Disclaimer
I build computers for friends and family as well as some to sell on ebay as I find parts at a reasonable price. My own PC is a Do It Yourself (DIY) that I am constantly upgrading and adding onto. As such, I have some experience with PC’s and their components, and hope to share some of that knowledge with others. I hope this review helps you to decide whether or not the 120GB Seagate hard drive with 2 MB cache is for you, and if it does, please leave me a friendly comment.
Why did I buy this drive?
I had built my own computer and had an 80 GB Western Digital Special Edition installed and operating as my sole hard drive. I was running Windows XP Home edition, and wanted to try out Linux. I had researched a little and discovered that Mandrake Linux was the Linux version to run for beginners, as it most closely resembles the ease of installation that Windows has made famous. However, I did not want to shrink my existing partition and create a new partition solely for Mandrake (call me lazy, call me a chicken), and I also wanted to be able to backup the important files that I had in my Windows hard drive in case of sudden death of the existing 80GB drive.
I decided that I wanted something large enough to back up the complete existing drive, which was 80 GB, with additional capacity for a partition for Mandrake. That meant that I needed to purchase at least 100 GB of capacity. After looking extensively at the websites of choice, I found the 120GB Barracuda 7200 RPM with 2 MB cache on sale after rebates for $89.99. That was a pretty darn good deal six months ago, so I ordered it from CompUSA.com.
Specifications
This hard drive is one of the quality offerings from Seagate in their value line. It has the smaller cache size of
2 MB and turns at a speed of
7200 RPM, which decreases seek time and increases performance.
Some other notable specifications include the seek time, which is 8.5ms average. This is better than the Western Digital I previously had with a seek time of 8.9ms, but then again, what is 0.4 milliseconds? Does that really make that much difference? We will see.
The computer uses the Ultra ATA/100 interface type, which is capable of burst read speeds of 100MB/s. This uses the mature technology of parallel ATA cables as opposed to the faster, newer, serial ATA technology. I may buy a SATA drive in the near future…
One other notable note on the Seagate Barracuda’s is that they are capable of withstanding 350 Gs of shock while not operating. What does this mean? You should be able to drop it while installing and not worry about the valuable platters shattering. However, I still would not recommend this practice.
Purchase
As I said, I purchased this to put in my own computer as a secondary drive and backup. I had a potentially bad situation with a 40GB Maxtor which was returning errors after Checkdisk and isolating portions of the disk due to surface errors. I had replaced this with the Western Digital, but it still made me nervous. I had backed up all my important files, but that soon outgrew the 780MB capacity of my CD-RW. At this point I could buy a DVD+/-RW or a new hard drive. The choice was easy based on the fact that the cost of the rewritable DVD unit I wanted was well over $200 while the Seagate was $89.99 after rebate. In addition to this, I would have to buy media for the DVD drive, and I wanted a second drive for Mandrake Linux anyway.
I saw the drive on CompUSA.com with a rebate and thought that it was the right time to buy. The 120 GB capacity was exactly what I was looking for, as I could completely back up the 80GB and have 40GB left for Mandrake.
Installation
Once the box arrived, I filled out the rebate form, cut out the UPC and sent that in. Always do that first, as if you get caught up and forget about for a few days, you may have lost yourself the rebate money!
Once that was taken care of, I opened the box and found the complementary software disk, the spare IDE cable, the installation screws, and the installation guide. The only part I needed was the drive itself, as I have installed several drives and have more cables and screws than I know what to do with!
I installed the drive on the secondary IDE cable with the jumper in the slave position, as I didn’t want both hard drives to use the same cable. Having both hard drives on the same cable can reduce performance somewhat, as both drives use the same cable to transfer data back and forth to the processor. It is better from a performance standpoint to have one on each cable, although to tell you the truth I don’t know if you would ever notice the difference. In any case, I connected the power, fastened the drive into place with screws and booted the computer.
I then went into the BIOS and set the booting priority to CD and put in my Windows XP disk. I then formatted 80 GB of the 120 as NTFS file system, so I could then use that capacity as backup if desired. I then turned off the computer and started back up, but this time with the Mandrake Linux CD inserted. I formatted a 5 GB partition as suggested by the program and was off to the races.
Dimensions
The dimensions of this drive are similar to every other 3.5” drive on the market, but if you are unfamiliar with that, here they are
Height: 1 inch
Depth: 5.78 inches
Width: 4 inches
The weight of the unit is also similar to other drives of this capacity, weighing in at 1.4 bs. They are easy to handle and install.
