English
Russian
GermanCorporate Barracuda
Evgenie Rudometov,
Victor Rudometov
authors@rudometov.com
Responding to requirements of the market for capacious highly reliable disk drives, company Seagate Technology has released models 3,5-inch HDD Barracuda ES. The model in size of 750 Gbytes with interface Serial ATA/300 became the high representative of this bar
All its accessories participate in modern computers in information processing practically, however, for long-time and non-volatile storage of great volumes of the information hard disk drives (hard disks, HDD) respond. Their size permanently increases thanks to efforts of scientists and the engineers permanently removing a paramagnetic limit, interfering growth of informational possibilities of disk drives.
One advanced achievements there was the processing technique of perpendicular writing for the first time inserted by company Seagate Technology (Seagate). This processing technique provides vertical layout of magnetic domains on a surface of magnetic disks. Thanks to it substantial increase of information capacity of disk drives is provided.
As a result of implantation of the given development variety of the perspective models HDD which upper representative has already reached values of 1 Tbyte has been released . However, despite its appearance, as high model a wide circulation has received HDD 750 Gbytes (1 Gbyte = 1 000 000 000 byte), become by the central unit of disk subsystems of high-powered computers, and also of some external disk drives.
On the basis of this model company Seagate has released HDD raised dependability and equivalent size. The given development has received name Barracuda ES (Enterprise Storage – systems of data storage of a corporate class).
Appearance of the given model and its prototype is presented in a Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. HDD 750 Gbytes Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10
Except information capacity, the important features of the given models 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. In addition to it both models support processing technique NCQ, providing the raised speed of processing of sequence of simultaneously arriving inquiries to HDD on reading and a data recording. This processing technique provides storage of inquiries and optimises queue, minimising number of movings of heads on disks that reduces unproductive time and increases the common speed of data access.
In a Fig. 2 marking of models 750 of Gbytes Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 with interface SATA/300 is presented .
Fig. 2. Marking of 750 Gbytes of models Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 with interface SATA/300
Considering the specified high models, it is necessary to mark, that besides it in the bar of disk drives Barracuda 7200.10 there is also a variant with the same size of 750 Gbytes, but with interface Parallel ATA/100. The low representative of the given bar now is the arrangement with size of 200 Gbytes. All bar Barracuda 7200.10 consists of following models: 750, 500, 400, 320, 250, 200, 160, 80 Gbytes. Unlike it bar HDD oriented to corporate sector — Barracuda ES, is presented exclusively by models with interface Serial ATA. Size of these models: 750, 500, 400, 320, 250 Gbytes.
Key parametres of 750 Gbytes Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 are presented in table 1.
Table 1. Key parametres of models HDD Barracuda 7200.10 and Barracuda ES
Size of models, Gbytes |
From 80 to 750 |
From 250 to 750 |
Interfaces |
Serial ATA/300 with NCQ or Ultra ATA/100 |
Serial ATA/300 with NCQ |
Size of the cache memory, Mb |
16, 8, 2 |
16, 8 (only 250 Gbytes) |
Speed of rotation of disks, rpm |
7200 |
7200 |
Admissible shock loads, g |
By operation – to 68, |
By operation – to 63, |
Band of an operating temperature, With |
0-60 |
5-55 |
Acoustic noise level, Bell |
2,8 |
2,7 |
Guaranty period, years |
5 |
5 |
Models 750 of Gbytes incorporate four hard disks. Other disk drives contain from two to three disks.
Both models have cards of controllers HDD similar on design on which basic elements (a Fig. 3) are presented. The part of electronic parts is allocated on an internal surface of cards. Cache memory HDD chips concern their number.
However at all similarity of design controllers of data HDD controllers are not identical. At attentive research of cards of controllers there are the differences linked to used chips and nominals of some details. And in some fragments of cards it is possible to detect, that resistors and capacitors are substituted by crosspieces.
Fig. 3. Sort HDD of 750 Gbytes Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 from controllers
By the specified features of difference are not ended. Under the statement of representatives of company Seagate in corporate models others use in comparison with prototypes magnetic heads, disks and codes of control programs. It has allowed to raise considerably dependability of models Seagate Barracuda ES, uninterrupted operation time (MBF – Mean Time Between Failures) till 1,2 million o'clock. As a result disks Seagate Barracuda ES are oriented to round-the-clock work under the formula: 24 hours per the day, seven days in a week within all year. And their prototypes are calculated for essentially softer functional mode providing eight hours in day within five-day working week. At performance of the given guidelines the manufacturer gives a guarantee of 5 years.
As to concrete values of productivity of 750 Gbytes of models in widespread applied tasks they can be received only in the course of testing.
Pattern of the system used in testing of hard disk drives Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda in 7200.10 size of 750 Gbytes:
· the Motherboard of Intel D975XBX (a chip set i975X),
· the Processor of Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Conroe, Dual Core, 65 nanometers, 2,93 GHz, the bus — 1066 MHz, L2 — 4 Mb),
· Dynamic storage DDR2 667, two Apacer units on 1 Gbyte, two channels,
· Videocard Gigabyte GV-NX86S256H (chip Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, bus PCI Express x16),
· Hard disk drives Seagate Barracuda of 7200.10 750 Gbytes and Seagate Barracuda ES 750 Gbytes,
· OC Operating system Windows 2003 Enterprise Server.
As the testing tool known package Winbench 99 used .
Schedules of linear reading of 750 Gbytes HDD Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 are presented in a Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Schedules linear readings Seagate Barracuda ES (foreground) and Barracuda 7200.10 (background)
The performance level of 750 Gbytes HDD Seagate Barracuda ES (750 SATA ES) and Barracuda 7200.10 (750 SATA) is characterised by the numerical data resulted in Tables 2-3 and in a Fig. 5.
Table 2. Results of tests Winbench 99
Tests |
750 SATA |
750 SATA ES |
Disk Access Time |
12,2 |
12,4 |
Disk CPU Utilization |
73,2 |
72,4 |
Removable Media |
30300 |
24300 |
High-End Disk WinMark 99 |
56000 |
56700 |
Business Disk WinMark 99 |
41300 |
41200 |
AVS/Express 3.4 |
113000 |
139000 |
FrontPage 98 |
426000 |
438000 |
MicroStation SE |
86500 |
104000 |
Overall |
56000 |
56700 |
Photoshop 4.0 |
15200 |
15100 |
Premiere 4.2 |
54100 |
55000 |
Sound Forge 4.0 |
117000 |
129000 |
Visual C ++ 5.0 |
105000 |
90200 |
Table 3. Results Winbench 99 Transfer Rate
Models HDD |
Winbench 99 Disk Transfer Rate |
|
Beginning |
End |
|
750 SATA ES |
79500 |
44900 |
750 SATA |
80800 |
45500 |
Fig. 5. Results of performance of test Winbench 99 Disk Transfer Rate
From the resulted results of testing follows, that disk drives of 750 Gbytes HDD Seagate Barracuda ES and Barracuda 7200.10 with interface SATA/300 besides bolshej sizes possess also impressive productivity. The revealed difference is not critical. To raise a transfer rate it is possible in dual pattern HDD at the expense of usage of function RAID 0 providing allocation of the information between two identical disk drives. It concerns both HDD Barracuda ES, and HDD Barracuda 7200.10.
Hard disk drives Barracuda ES and Barracuda in 7200.10 size of 750 Gbytes have been given by company EAST SIDE Consulting