Benchmark Results, Continued
Conclusion: Excellent Choice For Desktops
Seagate did a good job - the new 200 GB Barracuda 7200.7 is currently the fastest UltraATA drive in terms of transfer rates. With up to 64 MB/s, it even outperforms Western Digital's WD360 Raptor drive, which runs at 10,000 rpm. However, the transfer speeds at the end of the medium cannot cannot compete with the Raptor of course.
The data density seems to have some negative impact on access times. With around 15 ms, the new Barracuda 7200.7 lags a bit compared to its competition, namely Hitachi's 7K250 and the DiamondMax Plus 9 from Maxtor. Still, this does not have enough of a negative effect to spoil the application benchmark results: Both the Business and the Highend Disk Winmarks finish with acceptable results. The same applies to the IOMeter benchmark runs: Though the access time of the 7200.7 could be faster, the I/O performance is above average.
In the end, the results are pretty conclusive: The new Barracuda 7200.7 with 200 GB is an nice hard drive with low noise levels and a fast data transfer rate. And that is what you need most in a typical desktop environment. However, users with highest performance ambitions or webserver/database use should aim for a quicker accessing model.
