Raptor WD740 10,000rpm & 300gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.8

TailsNZ · Post by **TailsNZ** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:22 am

It's been a while since my last post... in a few months time though, I'm going to the US (I live in NZ right now) to stay with friends for a year. So I'm creating a new PC

My current one was made with the help of this site and forum to be pretty quiet

For my next one though, I'm looking at sacrafising some quietness for extra performance, buying these two:

74gb Western Digital Raptor WD740 SATA (10,000 RPM)
300gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS SATA

I'd use the Raptor, split in partitions for my Windows XP, Programs, Swap File and Scratch Disks. The Barracuda would be for everything else.

They seem good choices, but for sound, what do you think? Has anyone had experience with the WD740 Raptor's noise levels?

tay · Post by **tay** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 4:28 am

Tech report review shows that the 7200.8 is junk and you'd be better of with a .7 or a Diamondmax or even a WD.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 5:08 am

I've just bought a Raptor, and its seek noise is audible but not intrusive (mounted in the stock Antec SLK3700AMB drive bay). It has a sort of crunchy, "mechanical" sound which I actually quite like, but I'm sure some sort of decent soft mounting method would get rid of most of this if it bothers you. Bearing whine is non-existent, at least with my sample.

Incidentally, partitioning the Raptor in the manner you describe would only harm performance by increasing seek times. It would be far better for your purposes to keep it as a single volume. Furthermore, if you're talking about a Photoshop scratch file, that ideally needs to be on a different physical disk from the Windows paging file...

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:04 am

tay wrote:Tech report review shows that the 7200.8 is junk and you'd be better of with a .7 or a Diamondmax or even a WD.

How on Earth did you come up with the word "junk" for the 7200.8 from that review? Up until the IOMeter tests, it was probably slightly ahead in performance of the DiamondMax 10. Even then, it was only a few percent worse that the DM10 in the IOMeter tests. Who cares about synthetic benchmark tests anyway? In the real world tests this drive even competes pretty well with the 10,000RPM drives (it certainly doesn't get blown away by them).

In terms of noise, yes, the 7200.8 is not the best. I have a 400GB version and it is definitely not quiet at idle. It doesn't whine --- it sounds like the "whoosh" that a fairly quiet fan makes. A little louder than a Nexus 92mm at 12V, I'd say. As far as seek noise, I have it sitting on 1/2" Sorbothane strips and I don't hear the seeks at all in my fairly quiet system.

Your characterization of the 7200.8 being "junk" is just plain silly. There's no way you can conclude this from that review. Certainly, it is a little bit disappointing that it wasn't much of an improvement on the 7200.7 models, but for that amount of storage, it's a pretty good tradeoff. Your negative "spin" on this review does an unjustified disservice to the 7200.8.

tay · Post by **tay** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:17 am

Ok I take that back, its not junk. It just sucks compared to other drives this generation. Although the 5 year warranty is nice.
- its louder than comparable drives
- no AAM
- iometer is the only decent benchmark there since hdtach sucks and worldbench scores are within 1% of each other. It finishes last in the system boot/load time and iometer.

(please dont make fun of the speed of my Barracuda V

)

TailsNZ · Post by **TailsNZ** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:14 pm

Ah thanks, it sounds like the hard drives aren't too bad on the noise levels, being compared to quiet fans, and yeah if I don't like the crunchy "mechanical" noise I could try suspending it or such.

Looking at the reviews there, all those numbers seem so close together in many cases... like the Diamond10 review said, I guess hard drives evolve very slowly in everything but storage size. I have to wonder if you'd really notice the difference in drive performances in every day use.

Oh. Photoshop scratch disk is what I meant yeah. For just a single use, out of all the different choices what would you recommend would see the most everyday improvements by putting it on the Raptor? Like Windows XP, Windows XP with Program Files, also Page File too? Actually I might make a topic for that one too.

I do lots of desktop work / surfing / writing / excel etc... but also PhotoShop with many images, levels etc... and 3D modelling & animation with Lightwave. Often downloading TV shows from Shareaze in the background 24/7. That's mostly it, I leave games to Xbox and such.

