Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda: Bigger And Better?
Table of contents
- 1. Seagate’s Carnivorous Fish is Back
- 2. Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, ST31500341AS (1.5 GB)
- 3. Western Digital RE3, WD1002FBYS (1 TB)
- 4. Comparison Table And Test Setup
- 5. Transfer Rates And Diagrams
The introduction of the first 1 TB hard drive was more than a year ago. Hitachi was first to market with its Deskstar 7K1000, followed by Western Digital’s Caviar Green, Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11 and finally Samsung with the Spinpoint F. Hitachi and Western Digital have just recently reworked their terabyte drives, offering more performance and better efficiency, but Seagate decided to go right for the next step, and now its 1.5 TB hard drives are now available.
Going Ballistic With Perpendicular Recording
This is the third-generation 3.5” desktop hard drive to employ perpendicular recording and it seems the sky is the limit. Our article A Look into the Hard Drive Future delves into upcoming developments and capacities beyond 2010 and it’s safe to say that the capacity of hard drive will multiply many times before hitting the physical limits of forecasted manufacturing technology.
However, Seagate did not even have to use any secret techniques. Its 1.5 TB drive was achieved using four platters, which means that every platter has to be capable of storing at least 375 GB. Since Hitachi, Samsung and Western Digital all offer three-platter terabyte drives, it is fairly safe to assume that all could make the step to 1.5 TB capacity rather quickly—if they deemed it necessary.
How Much Capacity Do We Need?
Average users will not really be able to utilize a capacity as high as 1.5 TB today: the operating system takes up to 10 GB, applications may consume up to 50 GB and then there is personal data that you want to store. Most mainstream folks don’t collect more than single or double digit gigabyte amounts, which makes hard drives in the area of 320 to 500 GB sufficient for those users.
However, true enthusiasts typically collect dozens of gigabytes of music, digital photos, and an increasing amount of digital video. High-definition (HD) content can consume the full capacity of large drives faster than ever before, and the backup of existing data or even the entire system has to be stored somewhere too. At this point, we’re probably looking at putting terabyte capacities to use within a few months, and if you intend to invest into a drive that will last a while, 1.5 TB all of a sudden appears reasonable.
Seagate says that its improved 1.5 TB Barracuda 7200.11 is “so right for so many different applications.” Let’s see how much truth there is to that claim.
Related Stories :
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- Seagate Ships 3TB Barracuda XT
- Deals Oct. 16: 1.5TB Seagate Desktop Hard Drive $49.99
- Deals Sept 25: 1.5TB Seagate SATA III HDD $69.99
- Seagate's Industry First 1.5 TB Portable Drive
- Seagate 1.5TB Drives Randomly Freezing
- Seagate Boosts Hard Drive Storage Capacity To 1.5 TB
- Seagate to Drop Barracuda XT, Green HDD Line
- Deals May 21: 2TB Seagate 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive $92 FS
- Deals April 25: 3TB Seagate Internal Hard Drive $120
I would like too see some comparison with the WD640AAKS... as it is one of the best/most balanced HD out there... But it's a good review... keep it up
my hdd has on paper 80Gb, but the real capacity is 74Gb, at this drive what is the real capacity ?
Should be around 1390GB or so, not exact but around there I believe.
its 1500000000000 /1024 /1024 /1024 = 1396,98 GB (minus space for partition tables)
^and OS
That's assuming that it will be used for an OS and not for storage purposes.
I never really understood these benchmarks. Which is the most meaningful for a business using Corel draw or Photoshop. I noticed the raptor wins most all of them but I was trying to figure if the speed difference would be enough in those applications to consider it vs getting a larger drive.
Using 1.5TB HDD For Main OS? Yuck. It's good for DVR and Backup purposes. A 1 hour OTA ASTC Recording takes as much as 6gigs. My 500GB fills up really fast since I like record a bunch of TV programs.
And of course lets face it, it'll most likely be used by piraters to store all the iso images of DVDs, Blu-rays, and Games they have ripped and downloaded.
You see? Prited do help the economy
They need bigger drives, they need faster internet, they need more CDs/ DVDs/ BDs, they need new, faster DVD drives.
Pirates aren't that bad a all, are they?
Millions of people play cracked games, ift here's a new game, there's a need for better graphics card
Sweet. I am already out of space with my 800 GB MP3 collection. I was wondering when the bigger drives would finally come out.
To answer the question about actual storage: I have connected the drive to my w2k3 server and the reported capacity is 1.36TB.
Hope this helps!
I don't record TV programs because I think it's suck. I buy my Movies or rent them. However I record all my CD to wave files and remastered them the way I like it. Each song have about 35-50MB @24bit 44.1 or 96 KHz. I also take pictures at RAW format which is 8 MB each average, then do a PP afterward and I'm not even a PRO. Add my family Video together with my wife and my old albums, and old photo albums that scanned. and bunch of other stuff. And don't forget to leave 15% free of space to Defrag.
I think I would need two 1.5 gig and 1 for backup.
1.5tb is damn sexy
You see? Prited do help the economy They need bigger drives, they need faster internet, they need more CDs/ DVDs/ BDs, they need new, faster DVD drives.Millions of people play cracked games, ift here's a new game, there's a need for better graphics card. Pirates aren't that bad a all, are they?
Didn't someone in the gaming or music industry try to sue hardware vendors for that very purpose, claiming that the fact that these companies make PCs without DRM or other copy protection enabled at the hardware level promotes pirating of games, software, and music? This might have been a long time ago but I swear I read something about it here or at Tom's Guide or something.
In essence, the entire PC industry is one big criminal ring. Every personal computer created for the sole purpose of violating copyright law. I think that we, as civic minded citizens of our respective countries, should form a class-action lawsuit against Seagate, as this new, larger drive will, as you say, enable more and more people to illegally copy more and more content.
"Most mainstream folks don’t collect more than single or double digit gigabyte amounts, which makes hard drives in the area of 320 to 500 GB sufficient for those users."
My wife is pretty mainstream as far as computer goes and she has 1.5TB of external drives FULL of digital pictures.... with DSLR prices where they are and high mega pixal point and shoots, joe user can easily use more than 500gb of storage space in day to day use.... now whether they should store all those pictures on one 1.5tb drive to be lost when they dont do backups is another question....
Crap, I was gonna order a terabyte next month. Now I'm thinking I'll wait. I really hope to see a WD 1.5TB Cavalier Black HD soon.
I upped from 120 to 500GB thinking it would be enough. It has been 3 months and im 30GB away from filling it! I have a Tri-Boot system, many games, music, pictures, and a slew of movies. Remember when the 1TB drives were 400+-? now they are 180 online lol
$180? That is so spring time. Go to pricewatch. I am seeing drives in the $100 - $120 range. It is getting so cheap. I am going to replace my two 500gb drives with 1tb drives. As for size. I am going back and re-encoding my 800+ CDs at 320kbps. Also I am looking at my 200+ DVD's so that I have all them all back backed up viewable through XMBC. My biggest problem is fine a system to have 8/10 drives.
How can someone use 1.5TB for photos obiwan05? That would be like a half million pictures! I have hundreds or maybe thousands of high pixel count digital images and I don't think I've even got to 100GB, never mind terabyte. Get real people - Terabyte is for HD video and nothing else (for the SOHO user anyway). At 6 GB/hour OTA recording, you can gobble up space quickly.