Storage Giant: Seagate's Barracuda 180

Features
By published

Test Setup

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Test System
CPUIntel Celeron, 500 MHz
Motherboard and GraphicsAsus CUSL2-LS, i815E Chipseton-board graphics
RAM128 MB SDRAM, 7ns (Crucial) CL2
IDE Controlleri815 UltraDMA/100 Controller (ICH2)
SCSI ControllerAdaptec AIC-7899 Ultra-160
Network3COM 905TX PCI 100 Mbit
Operating SystemsWindows 2000 Pro 5.00.2195 SP1
Benchmarks and Measurements
Office Applications BenchmarkZD WinBench 99 - Business Disk Winmark 1.2
Highend Applications BenchmarkZD WinBench 99 - Highend Disk Winmark 1.2
Low Level BenchmarksHD Tach 2.61
Performance TestsZD WinBench 99 - Disc Inspection Test
Settings
Graphics DriversIntel i815 Reference Drivers 4.3
Storage DriversIDE: Intel Busmaster DMA Driver 6.03SCSI: Adaptec Ver. 3.5
DirectX Version8.0a
Screen Resolution1024x768, 16 Bit, 85 Hz Refresh

When I was setting up the drive, I encountered the problem that Windows 2000 was not able to format the 180 GB drive with FAT32. In this test situation, it was easier to create a 100% NTFS partition in Windows 2000 without any problems and that's what we used for our benchmark setup. You can use the commands Fdisk and Format in Windows 98 to create a FAT32 partition that can be read by Windows 2000, but Fdisk will report it as being a maximum of 40 GB (total capacity modulo 64). You'll have to enter '100%' to create a full sized partition. Tom addressed the Fdisk issue in Special Problem - FDISK on Arrays Larger than 64 GB .

Hard disk manufacturers specify disk size in 1 GB = 1 Billion Bytes (10^9). The binary logic of operating systems instead defines 1 GB = 2^30 = ~1.073 * 10^9. This difference always results in a lower reported size. In the case of the Barracuda the 181.6 GB calculate into 168 GB formatted size.

Patrick Schmid