Edit - Posted that as a topic here http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=20879

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:47 pm

In an ideal world, the Photoshop scratch file would have a disk all to itself, independent of the data files and the OS, but that's probably a bit extravagant for most people. If you're a serious user though and you often deal with large images and many layers, you'd definitely benefit from having it on a different disk from the OS and paging file.

In your situation, I'd use the Raptor (one single partition) for the OS, apps and paging file, create a smallish partition (maybe 10GB or so) at the start of the 300GB data drive for the PS scratch file, and use the rest of that drive for data.

It's a bit off topic as you say though, and setting up Photoshop optimally seems to be a bit of a black art in itself...this is a good link (it's a Mac user's site, but the techniques apply equally to PCs). If you also have a look on the storagereview.com forums for partitioning strategies, swapfile placement, Photoshop etc you'll find plenty of info from people who know much more about this stuff than I do...

Hope this helps...

edit: lol...sorry, I didn't realise you'd started a new thread, so this belongs over there...

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:44 pm

You might want to consider a 320GB Western Digital Caviar. It should have better performance (until the Raptor, Caviars were known for pushing into SCSI territory) and it is very quiet (especially with AAM enabled

).

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:45 pm

tay wrote:Ok I take that back, its not junk. It just sucks compared to other drives this generation. Although the 5 year warranty is nice.
- its louder than comparable drives
- no AAM
- iometer is the only decent benchmark there since hdtach sucks and worldbench scores are within 1% of each other. It finishes last in the system boot/load time and iometer.

(please dont make fun of the speed of my Barracuda V )

You're still being overly dramatic. It doesn't "suck" compared to the others. Performance-wise, if you take the whole set of benchmarks from this review, it only finishes last place in a few of the benchmarks. It's absolutely in the same class as all of these hard drives. It even beat one of the Raptors in boot time. It most definitely does not "suck". And, if you want a 400GB drive, you only have a couple of choices right now -- the 7200.8 and the Hitachi. I believe the Seagate outperforms the Hitachi pretty handily.

That said, there are many reports that the External 7200.8s have a rather high rate of failure. This is definitely a reason to avoid them, but I haven't heard that it's a problem with the internal units.

|Romeo| · Post by **|Romeo|** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:19 pm

I have several (4) 7200.8s I also have a couple of 7200.7s, and one V. All are SATA. The 8s are noticably better for video work, the V and 7 seem similar (subjectively). Given the platter density, and these benchmarks, I'd say the 8 is better than anything else in its price range for video work right now (DM 10 is slower for large files, Raptor/Savvio/Cheetah is too small and expensive when running this number of drives).

Noise wise, the V is obviously the best, but I can't hear much (or any -but there are really too many drives for doing this now) difference between the 7s & 8s when idling. Seeks for the 8s seem louder, but since they store video, the drives don't do so much seeking. Hard mounted (ran out of room; CM stacker on order for installation in closet

), the 8s are very bad, soft mounted they improve noticably. The 7s I have soft mounted, but they seem surprisingly loud

The V is at or below the noise floor in the room 90% of the time now, so I just can't hear it (the noise floor is mostly from the video machines that are producing all this video).

I had a couple of Spinpoints a while ago, but they vibrated at exactly the wrong frequency for the case they were in (my luck is legendary); so I replaced them with the 7s, which apparently vibrate at a different frequency, because it's a lot quieter with them.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 4:36 pm

Another HD to have a look at is the new 250 GB Samsung, a 400 GB will follow later.

IMHO I think the reason for the discussion if the newest Seagate sucks/is junk/average.... is that some of us expected a lot from the company who once made the Barracuda IV. While I don't think the new one is a top performer in any way nowadays, I must say I really expected a return to more low noise HD's (after the 7200.7) earlier.

I guess the new Seagate is quite average, but still disappointing for many of us just because it's a Seagate. In theory, if it was about a new Hitachi (performing just like a 7200.8) for instance we wouldn't even bother to discuss it.

TailsNZ · Post by **TailsNZ** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:45 am

My friend here keeps telling me to avoid Seagate, that they are well known as cheap hard drives with bad data retention. It seems there's some Seagate dislike here too?

