Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB, Single 500GB Platter

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Originally Posted by pa9797

Since I have rave reviews for the 7200.12 , I thought I need to satisfy myself that the WD Black is as good so I went to get one and try.


http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...7/DSC04309.jpg

At SRP of $149, this baby is expensive in term of per Gb. This works out to be $0,23 per GB vs Seagate 7200.12 is $0.18 per GB.

Do note however in terms of warranty this baby has full 5 years from WD. Seagate only offer 3 years for the 7200.12

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...7/DSC04313.jpg

As compared to the 7200.12, the Black is fat:

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...7/DSC04318.jpg

In this department 7200.12 is slimmer. This is due to the single platter Vs I think 2 for the WD.

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...7/DSC04319.jpg

Temperature this baby is much hotter. I recorded an average of 40d vs 7200.12's 30d

Noise.... Haiz , sad to say this baby is not quiet when seek. However to be fair the noise is muted. I still prefer to 7200.12's Cool and Quiet.


http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...401AALS--1.png

In terms of access speed. This baby is fast. Bootup , surfing is much faster than 7200.12

However in term of burst speed and transfer rate 7200.12 is well ahead:

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/b...T3500410AS.png

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Hardwarezone Forum

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Originally Posted by onethreehill

Source: Hardwarezone Forum

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Originally Posted by onethreehill

Hardwarezone Forum

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he mentions a few times that the 7200.12 are nice and quiet, then someone says..

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Originally Posted by pa9797

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Originally Posted by MadLocke

probably trade off between silence and seek speed... my guess is AAM in operation.. :D

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it could be but is still fast visibly

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might be AAM making it so nice and quiet + wrecking the seek times

Seagate's Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 32MB Hard Drive Review

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One of the most remarkable things about the storage industry is the fact that, although today's hard drives are much faster than those from yesteryear, they're still spinning at the same spindle speeds. 7,200 RPM has been the standard for desktop drives for a very long time now, supplanted only occasionally by enthusiast-oriented Raptors spinning their platters at 10,000 RPM. The enterprise world has managed to crank spindles up to 15,000 RPM, but that step up the rotational speed ladder happened more than nine years ago. Drives haven't spun their platters any faster since.

Rather than relying on higher spindle speeds to sustain a steady diet of incremental performance improvements, hard drive makers have instead increased the precision and speed with which drives can flow data back and forth to their spinning media. The amount of data stored on those spinning platters has grown, as well, and at an exponential rate. In just the last two years, we've seen platter capacities jump from 200GB to 250, 333, 375, and now 500GB.

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Source: Techreport

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Originally Posted by hollo

he mentions a few times that the 7200.12 are nice and quiet, then someone says..might be AAM making it so nice and quiet + wrecking the seek times

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I tried adjusting the AAM using HD Tune Pro 3.5, but I cannot adjust the settings on the 7200.12, they jump straight back to the lowest acoustics mode.

yea, i saw that in the techreport review

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We've also learned that Seagate has optimized the 7200.12's seek mechanism to lower acoustics. This so-called "quiet" seek mode is set at the factory and can't be adjusted by end users, and it has some significant performance implications that will become clear on the following pages.

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sad for people who want to make high performance RAID arrays out of them, the western digital single-platter 320GB drive had the same "problem" - it was optimised for low power consumption and volume. maybe samsung will make a high performance 500GB single-platter drive for us, like the HD322HJ

As promised, here is our review:
http://www.xcpus.com/GetDoc.aspx?doc=137&page=1


Honestly, for the jump in platter density from 333GB/p to 500GB/p, I was very disappointed not to see this drive perform better. It only edges out the 7200.11, instead of crushing it.

I'm getting one for my NAS server tomorrow.
My 500Gb GreenPower Wd is crumbling under torrent, unzip, file copy tasks...
:D