2,5 "HDD 100 Gbytes from Seagate

Evgenie Rudometov

authors@rudometov.com

Company Seagate which is the world's largest manufacturer of hard disk drives, has once again lifted a lath of size and productivity for 2,5-inch arrangements, having adjusted mass release of appropriate models of bar Momentus with the raised speed of rotation of disks. Now high model of this bar is the disk drive with informational size of 100 Gbytes. The given disk drive with interface ParallelATA differs not only high size, but also high efficiency, energoekonomichnostju and a low level of acoustic noise not only in waiting modes, but also functional modes

One of the major units of the modern computerised arrangements are the appropriate disk drives participating in processes of information processing and providing its durable, non-volatile storage. The main type are hard disk drives. Responding to inquiries of the market, manufacturers develop and release a wide spectrum of such products of various form factors.

Disk drives of this type find wide application, both in computers, and in products of the consumer electronics which nomenclature promptly increases. And as consequence of the given growth, the requirement for storage devices increases also. Certainly, the largest manufacturers of disk drives on hard disks which number also company Seagate which is the largest player of this sector of the market, by the way, concerns cannot ignore this fact. According to development of this sector and growth of requirement of computers and arrangements of consumer electronics in disk drives on hard disks this company in the conditions of a hard competition permanently increases release of the products, simultaneously expanding their nomenclature. Thus, considering growth of the market of various transportable arrangements, the considerable attention is given to disk drives of compact form factors. Models first of all concern their number with 2,5-inch magnetic disks. These popular arrangements combine compactness, high size, productivity and energoekonomichnost, and considering traditionally excellence of products from the known manufacturer — and high dependability.

Certainly, overgrowth of size and improvement of other parametres of disk drives of compact form factors is given completely not simply. The matter is that traditional processing techniques of writing now in use, apparently, are close to the exhaustion. As a result, in last couple of years rates of overgrowth of information capacity of disk drives have a little decreased. However, despite physical, technological and industrial difficulties, the corporations which are engaged in development and production of this type of the major accessories, continue to improve processing techniques and to perfect the constructions of the arrangements intended for an information storage.

Estimating reachings in the field of development and release of hard disk drives, it is necessary to remind, that company Seagate concerns that small number of corporations which use, as a rule, own firm processing techniques. She own forces creates both magnetic heads, and disk slices. On the basis of these major units company Seagate release at the numerous firms allocated in the different countries, a wide spectrum of hard disk drives, size, speed and which dependability increase from year to year. It allows to create disk subsystems of memory of the high information capacity, a part various products: from various arrangements of consumer electronics to notebooks, desktop computers, workstations and servers of various levels of complexity and various usages.

Models HDD Seagate Momentus 5400.2

Expanding the presence on prompt an emerging market of transportable systems which high-powered notebooks first of all concern, company Seagate has carried out mass release of the models representing the next extension of the popular set of drives Momentus. The new models, which bar has received name Seagate Momentus 5400.2, are characterised by higher parametres. First of all it concerns the high information capacity reaching for the upper model of disk drives of the given bar of value of 100 Gbytes. It is reached thanks to presence in the given arrangements to two 2,5-inch magnetic disks with very high density of a data recording — to 50 Gbytes on one slice that corresponds to information density of 85 Gbit on inch.

Estimating reachings of the company in the field of disk drives for sector of transportable solutions, it is necessary to mark, that thanks to the increased speed of rotation of the spindle, reached 5400 value rpm productivity of new disk drives has essentially grown. So under the statement of experts of this company, the given major parametre became almost on 50 % above, than for disk drives with speed of rotation of magnetic disks of 4200 rpm. Thus new, more efficient models consume as much energies, how many and disk drives of the previous generation with speed of rotation of 4200 rpm. And though new, perspective disk drives of bar Seagate Momentus 5400.2 have been announced one year ago, their mass release has been adjusted a little bit later, that, however, and not surprisingly, considering rather high complexity of development of new models and expansion of full-scale production of similar products.

Fig. 1. 2,5-inch hard disk drive Seagate Momentus in 5400.2 size of 100 Gbytes

Size of disk drives of bar Momentus 5400.2 — 60, 80, 100 Gbytes, the size of the built in cache memory has reached 8 Mb, the front end — Ultra ATA 100 (Parallel ATA — PATA). According to the technical parametres resulted on a firm site of the given manufacturer, mo have put Seagate Momentus 5400.2 possess high energoekonomichnostju and an acoustic noise low level, thus not only in waiting modes, but also modes of intensive retrieval. Besides, models of disk drives of the given bar are capable to soak blows in a non-working state to 800 G. High shock resistance and dependability of a construction together with energoekonomichnostju models of the given bar allow to use disk drives in the various arrangements which maintenance is carried out in uneasy conditions of service. Numerous variants of notebooks and other systems oriented to usage in transportable conditions concern such arrangements, for example. Besides, it can be the various compact portable devices of high information capacity applied for resocks and durable, non-volatile storage of programs and data. The transportable disk drives which are hooked up to computer systems by means of become traditional external serial interfaces USB  2.0/USB  1.1 and IEEE  1394 A/1394 b concern their number, for example   .