Hitachi? I saw (I think it was them?) announced that 500gb hard drive today... nice! Expensive, haha, but nice.

Sounds like I should look up more reviews of other hard drives though yeah. Seagate's have always been good for me, and the 5 year warranty and great review on Toms Hardware made me go for that one. But I'll check out these too yeah...

250 GB Samsung
320 GB Western Digital Caviar

For the WD vs Seagate, this comes from Tom's Hardware (lots of, well, numbers!):

----------------------------------------------------------------

Random Access Time (ms)

WD Caviar 320 - 13.3
Seagate 300 - 15
Seagate 400 - 16.5

Interface Bandwidth (MB/S)

Seagate 400 - 120.5
Seagate 300 - 120.2
WD Caviar 320 - 80.5

Read Transfer (average MB/S)

Seagate 400 - 56.9
WD Caviar 320 - 54.5
Seagate 300 - 54.4

Write Transfer (average MB/S)

Seagate 400 - 56.2
WD Caviar 320 - 54.3
Seagate 300 - 52.8

Highend App Performance (KB/s)

WD Caviar 320 - 43000
Seagate 400 - 40900
Seagate 300 - 40300

Temp (C)

WD Caviar 320 - 41
Seagate 400 - 46
Seagate 300 - 47

Warranty

Seagate - 5 years
WD Caviar - 3 years

----------------------------------------------------------------

Really close in reading / writing. Big difference in Access Time, and Interface Bandwidth, and Medium difference in Highend App Performance, Temp and Warranty. Haven't been able to find reviews of the 250 GB Samsung yet.

If Interface Bandwidth is so much higher, but actual transfer speeds are the same... it makes me wonder what Interface Bandwidth actually effects, if anything?

All so similar though, it's probably hard to go wrong with either... WD does look like it has the edge though.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 3:15 pm

Here's an Anandtech review of the Seagates compared to a wide variety of other drives http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=2396&p=1

Not too much in the way of acoustics, but the performance numbers are interesting. The Seagates were among the best performers in the "real world" tests. So much for "they're junk" and "they suck"...

tay · Post by **tay** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:57 pm

Pauli wrote:Here's an Anandtech review of the Seagates compared to a wide variety of other drives http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=2396&p=1

Not too much in the way of acoustics, but the performance numbers are interesting. The Seagates were among the best performers in the "real world" tests. So much for "they're junk" and "they suck"...

*sigh* OK!! They are not as good as competing drives? Is that OK?
A little bit of help when reading the graphs, I only include the difference in the 2 drives with the winner indicated:

File System tests
============
File zip : DM10 by <1%
File zip 2 : tie
File zip 3 : DM10 by <1%
File zip 4 : .8 by <1%

Copy folder : DM10 by 20%
Copy folder2 : DM10 by 10%

Application load times
===============
(summation of times) : DM10 by <1.5%

Game load times
============
Doom3 : Seagate by 11%
HL2 : Seagate by 12%
C&C : tie

Multitasking - Real World :
==================
(single time) : DM10 by 10%

The IOMeter tests are generally won by the DM10 handily. All drives are quite close in performance. The fact remains that there is no performance OR acoustic reason to buy Seagate 7200.8 series over the DM10. Many people have reported good results with the DM10. Considering the reputation of Seagate's previous series, the not so good (there I didnt say poor or junk) 7200.8s are hardly worthy of attention. Again I use junky drives myself WDJBs and a MaxlineII, but I move them to a closet with a gigE connection to get around this.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:23 am

storagereview.com isn't as happy with the drive as they expected to be:

"Seagate's Barracuda 7200.8 combines the latest in areal density with the standard SATA form-factor and interface. Unfortunately, while the capacity is there, the performance is not. The 7200.8 lags significantly behind the latest offerings from Maxtor and Hitachi in both single-user and multi-user instances."

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... 2AS_8.html

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:16 am

Thanks Tay, for restating your position in a less harsh way toward the 7200.8. I just felt that your loose use of the terms "junk" and "it sucks" was doing a major disservice to anyone that read this thread. Opinions from a respected member of this forum (such as yourself) can be very influential.

