series
Our test bed specs have been laid out below. Since our test bed has remained untouched from our look at Seagate's 400GB Barracuda article, we will include our results of the drives that we looked at then.
Our test bed:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2Ghz)
Giga-byte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Western Digital WD1600JS
NVIDIA 6600GT SLI Edition (single 128MB card)
1GB (512MBx2) Corsair XMS4400
Our motherboard is an nForce4 based board that features support for the SATA II standard, up to 3Gbps/sec SATA transfer rates, and NCQ and TCQ.
We used the following nForce platform drivers in conjunction with our testbed:
nForce4 Chipset Driver 6.66
Nvidia graphics driver 71.89
Windows XP SP2 w/out further updates
| AnandTech Storage Tests | |
| Business Winstone IPEAK | a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Business Winstone 2004 |
| Content Creation IPEAK | a playback test of all of the IO operations that occur within Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 |
| SYSMark 2004 | the official SYSMark 2004 test suite |
| Business Winstone 2004 | the official Business Winstone 2004 test suite |
| Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 | the official Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 test suite |
| Half-Life 2 Level Load Test | Half-Life 2 level load time test |
| Doom 3 Level Load Test | Doom 3 level load time test |
| Command & Conquer: Generals Level Load Test | Command & Conquer: Generals level load time test |
| Real World File System Task Tests | timed tests of basic file system tasks including zipping/unzipping and copying files |
| HDTach | Synthetic test for transfer rate of hard disk during a full disk read |
| Service Time and Transfer Rate Tests | Synthetic tests for average service time and transfer rate of hard disk during a full disk read |
| Business Winstone 2004 Multitasking Test | Synthetic tests for overall system multitasking performance |
| Real World Multitasking Test | timed tests of basic multitasking processes, timing a file zip operation while importing Outlook data |
More details about each individual test will appear in the section of the review dedicated to that particular test.
The 7200.9 Series
| Capacity | Platter Density | # of Platters/ Heads | Spindle speed (RPM) | Average Seek Time | Average Latency | Interface | Buffer Sizes |
| 40GB | 80GB | 1 / 1 | 7200 | 8.9ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 2MB |
| 80GB | 160 GB | 1 / 1 | 7200 | 8.9 ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 2, 8MB |
| 120GB | 120GB | 1 / 2 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 2, 8MB |
| 160GB | 160GB | 1 / 2 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 2, 8MB |
| 200GB | 100GB | 2 / 4 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 8MB |
| 250GB | 125GB | 2 / 4 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 8MB |
| 300GB | 100GB | 3 / 6 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 16MB |
| 400GB | 133GB | 3 / 6 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 16MB |
| 500GB | 125GB | 4 / 8 | 7200 | 8.5ms | 4.16ms | PATA / SATA | 16MB |
The 500GB 7200.9
Click for high resolution version.
The Circuitry
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46 Comments
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Spacecomber - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
The results from these benchmarks were about as mouthwatering as a rice cake with nothing on it.jeffrey - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
Titling the article "Mouthwatering Benchmarks" and then reading the mid-pack performance lowers the author's credibility.The drive is big, but it uses lower density plattters, has the highest idle heat, has the highest heat under load, and is 2.6 decibels louder than a 10Krpm Raptor when transferring. Overall performance was mid-pack and not mouth watering.
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It would have been a solid review without the title.
Much better than recent video card reviews.
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ss284 - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
Pretty dissapointing figures considering all the marketing crap that was posted a couple weeks back as a full fledged preview on anandtech. The drive neither runs cooler or quieter or faster than the previous generation of drives. Other than the 5 year warranty this drive has nothing over a model from a competing manufacturer, most notably hitachi. Im also suprised that the 160 gb model wasnt tested, since it has 160 gb platters, instead of the 125 in the 500gb model.LoneWolf15 - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
One other thing that it has over Hitachi: Seagate (along with WD and Maxtor) offer advance replacement in the event of failure. Hitachi, unfortunately, does not.It may sound like a minor gripe, but if I'm trying to save a client's data off a failing drive, it's nice to have the replacement drive handy. Since I've also had a drive company lose a drive on me in the RMA process (not a common occurrence, but I've had it happen) I feel far more secure having advance replacement. I do agree though that performance specs are not as good as expected; the difference is small enough that I'd save money and buy the previous Seagate 7200.8 drives.
smn198 - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
Please benchamrk the 160GB modelPenth - Monday, October 24, 2005 - link
"you're better off working with a 15K RPM Raptor for now."I think you meant 10K RPM Raptor, unless WD just dropped a bomb.
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