Performance
I have a new sick habit of stress testing every component I put in my computer. Being that there is not a stress test I know of out there, the first thing I did once the drive was in and running was to run HDTach 2.61 to see if it lived up to its billing. HDTach 2.61 will test the read/write speeds of the drives and report maximum, minimum, and average speeds. The Seagate turned in numbers of :
60.4 MB/s sustained burst
24.7 minimum read
46.7 MB/s average sustained read
The documentation stated that I should expect:
Burst Speed of up to 100MB/s
32 to 58 MB/s average sustained read
I didn’t reach the holy grail of 100MB/s, but I am right in there where I would expect with the average! In comparison, my Western Digital 80GB SE with 8 MB cache actually underperformed this drive by a small margin. Not noticeable in performance, but still, it is less!
This drive is quieter on paper than other drives I have had. The reported decibel production for this drive is between 25 and 35 dB depending on what the drive is doing. The Western Digital is rated louder than this in the literature, but then I do not notice it. I have six cooling fans including the aftermarket heatsink on the processor allowing me to overclock, so this is really not a considerable addition in noise level.
Reliability
I cannot speak to more than my own experiences in the area of reliability, but I have had great luck with this drive. The Seagate drive has been in my PC for a little over six months and been repartitioned several times. First thing I did was realize that I didn’t want the learning curve with Linux, so I deleted that partition off the drive. Then I had a corruption in my copy of Windows and had to run a complete install on the new drive, transfer data across, and reinstall the Windows on the old drive. I then repartitioned the drive with a Windows partition, a major utility partition and data partition. This is working great for me now, and the backup is my WD 80 GB drive. I run Checkdisk on the drives once a month and defragment them once a week and I have never had any issues with corruption or errors with this disk.
Warranty
So what happens if the drive does begin to go out on you? Seagate offers a three year warranty on this product. Strangely enough, the 80GB option in the same series only comes with a 1 year warranty. Not sure why, but I would step up into the 120GB size for the additional warranty. Besides that, we all know you are going to need that extra 40GB at some point, right?
Conclusion
Seagate has always been known as a quality supplier, and they are recently moving into the secondary market to compete with the likes of Western Digital and Maxtor for some of the enthusiast and DIY market. They offer a very good product which meets my needs and are competing very well in the pricing. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a new drive.
Benchmarks, for those that are interested
Interested in knowing how your CPU stacks up in benchmarks? Here are some links to benchmarks I use:
Pifast: Pi Fast is a program that tests your CPU by loading it. It will calculate the value of Pi to as many digits as you want and then report to you the time it takes to do so. The lower the better. My current best score is 43 seconds to calculate to 10,000,000 digits.
http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/PiProgram/pifast.html
3dMark benchmarks: There are four, to be exact, that I use from 3dMark. 3dMark2001SE and 3d2003 are graphics engine benchmarks, while PCMark2002 and PCMark2004 are benchmarks for the CPU, Memory and Harddrive.
http://www.futuremark.com/
Aquamark: This is simply one that will benchmark your graphics engine.
http://www.aquamark3.com/
UT2003: Unreal Tournament 2003 is a graphics engine test as well. It is also a fee downloadable game that is pretty awesome.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/
SisSoft Sandra, a multipurpose benchmark used all around the industry:
http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=
HDTach 2.61, a utility to test read/write of disks:
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
Finally, Prime95: Prime 95 is not a benchmark, but a test for stability of your system. You run this program for an extended period of time, and it will torture your CPU and RAM. If you are at all unstable, this will find it before anything else.
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Other reviews of interest
My Motherboard, the IS7-E, based on the I865-PE chipset:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124412268164
My memory, Corsair PC4000PRO XMS series:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124563984004
My other hard drive, the Western Digital 80GB SE:
http://www.epinions.com/content_126769204868
My LCD monitor, the NEC MultiSync LCD1760V:
http://www.epinions.com/content_119510109828
My PDA, the Palm Tungsten C:
http://www.epinions.com/content_118730559108
A good electronics superstore on the web, BestBuy.com:
http://www.epinions.com/content_126474882692
Another decent electronics superstore on the web, CompUSA.com
http://www.epinions.com/content_125633334916
My best friend, Newegg.com:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124769439364
I hope this helps you to make your decision, and please rate or leave a comment. Feel free to write as well!
