Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (500 GB, 750 GB, and 1,000 GB)
The new Barracuda does not yet offer capacity of more than 1.0 TB, which pales in comparison to the 1.5 TB Barracuda 7200.11. Instead, Seagate focuses on the “ideal combination of capacity, performance, and reliability” at mainstream capacities. In addition to the 1.0 TB, 750 GB, and 500 GB test samples we received, you can get 320 GB, 250 GB, and 160 GB versions. The 1 TB and 750 GB models feature 32 MB cache memory and the 500 GB and 320 GB drives have 16 MB cache, while the 250 GB and 160 GB entry-level drives have only 8 MB cache. All drives spin at 7,200 RPM and offer SATA/300 with NCQ.
Power and Performance
It’s nice to see that more and more drive manufacturers are adding power consumption to their spec sheets. Seagate says that the new 7200.12 requires 5.0 W at idle and 9.4 W when in operation. We measured exactly the same idle power for the 1.0 TB and 750 GB drives, but got lower results for the 500 GB single-platter model. The new 'cuda definitely offers 126-131 MB/s maximum throughput, which is a new record for 7,200 RPM 3.5” desktop hard drives. Note that the 500 GB model had the highest maximum result. Access time varies between 14.7 and 16.6 ms, but for some reason, the WD Caviar Green happens to offer noticeably better I/O performance than the Seagate drives. Clearly, the new Barracuda 7200.12 was not optimized for server workloads, but is geared exclusively for desktop applications, as its PCMark Vantage performance benchmark results are excellent.
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could have said, no1 win. basically each brand has its own advantage. nice article by the way.
^.^ i'm first
Is it just me, or have their been quite a few comparisions of these +500GB drives as of late? There don't seem to be huge changed in the Hard Drive market from you're last big comparison.
I would have hoped for a DDR3 or Budget i7 roundup.
I like my PC fast so I like my HDD to be fast enough to run app. and for storage I'm sure I will go for larges capacity. so my PC surely have 2 or more HDD (int and ext.)
Is it just me, or have their been quite a few comparisions of these +500GB drives as of late? There don't seem to be huge changed in the Hard Drive market from you're last big comparison.I would have hoped for a DDR3 or Budget i7 roundup.
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2128.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2252.html
We also have a sub-$200 i7 roundup in the works =)
just reading the section on noise levels, 50 db sounds an awful lot for activity. what are the choices for someone who wants a silent machine?
has the new 12 successfully avoided the disaster that was the 11 ?
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2128.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2252.htmlWe also have a sub-$200 i7 roundup in the works =)
Last month you covered story about a certain SDD consuming a vast amount of power whilst you were doing testing on a SDD round up article. Can you please tell me when is that SDD round up review is going to come out? Thank you.
is the seagate missing from the comparison table on page 5 or is I am missing something??
I like my PC fast so I like my HDD to be fast enough to run app. and for storage I'm sure I will go for larges capacity. so my PC surely have 2 or more HDD (int and ext.)
That's how to do it really.
My system has 2x500gb drives in raid 0 for system, and one of the wd20eads along with 5x500gb drives for storage.
The speed of the storage is largely irrelevant to be honest. Anything high enough to satiate a blueray playback from an image file would be enough, and the wd20eads really isn't that slow. I copied some stuff from an usb drive to the 2tb drive yesterday, and there are only 16gb left on the drive. Then I copied the newly created data from it to one of the 500gb drives I use as backup, and look - it was still copying at 60-50mb/sec - probably because the 500gb drive was getting closer to full too (40gb left). So no, it may not be as fast as a spinpoint, but you don't need that on storage. Size is everything in this case.
just reading the section on noise levels, 50 db sounds an awful lot for activity. what are the choices for someone who wants a silent machine?has the new 12 successfully avoided the disaster that was the 11 ?
The 7200.12 is built alot better. Dont know about the other, but half the reason i bought the 500Gb version is that its got a single platter. Fewer moving parts means alot lower rate of failure. That and it seriously does hit the speeds in the bench, and i love it
i love western digital.
the 2tb is not really worth considered the price is almos trice the 1tb.
Should that say F1? Although that F1 has more platters so it would make sense.
Good writeup...may need to order up some caviar to reduce 3 of my internal HD's to one low power one. I'm sure that'd make a power difference.
I have an issue with your bar graphs though -- it'd help chart comparisons if you kept the sequence of the drives ordered by name, instead of ordered by performance on the benchmark. That's the point of bar graphs: even if two things aren't close to each other, you can tell which one is better regardless of order because of the size of the bar.
And while I'm stating grievances -- the comment browser is terribly broken. First "page" displays fine but if I go to a subsequent one, they get all jumbled and overlay one another or disappear into an unreadable mess. Using WinXP SP2, and IE6 (work won't let me use anything else)
i love western digital. the 2tb is not really worth considered the price is almos trice the 1tb.
it is if you need a lot of storage in an oem system. Many oem supplied systems only have room for 1 or two drives without 5,25" adapters - so having a single 2tb drive is favorable to having two or three 1tb drives.
@chrone "i love western digital.
the 2tb is not really worth considered the price is almos trice the 1tb."
Are you retarded or are you just math-challenged? If the 2 TB is ALMOST twice the price of the 1 TB, that means its cost per GB is LOWER. So the 1 TB is more expensive per GB. Therefore, the 2 TB is a better value.
Good writeup...may need to order up some caviar to reduce 3 of my internal HD's to one low power one. I'm sure that'd make a power difference.
Depends. If your current HDD's are running at 50W, then it would be worth it. But switching HDD's to save 5 W's isn't a smart money saving move. 5 W's at 24/7 for a whole year is about $2.50 (maybe up to $5 depending on your cost of energy).
So you spend $100 to save $5. Not really worth it.
For power savings, look at the graphics cards and processors to save money. Those consume 10x to 40x the power of a HDD.
Good article. If i'd ever buy one of these drives, it'd just be for storage. Don't know that i'd ever put an operating system on it. But who knows.
The 7200.12 is built alot better.
I'm a little skittish about Seagate these days. The 7200.11 is known for a high rate of failure - and then there was the fiasco with the SD1A firmware update that bricked the drives it was meant to fix. Does the 7200.12 correct the 7200.11's flaws? Maybe in a year from now we'll know, but for today I'm buying WD for my new drives.
Hey Wotan31, I think Chrone meant "Thrice" not "Twice" (ie. The WD 2TB drive costs $299.99 on newegg vs 99.99 for the 1TB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] rder=PRICE
But neiroatopelcc is right. Sometimes you just need the higher capacity in a single drive.
I agree with snarfies. Reliability comes before everything else in a hard drive. Seagate have typically been the most reliable manufacturer for many years now (I get to see hundreds of drives and Seagate reliability has been fantastic for many years now). However, the firmware issue with their 7200.11 drives has been handled in disgraceful fashion by Seagate. Fortunately, I became aware of this problem during the early stages of its knowledge and managed to avoid ever buying one of these "Boat Anchors".
I would be very interested to know if Seagate has done anything to earn our future trust in their products....
I can tell you that the 7200.12 does not have the same issues that the 7200.11 does, they are totally updated code bases and have different SOC's that mitigate many of the problems seen in the 7200.11 series. MANY MANY bugs that were in the 7200.11 series have also been stomped out in the 7200.12 series, and the next series after it will be even better. The 7200.11 drives were the first ones released with a new code base, and as usual, have the most bugs (not all of them, the smaller capacity ones are based on an older very robust code base, however the new code base has the potential to significantly improve performance as you're starting to see with the 7200.12's).
But I've already said too much....