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Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.8 hard drive

Geoff Gasior
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Manufacturer Seagate
Model Barracuda 7200.8
Price (400GB)
Availability Now

AT FIRST GLANCE, having 400GB of storage capacity on a desktop hard drive seems a little ridiculous. It raises the question: do everyday users or even enthusiasts really need that much storage? They just might. With PCs increasingly becoming entertainment hubs tasked with storing audio and video in the highest possible quality, gigabytes can get eaten up pretty quickly. Gone are the days when 128KB MP3s were enough; lossless audio formats that take up much more space are all the rage these days. PCs that double as PVRs also need extra capacity, with high quality recordings consuming more than 2GB per hour. And that’s not even high definition content.

Maybe 400GB isn’t so ridiculous after all.

Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.8 is the latest hard drive to offer 400GB of storage, but the drive offers more than just a capacity boost. By packing more data per platter than Seagate’s previous Barracuda 7200.7, the 7200.8 also promises superior performance to its predecessor. Does it deliver? To find out we’ve run the 7200.8 through a punishing gauntlet of benchmarks and real world performance tests against competition from Maxtor and Western Digital.

Drive specs
Since the Barracuda 7200.8 succeeds the 7200.7 NCQ, let’s quickly compare the specs of the two drives.

  Barracuda 7200.8 Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ
Maximum external transfer rate 150MB/sec
Internal transfer rate 95MB/sec 85.4MB/sec
Average sustained transfer rate 65MB/sec 58MB/sec
Average seek time 8ms 8.5ms
Average rotational latency 4.16ms
Spindle speed 7,200-RPM
Cache size 8MB
Platter size 133GB 80GB
Available capacities 200, 250, 300, 400GB 80, 120, 160GB
Idle acoustics 2.8 bels 2.5 bels
Quiet seek acoustics 3.2 bels 2.5-2.8 bels
Performance seek acoustics 3.7 bels 3.1-3.4 bels
Idle power consumption 7.2W 9.0-9.3W
Seek  power consumption 12.4W 12.5-13.5W
Service life Five years
Warranty length Five years

The Barracuda 7200.8 doesn’t support Serial ATA II transfer rates, but that shouldn’t constrain the drive’s performance. Even its 95MB/sec internal transfer rate is a long way from saturating Serial ATA’s 150MB/sec pipe, and its average sustained transfer rate is even lower. Note that 7200.8’s internal and sustained transfer rates are both higher than the 7200.7’s. The new Barracuda’s seek time is also half a millisecond faster, despite the fact that both drives spin at 7,200 RPM.

Increased platter density is the secret behind the 7200.8’s higher transfer rates and lower seek times. With access to an additional 53GB per platter, the 7200.8’s drive head can access the same amount of data while moving a shorter physical distance.

Higher density platters allow Seagate to offer the 7200.8 in four sizes between 200 and 400GB. Interestingly, the entire family of drives has only 8MB of cache. That’s a little disappointing given the fact that some of Maxtor’s new DiamondMax 10 drives offer 16MB of cache.

Unfortunately, the 7200.8’s acoustics aren’t quite as low as its predecessor’s. However, the difference is only a couple of bels and may not show up in our noise testing. The new Barracuda does claim to offer lower power consumption, particularly at idle. That’s something we’ll be testing, as well.

While it’s easy to break out our noise level and watt meters to test the 7200.8’s acoustics and power consumption, it would take considerably more time to test the drive’s service life, which Seagate defines as the useful life of the drive. Seagate’s five-year warranty, which covers the entire service life of the drive, definitely stands out, though. Other 7,200-RPM drives, including those with five-year service lives, typically carry one- or three- year warranties. A longer warranty period doesn’t necessarily mean that the 7200.8 will be more reliable than drives covered by shorter warranties, but in the event of a drive failure, you’ll be entitled to a replacement for longer.

As expected, the Barracuda 7200.8 doesn’t offer much in the way of visual appeal. Hard drives are perhaps the only PC component category to successfully resist the trend towards flashy colors, blinking lights, and otherwise gaudy fashion accessories, which doesn’t make for a particularly interesting photo spread.