The IOMeter tests are generally won by the DM10 handily. All drives are quite close in performance.

The 7200.8 is the performance equal of competing drives in "real world" tests. It even beat a 10,000RPM Raptor on a couple of tests. I don't give a hoot about artificial HD benchmarks.

The fact remains that there is no performance OR acoustic reason to buy Seagate 7200.8 series over the DM10.

Wrong. A 400GB version of the 7200.8 is available whereas the DM10 does not offer a drive of this capacity. Seagate also offers a 5-year warranty on the 7200.8.

Considering the reputation of Seagate's previous series, the not so good (there I didnt say poor or junk) 7200.8s are hardly worthy of attention.

The reputation of the 7200.7 is at least as good as the Maxtor DM+9 or WD JB series. I'm not sure where you came up with this opinion. Sure, everyone was disappointed that the 7200.7 no longer supported AAM, but that's the only negative I can think of. Softmounted in the case, this is really not that big a deal (although in a Tivo unit this is a deal-killer).

In any case, for 300GB drives, I agree that the DM10 or the new WD is probably a better choice than the 7200.8. The 7200.8 does not support AAM and has a relatively loud idle "whoosh" noise. The seek noise is no worse than that of the Samsung 160GB in my system when mounted on 1/2" Sorbothane strips.

Believe it or not, I have no bias against any of the major HD manufacturers. In fact, I'm a brand whore -- I usually just buy the drive that is the best deal at the time when I need one (as long as it's an FDB drive).

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:14 am

I just felt that your loose use of the terms "junk" and "it sucks" was doing a major disservice to anyone that read this thread.

I agree that generally people should clarify their positions beyond using blanket remarks like 'it sucks', but I don't necessarily think it is a disservice. Anybody who goes by one person's opinion deserves to have trouble. Also, a community of silent enthusiasts would obviously not be the most objective source of criticism of hard drives.

That's why there are sites like Anandtech. This forum is for those interested in silence, and if the newer Seagate model is not as quiet as its predecessor, in this context it sucks, and saying so is no disservice. That it sucks as far as noise production compared to the previous model
(or other such harddrives) is implied.

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:46 am

FWIW I would not take any stock in a drive review from Tom's Hardware or Anandtech. They both rely far too much on synthetic benchmarks that have little relation to realworld performance.

Storagereview is another story. They thouroughly explain their methodology, and while they do use synthetic benchmarks, those are custom-created benchmarks designed to replicate real world situations. They are one of the few sites that I genuinely trust to provide objective information. Among other things, they were the first site I saw to definitively destroy the idea that RAID0 improves performance for standard computing tasks.

For noise concerns, they are not up to SPCR scratch, but for pure performance, I go nowhere else.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:00 pm

tay & Pauli, please take it easy. You have different thoughts and it's not likely that you will make the other person change his opinion. Not much to do about it, and yes, I will stay out of it from now on so you don't have to tell me to do so. Just calm down.

tay · Post by **tay** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 6:04 pm

Mats wrote:tay & Pauli, please take it easy. You have different thoughts and it's not likely that you will make the other person change his opinion.

Things look worse than they are Mats. I think we are a lot closer to each others point of view now than when we started. So its all good.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:59 am

Yeah, I think tay and I are cool, Mats. I tried to convey in my last post that I think tay is an excellent contributor to this messageboard.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:39 am

Before this thread turns into a giant spat...

The Raptor 74 GB, I have two in RAID 0, and my findings are essentially the same as what everybody has said - They do have an audible seek, but it isn't super loud. To me it sounds like a low rumbling, and as with low frequency noises, is not obtrusive.

As for the 7200.8, I am not really pleased with them, although it may be due to my experience - I tested a 300 GB External Seagate which houses a 300 GB 7200.8. Because the enclosure is mainly plastic with lots of vents on the top/bottom, there was quite a bit of noise. In addition, the drive made strange noises every so often. Again, it might be just be coincidence. I would say, like the people above, to get a 7200.7, which I have, and I do like very much ;P