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Seagate Barracuda ES Utilizes Perpendicular Recording

The new Barracudas are able to pack such a large amount of storage into the 3.5" form factor by utilizing a new recording technology known as perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). This technology reorients the vector of the data recording line from horizontal to vertical magnetization. This technology has allowed Seagate to pack impressive drive capacities into small packages. Some insight into PMR can be gleaned from our original Seagate 7200.10 "big boy" shootout.

Created for demanding enterprise environments, one of Seagate's calling cards in the ES series is a declared failure rate of 0.73% (AFR) while experiencing full day operation. Seagate claims that the maximum non-recoverable read errors per bits figure is only 1 sector per 1014 versus <1 sector per 1015 for the Raptor ADFD series. In any multiple drive environment, intrinsic stress or vibration from external drive units can create problems leading to read/write errors, system/drive availability and overall performance. The ES series relies on built-in multi-drive firmware, which controls its rotational vibration tolerance to attempt to reduce these effects.