 

Test notes
Benchmarking purists will no doubt cringe at the array of competitors we’ve lined up today. First, we’ll be comparing both 7,200 and 10,000-RPM drives. They’re all Serial ATA, of course, but the Western Digital Raptor WD360GD and WD740GD have a spindle speed advantage right out of the gate. However, what the Raptors have in spindle speed they lack in capacity. The WD360GD and WD740GD weigh in at only 37 and 74GB, respectively. That’s tiny compared to our 400GB Barracuda 7200.8, 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10, and even our 160GB Barracuda 7200.7. Spindle speed obviously has an impact on performance, but in some tests, total drive size may, as well.

Finally, there’s the issue of command queuing. Our Maxtor and Seagate 7,200-RPM drives all support Native Command Queuing (NCQ), but the 10K-RPM Raptors do not. The Raptor WD740GD does support a command queuing variant called Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ), but host controllers that support TCQ are few and far between. NVIDIA’s nForce4 is currently the only core logic chipset to support TCQ, but NVIDIA’s storage controllers have had single-drive performance problems in the past. Host controllers with both NCQ and TCQ support have shown inconsistent performance as well, so we’ve elected to use a test platform based on Intel’s reliable ICH6R south bridge. On the ICH6R, the Raptor WD740GD will have to make do without TCQ.

Seagate makes versions of the 7200.7 with and without NCQ support. Since we used the NCQ version of the drive in our tests, it will appear as “Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ” on the benchmark graphs. The DiamondMax 10 and 7200.8 aren’t explicitly labeled as NCQ drives because they’re not available without NCQ support.

Our testing methods
All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition
System bus 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard DFI LANParty 925X-T2
Bios revision 925LD920
North bridge Intel 925X MCH
South bridge Intel ICH6R
Chipset drivers Intel 6.3.0.1007
Memory size 1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Micron DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
CAS latency (CL) 3
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 3
RAS precharge (tRP) 3
Cycle time (tRAS) 8
Audio codec ALC880
Graphics Radeon X700 Pro 256MB with CATALYST 5.2 drivers
Hard drives Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ 160GB SATA
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA
Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 37GB SATA
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB SATA
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 40GB ATA/133
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 2, DirectX 9.0C

All of our test systems were powered by OCZ PowerStream power supply units. The PowerStream was one of our Editor’s Choice winners in our latest PSU round-up.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. All of the 3D gaming tests used the high detail image quality settings.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

 

WorldBench overall performance
WorldBench uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications and produces an overall score. WorldBench also spits out individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each. We’ll look at the overall score, and then we’ll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests.

The Barracuda 7200.8 gets off to a good start in WorldBench, trailing the 74GB Raptor by a single point. Note that the 7200.8 is also two points ahead of its most direct competitor, the DiamondMax 10. Let’s break down WorldBench’s overall score into individual test results to see where the 7200.8 gains its advantage.

Multimedia editing and encoding

MusicMatch Jukebox

Windows Media Encoder

Adobe Premiere

VideoWave Movie Creator

Scores are essentially tied through most of WorldBench’s multimedia editing and encoding tests, although the field spreads a little in the Adobe Premiere test. There, the 7200.8 falls to third place behind the Raptor WD740GD and DiamondMax 10.

 

Image processing

Adobe Photoshop

ACDSee PowerPack

Our hard drives don’t appear to affect performance in Photoshop, but ACDSee is a different story. Again, the 7200.8 comes in just behind the DiamondMax 10.

Multitasking and office applications

Microsoft Office

Mozilla

Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder

The Barracuda 7200.8 doesn’t separate itself from the field in any of WorldBench’s office or multitasking tests…

Other applications

Winzip

Nero

But the drive performs quite well in Nero and WinZip. In both cases, the 7200.8 beats out the DiamondMax 10; in Nero, it even schools the fastest Raptor.

 

Boot and load times
To test system boot and game level load times, we busted out our trusty stopwatch.

Surprisingly, the old Barracuda 7200.7 tops the field in our system boot time test. All drives are within a few seconds of each other, though.

The 7200.8 brings up the rear in our DOOM 3 and Far Cry level load tests, which is a little disappointing.

