High model 3,5 ”HDD from Seagate

Evgenie Rudometov,

Victor Rudometov

authors@rudometov.com

Within the limits of the declared bar of products Barracuda 7200.9 company Seagate Technology has released recently 3,5-inch the arrangement with interface Serial ATA and size of 500 Gbytes. The given model possesses not only high information capacity, but also rather high efficiency

One of the major completing modern computer systems are hard disk drives (HDD). Their technical parametres From year to year improve. And first of all it concerns growth of the information capacity providing saving of the increasing quantities of the information. It is necessary to mark, that as numerous researches testify, sizes of the stored information fast increase. The given prompt growth is powerful stimulus for perfection of the architecture of these major accessories. Thus perfection is routed as on size growth, and increase in productivity and dependability of operation.

As is known, productivity of disk drives on hard disks is defined by a number of parametres, major of which 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. All from the enumerated components bring the contribution to productive work of each disk drive having in the basis hard magnetic disks.

Access time to data consists of time of head positioning for the necessary track and a latency (latency) the necessary sector under a head. It is obvious, that the latency depends on speed of rotation of magnetic disks, and rate of data transfer on other subsystems of the computer depends on the front end. Besides, rate depends on speed of the internal information transfer depending not in the last instance from a bit density.

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). However, despite all their advantages more perspective is serial interface ATA — Serial ATA (SATA). It provides even in the first variant a transfer rate with a speed of 150 Mb per second. The second variant named Serial ATA 2, and those more — to 300 Mb per second. It, by the way, is marked in the interface name, nazvanogo as Serial ATA/300 or SATA/300.

As to other characteristics of disk drives it is necessary to mark, that the bit density increase allows to increase size and a transfer rate at the same speed of rotation of disks.

Estimating high rates of growth, it is necessary to mark, that the last two-three years rate of overgrowth of size has a little decreased, that testifies to reaching of some limit for existing processing techniques of a data recording/reading. But, despite it manufacturers continue to release more and more perfect arrangements, increasing their productivity and information capacity.

Responding to inquiries of the market, company Seagate Technology (Seagate) continues to increase information storage density on magnetic disks. It provides increase in size of appropriate arrangements.

Despite rather high efficiency of models Barracuda 7200.7, company Seagate has not stopped at the reached level and has released following bars Barracuda. And though more recently the computer public estimated HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 as the newest disk drives, it appears, time for testing of more perfect models has already come. These models represent the following set which has received a future issue in name Barracuda — Barracuda 7200.9.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9

Among disk drives with interface SATA high model Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 is HDD with information capacity of 500 Gbytes, presented on a Fig. 1 – a Fig. 3).

Fig. 1. Hard disk drive Seagate Barracuda of 7200.9 500 Gbytes in protective plastic packing

The important features of the given model are the built in cache memory in size of 16 Mb, and also serial interface Serial ATA with a transfer rate to 300 Mb per second — SATA/300 (a Fig. 2). Besides, given model supports processing technique NCQ, providing the raised speed of processing of sequence of simultaneously arriving inquiries to HDD on reading and a data recording.

Fig. 2. The built in controller and SATA/300 plug of model Seagate Barracuda in 7200.9 size of 500 Gbytes

Fig. 3. Marking of 500 Gbytes of model Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 with interface SATA/300 and the cache memory of 16 Mb

Considering the specified high model, it is necessary to mark, that besides it in the bar of disk drives Barracuda 7200.9 there is also a variant with the same size of 500 Gbytes, but with interface Parallel ATA/100. The low representative is the model with the size making only 40 Gbytes.

Table 1. Key parametres of models Barracuda 7200.9

Barracuda 7200.9 set drives differ high efficiency and possess high dependability. They soak loads to 350 G in a non-working state. On all disk drives of the given bar according to the order bookings the five years' guarantee of the manufacturer extends.

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 models of disk drive Barracuda 7200.9 substantially speaks high density of the information and in the considerable speed of rotation of a spindle of the engine, a component of 7200 turns in a minute. Besides, the big productivity is promoted by the cache memory which size depending on models makes from 2 to 16 Mb, and also the optimised control algorithms mechanical and electronic units of the disk drive.

At high efficiency of model Barracuda 7200.9 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 for high models values 2,8, and for low — 2,5 bell are resulted .

As to concrete values of productivity in widespread applied tasks they can be received only in the course of testing. Thus as the main measurement standard the high representative of bar Barracuda 7200.7 presented by model 200 of a Gbyte with interface Serial ATA/150 used .

Results of the led express testing of disk drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 with interface SATA/300 and size of 500 Gbytes are more low resulted  .

Before to pass to results of testing it is necessary to mark, that the selected standard model differs high efficiency that creates certain problems for lead of the new model heading the newest bar Barracuda 7200.9.

Testing Seagate Barracuda of 7200.9 500 Gbytes

Pattern of the system used in testing of hard disk Seagate Barracuda of 7200.9 500 Gbytes:

·         the Motherboard: ASUS P5AD2 (chip set I925 X, memory DDR2),

·        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),

·         the Disk drive on hard disks 1: HDD Seagate ST3500641AS (Barracuda 7200.9, 500 Gbytes, 16 Mb of the cache memory, 7200 rpm, SATA/300),

·         the Disk drive on hard disks 2: HDD Seagate ST3200822AS (Barracuda 7200.7, 200 Gbytes, 8 Mb of the cache memory, 7200 rpm, SATA/150),

·         Dynamic storage: 2X512 Mb, DDR2 533,

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

·         the Optical CD-ROM drive: ASUS CD-S400/A (40X),

·         the Operating system: Windows XP.

As the testing tool known program Winbench 99 used .

Table 2. Results Winbench 99 Disk Transfer Rate

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

From the resulted results of testing follows, that disk drive Seagate Barracuda of 7200.9 500 Gbytes with interface SATA/300 possesses not only a high capacity, but rather high efficiency. For the sake of justice it is necessary to mark, that the disk drive given on testing concedes on a transfer rate to the high representative of bar Barracuda 7200.7 possessing in size of 200 Gbytes a little .

However, parsing the received results of testing, it is necessary to take into consideration that fact, that model 500 of Gbytes is a sample with one of the first variants of program wearing HDD (firmware). There is an underplate to assume, that in the course of perfection of the built in program code and depositing improving operation of the given model of hardware modifications its high-speed parametres will essentially increase. As a result model Barracuda of 7200.9 500 Gbytes will take an in the lead place not only on information capacity metrics, but also productivity. Such it was already repeatedly observed with disk drives and companies Seagate, and other manufacturers HDD. Doubting it is possible to recommend to repeat after a while testings and personally to check up the given forecast.

The sample of hard disk drive Barracuda in 7200.9 size of 500 Gbytes has been given by company EAST SIDE Consulting