Seagate 7200.11 Review - Pitted up against the Raptor.

[dominick32]

As usual, XtremeSystems and OCForums is always the first place to get my review when it goes live. Instead of converting html to vb code I am going to simply quote the intro and link to the article. Hope you guys like...

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
1/17/2008
Author: Dominick V. Strippoli




"The Raptor Says to the Barracuda: I challenge you to a duel!"

Reviews of Seagate's latest SATA Barracuda iteration, dubbed the 7200.11 have been floating all over the internet claiming that the drive gives a Western Digital Raptor 150 a run for its money and than some. The new Seagate drive is offered in capacities of up to 1 TB, using the SATAII standard, and using a 7200 RPM rotational speed. A major difference in the latest iteration of the Barracuda is the upgrade to a 32MB cache/buffer. The onboard HDD cache upgrade to this size was unheard of in the SATA industry until Seagate and Samsung brought out these newer drives. The manufacturer is claiming a drive that seeks comparably to other top of the line large capacity drives. Seagate also claims sustained throughput higher than any other SATA drive we have seen so far. The drive specs are top notch on paper, and it seems to be a perfect candidate to put up directly against the infamous Western Digital Raptor 150. And so the Raptor says to the Barracuda: "I challenge you to a duel!"

Read the full review here: http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracuda/

UPDATE 1/18/08

Just finished a small review on the 7200.11 Raid 0 Setup I completed:

Seagate 7200.11 (Raid 0 Results)
1/18/2008

Author: Dominick V. Strippoli



We recently reviewed the latest drive from Seagate's arsenal: Known as the 7200.11 Barracuda. This drive proved to be an excellent competitor for the well known Western Digital Raptor 150. General performance of the drive was very comparable to the Raptor and ended up about 7% to 15% slower in every day tasks. On the other hand, when working with video/photo editing and larger file operations the Seagate 7200.11 had a very sizable 25% to 30% advantage. As highly requested by our readers, we have put together a very simple review article of the same 7200.11 drive used in a Raid 0 array. We will use the same testing methodology as our previous review and simply add one additional Barracuda to create a Raid 0 array. Once again, we will be using the Western Digital Raptor 150 as a comparison drive. In order to obtain the maximum possible sustained transfer rates on the drives, and the quickest possible access time we have limited our Raid 0 volume to a 50GB size and 128k stripe. This in turn will only use the first 25GB's (and fastest portions) of each drive. The remaining 440GB's or so, for the purpose of taking advantage of the Matrix Storage Controller we have chosen to create a mirrored Raid 1 setup. Since we have already reviewed the single Seagate 7200.11 in a full scale in-depth review, we are simply going to provide this introduction, a small conclusion, and solely hard results from our testing.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracudaraid/

[Knight]

Can't wait for some Raid results.

[Syn.]

Figured as much, Raptor faster in real world usage and Barracuda faster in pure throughput. Its nice to see a HDD breaking 100MB/s during file transfer.

Isnt anyone else disappointed with the fact that SATA2 is suppose to be 350mb capable and yet no HDD out there that can actually achieve that.

[Ugly n Grey]

Isnt anyone else disappointed

no, I'm not disappointed, to be disappointed I'd need to have some unrealistic expectations of how quickly a mechanical device can spin and have the magnetic images transferred into digital signals. I don't have those expectations.

The review is nice and makes sense to me, thanks.

[ChongL]

We need a Raptor with 32MB now...

[berk]

Cheap SSDs FTW!!!..and bloody hurry up about it.

[afireinside]

Thanks a ton dominick! Been debating which of those drives I should buy as a replacement for my aging 8mb cache raptors in RAID 0. Some solid info helped a lot

[Brother Esau]

Raid Controller with 1MB Cache or Larger and two Raptors 16mb

[AliG]

We need a Raptor with 32MB now...

I'd rather see larger platters with higher density first, a 250gb platter raptor would be beastly

That, or cheaper SSDs

[billdavis]

no, I'm not disappointed, to be disappointed I'd need to have some unrealistic expectations of how quickly a mechanical device can spin and have the magnetic images transferred into digital signals. I don't have those expectations.

The review is nice and makes sense to me, thanks.

i like that you are honest

[VulgarHandle]

good review

as a suggestion, make sure all your graphs have a same general layout, by this I mean, if in the results you list the Seagate first, then the WDRaptor, than keep it like that in all the graphs

[dominick32]

good review

as a suggestion, make sure all your graphs have a same general layout, by this I mean, if in the results you list the Seagate first, then the WDRaptor, than keep it like that in all the graphs

Thanks everyone. And yes, I truly apologize for that. It was a very **rushed** review and when making the charts I did not focus on specifics like I should have. Thank you for the suggestion. My fault completely. I just wanted to get the data out ASAP.