Table 1. Key parametres of models Seagate Momentus 5400.2

As to productivity of disk drives of the given popular bar from the known and authoritative manufacturer this parametre can be estimated on the basis of results of testing of high model Seagate Momentus 5400.2 with information capacity of 100 Gbytes. This model has technical name ST9100823 A. In quality of the original measurement standard to which it is compared given topovaja model, it is selected the popular model of 2,5-inch disk drive Fujitsu MHT2030 AT was no time. This model thanks to high consumer properties uses in a number of transportable arrangements, including some popular variants of notebooks of various type.

Testing of 100 Gbytes HDD Seagate Momentus 5400.2

Pattern of the system used in testing:

·        the Motherboard of Intel D925 XCV (chip set I925 X, memory DDR2, the slot of video PCI Express x16, ports PATA and SATA),

·        the Processor of Intel of Pentium  4 with clock rate of a kernel of 3,4 GHz (LGA 775, kernel Prescott, the bus of 800 MHz, processing technique Hyper-Threading),

·        Dynamic storage DDR2 of 533 MHz, two units on 512 Mb, two channels,

·        ASUS EXTREME AX 600 XT Videoadapter (chip ATI Radeon X600 XT, bus PCI Express x16),

·        Disk drives on hard disks Seagate Momentus 5400.2 model ST9100823 A (100 Gbytes, 5400 rpm, 8 Mb of an onboard cache, PATA-100) and Fujitsu MHT2030 AT (30 Gbytes, 4200 rpm, 2 Mb of an onboard cache, PATA-100),

·        OC Operating system Windows XP.

After hooking up both models of disk drives correctly and without any problems and difficulties were defined by the operating system of Windows XP.

And now some digits received as a result of testing of hard disk drives with file system NTFS.

Tabitsa 2. WinBench 99

Fig. 2. Results of performance of test Disk Transfer Rate: Beginning and End

Tabitsa 3. High-End Disk WinMark 99

Fig. 3. Results of performance of test Business Disk WinMark 99

All received results of testing of disk drives on hard disks Seagate Momentus 5400.2 model ST9100823 A and Fujitsu MHT2030 AT are presented in tables 2-4.

Table 4. Results of testing of disk drives Seagate Momentus 5400.2 model ST 9100823 A and F ujitsu MHT 2030 AT

Development HDD Seagate Momentus

In conclusion of the given short browse of high 100 Gbytes of model it is necessary to mark, that, despite high parametres of disk drives Seagate Momentus 5400.2, the company is not gathered to stop on the reached.

Really, in 2004 Seagate has declared development and release of high-powered models of bar Momentus 7200.1 with speed of rotation of a spindle of 7200 rpm. Size of the declared disk drives — 40, 60, 100 Gbytes, onboard cache size — 8 Mb, front end variants — Ultra ATA 100 and Serial ATA-150.

Under the statement of experts of company Seagate, model Momentus 7200.1 possess maximum dependability in branch and productivity among drives for notebooks and other transportable systems.

Thanks to firm protection system G-Force Protection new models of 2,5-inch drives Seagate are capable to soak blows, and also vibration which often takes place in multidisk systems (for example, in servers of initial level). And the firm processing technique of floating magnetic head QuietStep reduces to a minimum noise at head positioning.

Disk drive Seagate Momentus 7200.1 with a form factor of 2,5 inches and speed of rotation of a spindle of 7200 rpm is intended for high-powered transportable personal computers. However model Seagate Momentus 7200.1 can be used also and in transportable game systems, the PC of a small form factor and in a number of other arrangements, including blade servers, MP3 players, printers and kopiry. Model Momentus 7200.1 is developed under interfaces Serial ATA and Ultra ATA. As this model, as well as other disk drives of Momentus set, possesses high shock resistance, it can use not only in notebooks and other transportable systems, but also in the industrial systems which maintenance is quite often carried out in the conditions of close to the extremal.

As to numerical estimations of productivity of models Momentus 7200.1 they will be resulted in future articles, after that the given arrangements will get to us on testing.

Hard disk drive Seagate Momentus in 5400.2 size of 100 Gbytes (ST9100823 A) has been given by the Moscow representation of company Seagate