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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Joins The Terabyte Club

Those who wanted to ship their terabyte hard drives fast came in late this time. I'm referring to Samsung and Seagate, who intended to overtake Hitachi by providing terabyte hard drives based on a higher data densities, and thus using a smaller platter count than the Deskstar 7K1000's five platters. Fewer platters per hard drive mean fewer mechanical parts that wear and tear, and the side effect is always better transfer performance. All of this remains theory, though, unless products are actually available. We still haven't seen Samsung's three-platter terabyte hard drive, but the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 has finally arrived.

While capacities seemed to be stuck at 500 GB for a while, with only Seagate going up to 750 GB, we now have three contestants battling at up to 1000 GB. Samsung will hopefully join soon, as its drives have proven to be quick and quiet over the last few years. But what is next? Western Digital declared its intention to deliver 3 TB hard drives by 2010, which represents a yearly data density increase of 40%. Samsung told us earlier this year that capacities between 1 and 2 TB should be available rather early next year. In any case, the battle for the prestigious high-end storage segment will continue, as the drive makers continue to exploit perpendicular magnetic recording and get ready for the subsequent steps, like patterned media and heat assisted recording.

It's still some time until 2010, and I believe we will still chronically suffer from insufficient storage capacities in the light of increasing amounts of data. There are times in which something as circumstantial as a printer driver package requires far more than 100 MB, and where Windows Update downloads more data than the Windows installation ever put on your hard drive. We not only store digital movies like we stored music or pre-multimedia files some years ago, but we'll increasingly store more and more High Definition content as well. Thus, if you ever wondered why anyone needs a terabyte hard drive today, here is a simple answer: one terabyte stores approximately 220 single layer DVDs, which certainly is a lot, but is only sufficient for 30 to 40 movies in full HD quality. If you want to continue to store it all, you'll need more and more storage - and backup space too.

For the time being, one terabyte is the limit, and we currently have to choice among three entirely different product concepts. Hitachi was the first to reach the terabyte limit with the Deskstar 7K1000, which prove to be a solid performer. The second candidate is Western Digital's Caviar GP; these letters stand for "Green Power" and points out the way WD is going: the WD10EACS has its focus on energy efficiency, not on performance. Finally, there is the Barracuda 7200.11 by Seagate, which follows the traditional method of providing more capacity and more performance with every new drive generation. Let's see how the new "dot eleven" compares to its two competitors...

Where Does The Hard Drive Go From Here?

Flash or Hybrid Hard Drives will increasingly challenge conventional hard drives - but not at high capacities.

This is a rather interesting question, as there have been several developments that clearly blur the future of mass storage. On the one hand, there have always been so-called "solid state" drives. Traditionally, these have been hard-drive-like products created with silicon memory and some sort of battery buffer. These products are extremely fast, but they're likewise expensive and exclusive, and so not suitable for the mainstream. But there are two technologies threatening the traditional hard drive domain: Flash hard drives, which are based on non-volatile Flash memory, and so-called hybrid hard drives (H-HDDs). The latter are traditional hard drives that also have an additional Flash memory bank that can be used to store OEM application data or frequently used operating system files.

Hybrid hard drives are meant to speed up system startup by reading from the Flash memory instead of the slower mechanical medium. The latter can also be disabled when the hard drive isn't required to spin. Flash hard drives such as the SATA5000 by Sandisk aim to replace all moving parts by fundamentally faster Flash memory lineups, which became an option due to continuously increasing Flash data densities.

However, hybrid hard drives suffer from immature operating system support. At this point, hybrid hard drives do not deliver substantial benefits, whether in the form of longer battery runtime for notebooks (the hard drive spindle motor can be shut down as long as the hybrid hard drive operates with its Flash memory) or by delivering better performance. At the same time, buying a hybrid hard drive instead of a conventional one certainly isn't a bad thing. It is certainly the way hard drives are going, but it will take time once they're supported before they finally make some sense.

Flash hard drives will get better and better with every generation. While early models are limited to 32 GB for cost reasons, and they still haven't beat the conventional hard drive in many benchmark segments, the upcoming generation will deliver data rates that compete with the latest 7,200 RPM desktop drives. The only issue that cannot be solved by smart engineering is data density: Flash hard drives will be limited to 64 and 128 GB for the time being - unless you're willing to spend four digit amounts on a hard drive that still won't even hold as much as current notebook drives at 250 GB. But accelerated Flash technologies will eventually find their way into Hybrid Hard Drives.

Terabyte HDD Comparison

Test Setup

System Hardware
Processor(s)	2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core) 3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
Platform	Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604) Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAM	Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.) 2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB 120 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Mass Storage Controller(s)	Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5) Promise SATA 300TX4 ICP 5085BL 8-Port SAS/300
Networking	Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Subsystem	On-Board Graphics ATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance Measurements	c't magazine's h2benchw 3.6
I/O Performance	IOMeter 2003.05.10 Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OS	Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform Driver	Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics Driver	Default Windows Graphics Driver

Test Results

Data Transfer Diagram

Read Data Transfer Performance

Write Data Transfer Performance

Access Time

Interface Bandwidth

I/O Performance

Application Benchmarks

Power Consumption

The power consumption measurements are slightly different from what we found in our review on the Western Digital Caviar GP, because one of the ampere meter's output experienced distorted results due to a low battery. The Caviar GP by Western Digital clearly is the most energy-efficient drive. Seagate's new Barracuda 7200.11 is in the middle, but its idle power requirement isn't far from what the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 consumes.

Conclusion

Hitachi, Seagate or Western Digital? Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 is the fastest, Western Digital's Caviar GP the most efficient, and the Deskstar 7K1000 by Hitachi is far from being left in the dust.

Here we have three drives, three product concepts, and three different outcomes. All three drives deliver decent sufficient performance to power a modern high-performance PC. Enthusiasts and power users should avoid Western Digital's Caviar GP, as the drive wasn't tuned to perform, but rather to be as energy efficient as possible. From this standpoint, the WD10EACS Caviar GP beats the hell out of its competitors: At only 4.2 W idle power, it requires half the power of the two other terabyte drives. If you intend to equip a datacenter with dozens or hundreds of high-capacity drives, this may very well become an important decision point. The benefits of the decreased power consumption are low heat dissipation, and the quietest acoustics of any 3.5" drive we've had in our test labs.

Hitachi and Seagate battle head to head when it comes to winning the heart of the enthusiast who wants as much performance as possible. The Deskstar 7K1000 still does okay in the access time and I/O performance tests, but it loses ground when it comes to transfer rates. The Barracuda 7200.11 offers the best low-level benchmark results, jumping over 100 MB/s read or write transfer rates and accessing data in an average of 12.7 ms. With the exception of access time and I/O benchmarks, it also clearly beats Western Digital's 10,000 RPM Raptor, and sets the new standard for desktop hard drives. (It's about time for Western Digital to come up with a new Raptor drive. Based on current technology, it should be able to regain everything that has been lost to Seagate right now.)

Anyone who just wants a reasonable high-capacity drive has to consider the Caviar GP, due to its excellent thermals and low power consumption. Users with performance ambitions should go for the Barracuda 7200.11, as it currently offers the best mix of performance, capacity and cost. What about Hitachi? The Deskstar 7K1000 requires a little facelift, but if I could get it for significantly less than the others, I wouldn't refuse it.

Piyush Gupta wrote Thats very gud information in depth Mention source also.. Read Forum Rules before posting....

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