Seagate is the third hard drive maker to join the exclusive terabyte club. Its Barracuda 7200.11 competes with Hitachi's DeskStar 7K1000 and the power-saving Caviar GP by Western Digital. Who comes out on top?
I don't think the WD drive is marketed towards the consumer too much, who gives a rat's ass about 4w, your clothes dryer pulls about 5,500w and I don't see people complaining about that. But like the above poster said, if you're talking 100 or even 1,000 drives, that's 400 or 4,000 watts saved.
The only home use I could see for that Green Power drive would be a HTPC, it would be pretty nice for a HTPC I think.
When I overhaul my rig new HDs are second behind a new CPU, Mobo, and Memory upgrade, and this new drive singlehandedly outperforms my RAID0. Still I'd like to see where the Samsung drives fit in with all of this and I'd be curious to see the new Raptors the article hinted at.
The 1TB Caviar GP would work GREAT in a HTPC where you need low noise, low temps AND lots of space for HD content.
For a gaming/high-performance rig, the Seagate would seem an appropriate choice as it leads on transfer rates. However, if your stacking 4-5 of these side-by-side in a case with only average airflow, heat could be an issue.
Performance-wise, I would still take two or three Raptors in RAID0 (even 4 if peak transfers is priority). Then if I need some "capacity" add 2 or 3 Caviar GP's to my system, which should only contribute negligible heat and noise.
The 5 year warranty is a good thing.
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Owner of the Dual Core Goliath.
Now building the Quad Core Colossus...
It would be nice if someone would point out the differences between the Seagate ST31000340AS and Seagate ST31000340NS, because Seagate's web site has a way of obfuscating the difference, rather than illuminating the users. e.g. does the NS series do NCQ or not (it's not mentioned, but then I can't imagine that it wouldn't do it in an enterprise drive where it's even more important). On the other hand MTBF is higher for the NS series, but some people claim they are slower (why, and how much?)
Was the SATA 1 limiting jumper removed from the seagate drive before testing? From the interface bandwidth result it looks like it was limited. Removing the jumper sets it to SATA 2 improving interface bandwidth to over 240MB/s on my seagate 7200.11 500GB drive.
Message edited by valheru on 11-06-2007 at 01:05:35 PM
It would be nice if someone would point out the differences between the Seagate ST31000340AS and Seagate ST31000340NS, because Seagate's web site has a way of obfuscating the difference, rather than illuminating the users. e.g. does the NS series do NCQ or not (it's not mentioned, but then I can't imagine that it wouldn't do it in an enterprise drive where it's even more important). On the other hand MTBF is higher for the NS series, but some people claim they are slower (why, and how much?)
The AS series of drives is the desktop series (Barracuda).
The NS series is the enterprise series (Barracuda ES). They have a higher MTBF and are designed for 24/7 use.
I believe both drives implement NCQ, but I'm not positive.
--------------- - SomeJoe7777
"Did he dazzle you with his extensive knowledge of mineral water? Or was it his in-depth analysis of, uh, uh, Marky Mark that finally reeled you in?" - Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), Reality Bites, 1994
I just bought 2 WD RE2 1TB GP Hds for my HTPC and am buying 3 more 2 to include in the system (internally - Raid 5 configuration) and the other to have as a spare. I'm also going to buy a couple more to configure and external backup device connected through eSata. I'm just starting to build my system and won't be powering it up until late April. 4W savings and low noise were my choice over speed - I've been assured by WD that playing stored HD Videos through my system connected to my Samsung 61" 1080P projection will work fine. I'll post my complete spec if you're interested. Just wanted to add my two cents worth for now.
