Three New Desktop Hard Drives For 2010

Features
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Published

Comparison Table And Test Setup

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Manufacturer Hitachi Samsung Seagate
Model Deskstar 7K2000 Spinpoint F3 Barracuda XT
Model Number HDS722020ALA330 HD103SJ ST32000641AS
Form Factor 3.5" 3.5" 3.5"
Capacity 2,000GB 1,000GB 2,000GB
Spindle Speed 7,200 RPM 7,200 RPM 7,200 RPM
Other Capacities 1,000GB 500GB -
Platters 5 2 4
Cache 32MB 32MB 64MB
NCQ Yes Yes Yes
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s
Operating Temperature 5-60°C 0-60°C 5-60°C
Specified Idle Power 7.5W 6.3W 6.6W
Measured Idle Power 7.6W 4.9W 6.4W
Operating Shock (2ms, read) 70 G 70 G 63 G
Warranty 3 Years 3 Years 5 Years
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System Hardware
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core i7-920 (45nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB L3 Cache)
Motherboard (Sockel 1366) Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.1 Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R BIOS: 1.0B
RAM 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDD Seagate NL35 400GB ST3400832NS 7,200 RPM, SATA 1.5 Gb/s, 8MB Cache
Power Supply OCZ EliteXstream 800W OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurements h2benchw 3.12PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O Performance IOMeter 2006.07.27Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes
System Software & Drivers
Driver Details
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset Chipset Installation Utility 9.1.0.1007
AMD Graphics Radeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage 8.7.0.1007

Since all hard drives are compared on the same reference storage test system, we could not benchmark the Barracuda XT at 6 Gbit/s SATA link speed. As you can see in this first 6 Gbit/s SATA review, this would slightly improve some benchmark results, but not change the overall picture.