Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB Hard Drive
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SiSoft Sandra
SiSoft Sandra has two tests to determine hard drive speed: read performance and write performance. I formatted the 7200.11 with one partition and ran both tests three times, to ensure I was getting consistent results. Here’s what Sandra came back with:

Read Performance:

  • Drive Index 93 MB/s
  • Random Access Time 12.5 ms
Write Performance:
  • Drive Index 93 MB/s
  • Random Access Time 5 ms
These results may be surprising to those of you who’ve read the Hitachi review – the drive index is far lower than the 125 MB/s the same version of Sandra reported when benchmarking that drive. However, after testing the Barracuda 7200.11 I reran the tests on the Hitachi and consistently came back with drive index results of 78 MB/s. I can’t account for the reason behind the change, but I think it’s safe to say that according to SiSoft Sandra, the Barracuda 7200.11 is the faster 1 TB drive.

The Barracuda, loaded as a secondary drive in the testing computer.

The results of SiSoft Sandra’s Read Performance benchmark.


Passmark Software PerformanceTest
A second benchmark for comparison purposes: Passmark Software’s PerformanceTest. PerformanceTest runs one complete read and write test on the drive and returns four results:
  • Sequential Read: 70.8 MB/s
  • Sequential Write: 58.0 MB/s
  • Random Seek + RW: 3.79 MB/s
  • Disk Mark: 479.5
The results of SiSoft Sandra’s Write Performance benchmark.


According to PassMark’s documentation, the sequential read and write tests create a 200 MB file and read it back in 16 KB blocks, while the Random Seek + RW test combines the two tests with a random seek test to test out the drive’s seek time. The Disk Mark is PerformanceMark’s overall evaluation of the hard disk. The value is relative, so there’s no top level of the scale; it’s best as a comparison with other drives. Because I’m sure you’re all curious, here are the results from the Hitachi 7K1000 drive:
  • Sequential Read: 69.3 MB/s
  • Sequential Write: 62.8 MB/s
  • Random Seek + RW: 3.87 MB/s
  • Disk Mark: 491.9
An interesting mix comes out of the comparison: the Barracuda 7200.11 wins in some areas (particularly the sequential write), comes up relatively the same in others (view the nearly identical sequential read and random seek scores), but scores lower overall in PerformanceMark’s sum-up Disk Mark score. Compared to the Sandra results, the differences between the two drives are not nearly as drastic, and PerformanceMark gives only a slight edge to the older 1 TB drive.

The results of PassMark’s PerformanceTest.


Conclusions
Overall, the results are inconclusive: depending on the benchmark, Seagate’s entry into the 1 TB drive market either competes with or completely outperforms the older Hitachi 7K1000 hard drive. Either way, however, the consumer wins: excellent performance from a massive hard drive that gives you a lot of bang for the buck. Check your prices first to see if the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 is your best deal, but definitely highly recommended.



Highs
Ties or outperforms the competition; 32 cents per gigabyte cost; Price per gigabyte is equally equitable for both 750 GB and 1 TB drives.

Lows
500 GB version provides best bang for buck value; No feature that really sets the drive above the crowd.

Final verdict
Seagate’s newest hard drive continues the company’s tradition of competitive hard drives.

90%

Nov 9, 2007

Review by Eric Hanson.

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