Seagate: it is even more and even faster

Evgenie Rudometov

authors@mail.ru

On the basis of the newest processing techniques company Seagate has released the eighth generation of 3,5-inch hard disk drives. Models of the new bar which has received name Barracuda 7200.8, are characterised not only high size, but also high efficiency and dependability of operation

Development of the architecture of computers is closely linked to perfection of their accessories. Productivity and other functional properties depend on these accessories. The process of perfection grounded on the newest innovations, has mentioned all components of permanently becoming complicated computing systems. Thus to the major accessories traditionally carry the central processor unit, the motherboard, the videoadapter, dynamic storage and hard disk drives. And if the first of the given list gives a lot of attention to disk drives, it is necessary to recognise, — it is much less, though their role is not less important, and they are the important unit of the architecture of modern computer systems.

In the course of evolution of computer processing techniques varied not only the architecture and design of systems and accessories making them, step-by-step varied criteria of an estimation of consumer usefulness of systems. The functionality linked to information processing of different type began to play the increasing value. And, first of all, it concerns processings of a multimedia content and its operative and, of course, reliable storage, especially considering the high price of the information. Moreover, the information price quite often exceeds cumulative cost of hardware several times. As a result, hard disk drives are one of the major accessories. They make a basis of a non-volatile subsystem of memory of the big information capacity of modern computers. These computers use not only as calculators, but also as multimedia arrangements as a part of audio and video of complexes, game systems and multifunctional communication centres. Growth of the market of these products testifies to value of hard disk drives (a Fig. 1) and increase in number of their release (a Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Growth of the market of hard disk drives (on substances Seagate)

Fig. 2. Growth of number of released hard disk drives (on substances Seagate)

Parsing possibilities of arrangements of an information storage, it is necessary to remind, that productivity of disk drives on hard disks is defined by a number of technical parametres. Major of them are the bit density, access time to data, the cache memory size. Besides, productivity is influenced by control algorithms disk drive units, and also used internal and data transfer front ends. Each of the enumerated components brings the contribution to hard disk drive productive work.

Considering resources of an external information transfer, it is necessary to mark, that traditionally greatest distribution was found by models with parallel interface ATA — Parallel ATA (PATA, it IDE, EIDE, ATAPI). The Transfer rate permanently increased and has reached values of 100 Mb per second and even more. As to an internal transfer rate it substantially depends on a bit density on a magnetic disk on which the information capacity of this disk depends also, and, therefore, and size of all disk drive.

Estimating size of disk drives, it is necessary to remind, that to the little more than a year ago company Seagate Technology which is one of the largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (an order of 30 % of all size), has declared disk drives with a bit density of 100 Gbytes on one 3,5-inch slice.

The high model of the disk drive of company Seagate, a part of the bar which has received name Barracuda 7200.7, is capable to store 200 Gbytes of the information in the presence of only two slices. The given model with interface PATA and size of 200 Gbytes is supplied by the cache memory-buffer in size of 8 Mb.

However, despite rather high efficiency of high model of bar Barracuda 7200.7, company Seagate has not stopped on the reached boundaries. Having increased a bit density of the information to 133 Gbytes on a slice, she has declared recently new modification of bar Barracuda. This modification has received name Seagate Barracuda 7200.8.

Among disk drives with interface PATA high model Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 is the model with information capacity of 400 Gbytes and the built in cache memory in size of 8 Mb (a Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Hard disk drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 with informational size of 400 Gbytes, interface PATA, the cache memory-buffer in size of 8 Mb

Besides this model, in the popular bar of disk drives Barracuda 7200.8 are available PATA variants in size of 300 and 250 Gbytes.

On all disk drives of the given bar according to the order bookings the five years' guarantee of the manufacturer extends, that indirectly testifies to high dependability of the given arrangements.

Barracuda 7200.8 set drives differ high efficiency and are the most reliable in branch, soaking, by the way, as well as their predecessors Barracuda 7200.7, loads to 350 G in a non-working state. Here it is necessary to add, that they besides are also one of the most silent disk drives of a form factor of 3,5 inches created on the basis of hard magnetic disks. Really, in the order bookings as audio parametres value 2,5 bell is resulted.

High parametres of productivity, size, dependability and noiselessness are reached, according to creators, thanks to application of the whole set of firm processing techniques.

High efficiency of the given model of the disk drive is promoted by considerable speed of rotation of a spindle of the engine which makes 7200 turns in a minute, and also the cache memory in size of 8 Mb and the optimised control algorithms mechanical and electronic units of the disk drive, realised in the form of the special program code written in an appropriate chip of the disk drive.

As to concrete values of productivity they can be received only in the course of testing. Thus as measurement standards it is expedient to take the high representative of prior bar Barracuda 7200.7 — model 200 of Gbytes.

Appropriate testing has been led. As one more disk drive the recent leader has been in addition selected from a class of 120 Gbytes of arrangements — model of IBM IC35L120AVV207-0 in size of 120 Gbytes.

Results of the fulfilled testing of disk drive Seagate Barracuda in 7200.8 size of 400 Gbytes and its matching with model Barracuda in 7200.7 size of 200 Gbytes (Table 1, Table 2, a Fig. 4, a Fig. 5) and model of IBM of 120 Gbytes are more low presented     .

Pattern of the system used in testing

r    the Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2 (a chip set i925X, memory DDR2).

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

r    the Hard disk drive 1: HDD Seagate ST3400832A (Barracuda 7200.8, 400 Gbytes, 8 Mb of the cache memory, 7200 rpm, UltraDMA/100).

r    the Hard disk drive 2: HDD Seagate ST3200822A (Barracuda 7200.7, 200 Gbytes, 8 Mb of the cache memory, 7200 rpm, UltraDMA/100).

r    the Hard disk drive 3: HDD IBM IC35L120AVV207-0 (180GXP, 120 Gbytes, 2 Mb of the cache memory, 7200 rpm, Parallel ATA/100).

r    Dynamic storage: 2x512 Mb, DDR2 533.

r    ASUSEXTREME AX 600XT Videoadapter (chip ATIRadeon X600XT, bus PCI Express x16).

r    CD-ROM: ASUS CD-S400/A (40x).

r    OS: Windows XP.

As exercisers used WinBench  99.

Table 1. Results Disk Transfer Rate

Models HDD	Winbench 99 Disk Transfer Rate
	Beginning	End
400Gb PATA	70100	40500
200Gb PATA	63500	37100
120Gb PATA	56400	30900

Fig. 4. Results of performance of test Winbench 99 Disk Transfer Rate

Table 2. Results High-End Disk

Models HDD	Winbench 99 High-End Disk WinMark 99
400Gb PATA	44700
200Gb PATA	36600
120Gb PATA	20400

Fig. 5. Results of performance of test Winbench 99 High-End Disk WinMark 99

As follows from the presented results of the testing, the new hard disk drive shows not only high information capacity, but also productivity high level. As a result, engineers Seagate could pause the hard work and take rest, "resting on laurels".

However in the middle of June of this year the company has declared the following modification of disk drives Barracuda — Barracuda 7200.9. New arrangements possess speed of rotation of a spindle of 7200 rpm and an average time 8 mks. Deliveries will start this year. According to the implementators, new hard disk drives became even more efficient and silent, but it is a subject already other articles.

The disk drive on hard disks Barracuda in 7200.8 size of 400  Gbytes has been given by German representation of company Seagate