Seagate and Western Digital 1TB Drives: Improved and Green
by Dave Robinet on November 26, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
PCMark Vantage Continued...
Remaining true to what we've come to expect in our previous tests, PCMark Vantage shows us that neither the WD Caviar GP nor the Seagate 7200.11 are performance leaders. While the results they turn in are respectable, they are no threat to the drives sitting atop our charts.
Of interest, the Seagate performed poorly in both benchmarks that had higher write operation content. We have re-run the tests several times, and continue to see the Seagate 7200.11 drive turn in sub-par results in these types of tests. We saw this trend continue not only in PCMark Vantage, but also throughout the entire test suite for this article. The results indicate that the write performance problems with the 7200.10 are still present with this series update.
Vista Startup / Shutdown
As in our Windows XP test, we feel it is important to include Windows Vista startup and shutdown figures. Given the amount of suspend-related problems that Microsoft is still working out with Vista, we will exclude hibernation and resume scores from our current test methodology. We will re-evaluate this after Service Pack 1 is available for general use.
Our startup timer begins when we select Vista from the OS Choices menu at startup. We end when the login screen appears. For the shutdown test, we turn off Vista with no applications running. We run the test three times, and take the average result of the three scores.
The Western Digital GP is clearly slower than any other drive in the startup tests while it performs better in the shutdown test. The Seagate 7200.11 has results again at the bottom of this elite pack of drives, but with better performance than the WD drive in the startup test and lower performance in the shutdown test.
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Luminair - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
"Operating System Stated Capacity"Lets be clear so maybe you can be clear in the next article.
The IEC, IEEE, CPIM, and NIST define Giga (G) as 1,000,000,000 or one billion.
The same standards organizations define Gibi (Gi) as 1,073,741,824.
As such, by standard definitions, these hard drives are in fact 1000GB, or 1000 gigabytes.
Your "Operating System Stated Capacity" really means "Windows Explorer Capacity". Other operating systems don't get it wrong like Windows does. So if you report this wrong information at all, you should make the truth known -- that Windows is well known to WRONGLY report GiB as GB (and MiB for MB and so on).
Those drives have 1000 gigabytes of space. Windows Explorer and solid state memory companies report the space incorrectly.
Luminair - Friday, November 30, 2007 - link
These guys get it right :) http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?menu=browser&ar...">http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?menu=bro...&ima...valherumk2 - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
Looks like another review of the 7200.11 drive where it appears the reviewer didn't remove the jumper limiting it to SATA 1. Interface bandwidth burst rate is over 200MB/s on my 7200.11 with the jumper removed.Zap - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
That's also the first thing that came to my mine... "dude forgot to remove the jumper."Zap - Thursday, November 29, 2007 - link
That's also the first thing that came to my mine... "dude forgot to remove the jumper."100proof - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Dave, is there a reason that Samsung's 1TB drivewas not included in this review? The drive is
difficult to obtain in the US but is available in
other countries at this point in time. Tomshardware
has already posted a review, and there is also
discussion taking place on storagereview.com
Tomshardware Review of Samsung F1 1TB
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_ove...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_ove...
Storagereview discussion of F1 Series
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopi...">http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopi...
Dave Robinet - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
It's a matter of availability, not of lack of interest. We do like the latest Samsung offerings - they simply didn't have a drive shipped to us in the lab in time for the article.If they get us a 1TB drive for us to have a look at, then we'll gladly put it in a future article.
Thanks for reading!
quanta - Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - link
In the meantime, Tom's hardware did the Samsung Spinpoint F1 review[1], which showed it has great non-server performance. In fact, it outruns WD Raptor WD150ADFD in some tests. Power consumption is between 'cuda 7200.11 and Caviar GP.[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_ove...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/21/samsung_ove...
piasabird - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
You get a lower overall price per Gig by using two 500 gb drives.Googer - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
With a pair of 500GB hard drives, you do not get it in a single volume, power consumption increases, RAID 0 decreases reliability and increases error possibilities.The fact that it takes two drive bays is a sore thumb to those who build small form factor multi-media systems with only one drive bay that will also funtion as a Digtal Video Recorder.
I should also add, this "GREEN" drive is ideal for a TiVO upgrade due to it's large size, quiet operation, low heat, and noise output.