Seagate 750GB Barracuda ES
Test System & Sandra 2005
For testing the Barracuda ES SATA HDD, we used an Athlon 64 3800+ processor on an MSI K8N Platinum nForce 4 SLI motherboard. We also used 1GB of low latency Corsair DDR (TWINX1024-3200XL) RAM and a 120GB Maxtor SATA hard drive. The 750GB Barracuda ES was compared to a 750GB Barracuda 7200.10, 500GB Barracuda 7200.9, and a 500GB Hitach Deskstar 7K500.
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Motherboard - Video Card - Memory - Audio - Hard Drives -
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Hardware Used: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ MSI K8N Platinum nForce4 SLI chipset Radeon X1800 XL 1024MB Corsair XMS PC3200 RAM CAS 2 Integrated on board Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s Hitach Deskstar 7K500 500GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s Western Digital WD5000KS 500GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB - 7,200RPM - SATA 3Gb/s |
Operating System - Chipset Drivers - DirectX - Video Drivers - |
Relevant Software: Windows XP Professional SP2 nForce Drivers v6.82 DirectX 9.0c ATI Catalyst v6.8 Benchmarks Used: SiSoftware Sandra 2005 Futuremark PCMark05 HD Tach 3.0.1 |
We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA File System benchmark module. This test's method of hard disk performance analysis is what we would consider a "light duty" consumer-level evaluation tool. The folks in IT would have your head for recommending a drive based solely on SANDRA File System test results. However, the benchmark is a popular utility within the performance PC enthusiast community, and it does provide a decent quick glance at high-level throughput characteristics of the total storage subsystem, which of course includes HDD controllers and other associated system components.
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Looking at the results from SiSoft Sandra's read tests, we find Seagate walking away with the top three performing drives. Here, the Barracuda line of drives offer the highest random, sequential, and buffered read performance of the crop of drives being tested. The enterprise Barracuda ES is neck and neck with the nearly identical Barracuda 7200.10 consumer drive with any variance easily falling within the test's margin of error.
Despite a strong effort by the Hitachi 7K500, the two latest Seagate Barracuda drives again reign supreme in SiSoft Sandra. It is somewhat interesting to see the enterprise Barracuda ES trail the Barracuda 7200.10 by the slightest of margins. Regardless, both drives are showcasing stellar random, sequential, and buffered read performance.
Based upon the exceptional performance witnessed within the discrete read and write tests above, it is no surprise to see that the two latest Barracuda drives obtained the highest overall drive ranking by SiSoft Sandra for this group. Again, albeit by the slimmest of margins the consumer-based Barracuda 7200.10 scored higher than the enterprise-class Barracuda ES.