Dominick

[Polizei]

I'd rather see larger platters with higher density first, a 250gb platter raptor would be beastly

That, or cheaper SSDs

If Seagate made a 10k RPM drive with perp recording, now that would be beastly.

[LagunaX]

Close but no cigar.
What we see are the boot times and game loading times.
I'll stick to my 150gb raptor, lol...

[dominick32]

Close but no cigar.
What we see are the boot times and game loading times.
I'll stick to my 150gb raptor, lol...

Just in case you didnt read the review. I will skip right to the conclusion:

We have two very strong drives that have unique strengths and weaknesses. Is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 fast enough to be used as our OS/Page File/Game/App drive? Although the Seagate is incredibly fast, as a general usage OS drive we still feel that the Raptor will be the quickest out of the two. This is based solely on sheer access time and latency of random read I/O's. On the other hand, a video/graphic editing station and anyone with a tendency to work with large files would be much better off using the Seagate. In this category, the Seagate fully dominates the Raptor in all aspects. Drive throughput on the Barracuda is phenomenal. Someone holding off for Solid State Technology pricing to drop may still consider picking up a combination of these two drives. Using the Raptor as your boot drive, and purchasing a Seagate 7200.11 in a 750GB or 1TB capacity for your DATA drive. There was some fierce competition at hand today, and we love it!

[MotF Bane]

Some 7200.11 drives that were shipped from Seagate have a glitch in the firmware that cap the full 32MB cache on the drive to 8MB. If you own one of these original drives, you are going to have to flash to the latest firmware in order to achieve full performance spec of the HDD.

Uh, how can I tell if my drive has that limit on it?

[dominick32]

Uh, how can I tell if my drive has that limit on it?

Sure thing bud.
A small number of Barracuda 7200.11 drives with firmware versions SD04 or SD14 may show and utilize only part of the available cache.

You need to look on the top of your drive, and you should have firmware SD15. <--- This is OK.

If you have SD04 or SD14, you have the original firmware and you need an update.

Regards,

[NapalmV5]

^ good to know about the firmware bs

no seagate drives for me thats for sure

[DeathReborn]

I wonder if any former Maxtor employees had any input on the Firmware "mistake", they've had a few in their past.

Still, if it's priced lower than the competition i'd consider it.

[JoeBar]

Review results as expected. No need to change my raptor...

[Start]

I'll wait for something with a faster seek time than the Raptor.

[Monkeywoman]

the 7200.12 should have those power over eSATA right?

[Shaggy]

Read speed is nice, would make a great file drive. Still, what makes a raptor a raptor is the random access times, which only SSD can match at the consumer level. Seagate should make a competative 'extreme' drive. (in a few years).

[[XC] Lead Head]

^ good to know about the firmware bs

no seagate drives for me thats for sure

Thats good, no Seagate drives because of a glitch that Seagate provided the fix for? How bout no more ATi or Nvidia, or any graphics card or motherboard for that matter because the drivers might have a glitch (which they always do). Makes just about as much sense as what you said.

[dominick32]

Just completed the Raid 0 review here:

Just finished a small review on the 7200.11 Raid 0 Setup I completed:

Seagate 7200.11 (Raid 0 Results)
1/18/2008

Author: Dominick V. Strippoli



We recently reviewed the latest drive from Seagate's arsenal: Known as the 7200.11 Barracuda. This drive proved to be an excellent competitor for the well known Western Digital Raptor 150. General performance of the drive was very comparable to the Raptor and ended up about 7&#37; to 15% slower in every day tasks. On the other hand, when working with video/photo editing and larger file operations the Seagate 7200.11 had a very sizable 25% to 30% advantage. As highly requested by our readers, we have put together a very simple review article of the same 7200.11 drive used in a Raid 0 array. We will use the same testing methodology as our previous review and simply add one additional Barracuda to create a Raid 0 array. Once again, we will be using the Western Digital Raptor 150 as a comparison drive. In order to obtain the maximum possible sustained transfer rates on the drives, and the quickest possible access time we have limited our Raid 0 volume to a 50GB size and 128k stripe. This in turn will only use the first 25GB's (and fastest portions) of each drive. The remaining 440GB's or so, for the purpose of taking advantage of the Matrix Storage Controller we have chosen to create a mirrored Raid 1 setup. Since we have already reviewed the single Seagate 7200.11 in a full scale in-depth review, we are simply going to provide this introduction, a small conclusion, and solely hard results from our testing.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/barracudaraid/