 

File Copy Test
File Copy Test is a pseudo-real-world benchmark that times how long it takes to create, read, and copy files in various test patterns. File copying is tested twice: once with the source and target on the same partition, and once with the target on a separate partition. Scores are presented in MB/sec.

Although the 7200.8 definitely improves on the 7200.7’s performance with FC-Test’s file creation test, the DiamondMax 10 and Raptor WD740GD are consistently faster.

The Barracuda 7200.8 fares slightly better in the read test, trading punches with the DiamondMax 10 through each test pattern. Both drives come very close to topping the WD740GD.

In FC-Test’s copy and partition copy tests, the 7200.8 hits its stride and is largely faster than the DiamondMax 10. It even manages to best the WD740GD in a number of test patterns, particularly in the partition copy test.

 

IOMeter – Transaction rate
IOMeter presents a best-case scenario for command queuing, so the Raptors have a slight disadvantage scaling performance under higher loads.

Of course, the Raptors have 10K-RPM spindle speeds on their side, which makes all the difference in the world in IOMeter. Disappointingly, the Barracuda 7200.8 is actually slower than its predecessor. The 7200.8 is also generally slower than the DiamondMax 10, particularly at higher loads where the Maxtor drive’s performance scales more aggressively.

 

IOMeter – Response time

The 7200.8 also falls behind when we look at IOMeter response times. The ‘cuda largely keeps up with the read-dominated web server test pattern, but not otherwise.

 

IOMeter – CPU utilization

At least the 7200.8’s IOMeter CPU utilization is low. Of course, CPU utilization is pretty low for all the drives.

 

HD Tach
We tested HD Tach with the benchmark’s full variable zone size setting.

The 7200.8 bounces back with a strong performance in HD Tach’s transfer rate tests. It’s easily faster than the DiamondMax 10 and second only to the Raptor WD740GD. Also notice that the 7200.8 is much faster than the 7200.7.

Seagate can’t match the DiamondMax 10’s read burst speed, but the 7200.8 comes close.

Despite having a quicker access time on paper, the 7200.8 fails to beat the 7200.7 in HD Tach’s random access time test. Both Barracudas best the DiamondMax 10, but none of the 7,200-RPM drives have a chance against the Raptors.

The margin for error in HD Tach’s CPU utilization test is +/- 2%, making the slight variation in scores a virtual tie.

 

Noise levels
Noise levels were measured with an Extech 407727 Digital Sound Level meter 1″ from the drives at idle and under an HD Tach seek load.

The Barracuda 7200.8 isn’t any quieter than the 7200.7, especially under a seek load. Note that the DiamondMax 10 is almost three decibels quieter under load.

Power consumption
Power consumption was measured for the entire system, sans monitor, at the outlet. I used the same idle and load environments as the noise level tests.

Power consumption is pretty close, especially under load. Despite the drive’s specs, the 7200.8’s power consumption at idle is actually higher than its predecessor.

 

Conclusions
Our benchmark results were mixed, making it hard to unreservedly recommend the Barracuda 7200.8 over the other drives in the test group. For example, the drive’s comparably weak performance in IOMeter, where it’s not only slower than the DiamondMax 10 but also the Barracuda 7200.7, suggests that the latest ‘cuda may not be the best drive for server or multi-user environments. The drive’s IOMeter performance is certainly disappointing, and I can’t help but wonder whether the drive would have fared better with 16MB of cache.

Uninspiring IOMeter performance aside, the 7200.8 largely excelled in FC-Test and WorldBench. Those results make a strong case for the drive’s suitability for desktop applications, although I’d be more enthusiastic if seek noise levels were a little lower and load times a little faster.

Of course, there’s more to the Barracuda 7200.8 than just its performance. First, the drive is available in capacities up to 400GB. Maxtor’s DiamondMax 10 tops out at only 300GB, and while Hitachi Global Storage has 400GB drives available, they don’t support Native Command Queuing. The Barracuda 7200.8 also boasts a five-year warranty that’s unmatched by 7,200-RPM drives from other manufacturers. Depending on your priorities, the extra warranty coverage may make up for the drive’s slightly higher noise levels and lackluster IOMeter performance. I know it does for me. 

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