1. Features
Seagate is the biggest hard disk manufacturer. As a result, the majority of PC users have used one the company's hard disk drives including us. We have many of their models in our labs and we hav ebeen always satisfied with their performance and price. Recently Seagate announced the 12th series of the Barracuda har disk drives, which offer many new technologies and features.
The Seagate
Barracuda 7200 drives have been strengthened and refined over
12 generations. And this
latest generation is a leader in environmentally
friendly storage. The new family offers capacities of 1 TB and 750
GB with 32-MB cache, and 500 GB with 16-MB
cache. The Barracuda 7200.12 drive is an ideal
choice for workstations, desktop RAID, gaming
PCs, high-end PCs, mainstream PCs and USB/
FireWire/eSATA external storage.
Advantages of Perpendicular Recording
After years of research at
Seagate, perpendicular recording is now a
proven technology. It increases capacity and
dependability by storing data vertically, rather
than horizontally. And vertically stored data bits
mean increased data density—which means
higher performance to increase productivity.
Additional Features
- Best-in-class environmental specifications and
reliability features
- Adaptive Fly Height offers consistent read/write
performance from the beginning to the end of
your computing workload.
- Clean Sweep automatically calibrates your
drive.
- Enhanced G-Force Protection defends
against handling damage.
- Seagate SoftSonic motor enables ultra-quiet
operation.
The Eco-Friendly Choice
The Barracuda 7200.12 drive delivers excellent
power savings without sacrificing drive or
system performance.
Seagate hard drives have long been produced
with the environment in mind, and not just with
low power consumption.
- Features
- Sustainable technology for a green world:
- Typically 70 percent or more of the materials used to build the drive is recycled.
- Complies with the RoHS directive
- 12th generation of the world’s most popular desktop hard drive
- Ships with the most reliable and proven perpendicular magnetic recording technology
- Delivers high performance:
- 160-MB/s maximum sustained data rate
- Up to 3 Gb/s instantaneous burst
- 32-MB cache on 1-TB and 750-GB drives, 16-MB cache on 500-GB drives, 8-MB cache on 250-GB drives
2. Package
Today we test the new Seagate 7200.12 (ST3500418AS) that boasts 500GB of storage and retail for just €52 (including VAT).
As usual, the disc comes inside an antistatic plastic enclosure:
The large sticker includes basic information about the device, typically found in HDDs.
Compared with Seagate's previous series of HDD (7200.11), the height of the new 7200.12 is lower, due to the single platter design of the new drive:
The available connectors include the SATAI/II & the power:
Specifications
| Specifications |
500 GB |
| Model Number |
ST3500418AS |
| Interface |
SATA 3.0Gb/s |
| Cache |
16 MBytes |
| Capacity |
500 GB |
| Areal density (avg) |
329 Gbits/inch2 |
| Guaranteed Sectors |
976,773,168 |
| PHYSICAL |
|
| Height (max) |
20.17 mm (0.794 inches) |
| Width (max) |
101.6 mm (4.000 inches) |
| Length (max) |
146.99 mm (5.787 inches) |
| Weight (typical) |
415 grams (0.915 pounds) |
| PERFORMANCE |
|
| Spindle Speed |
7,200 rpm |
| Average latency |
4.16 msec |
| Random read seek time |
<8.5 msec |
| Random write seek time |
<9.5 msec |
| RELIABILITY |
|
| Annual Failure Rate |
0.32% |
| POWER |
|
| Maximum start current, DC |
2.0 amps |
3. Bechmarks
In this test we compared the Seagate 7200.11 and the latest 7200.12 series of HDD. Both drive offer the same capacity of 500GB. The comparison would be at least interesting for all those who are currently having a 7200.11 and looking for a possible upgrade to a newer model.
All tests were performed under the same testbed, benchmark software and operating system (Windows VISTA x64 SP1).
Let's start with the popular HDD Tach benchmarks.
The software showed that there is a significant difference between the performance of the 7200.11 and the new 7200.12 series in both reading/writing tests, as you can see in the graph below. On the other hand, the 7200.12 series have a slightly higher random access time, mainly due to its single platter design:
The HD Tune Pro software also confirmed the previous findings, with the 7200.12 series to be faster:
The Sisoft Sandra 2009 SP2 results were not much different:
We have also performed more tests with also ATTO Disk Benchmark. If you have time, you may download the results here.
4. Conclusion
For sure, the new Seagate 7200.12 series of HDD is significantly faster than its is predecessor, the 7200.11. Upgrading is just worthy and will boost the performance of your PC. You can easily expect a faster reading by 17MB/sec, while writing writing will be even faster. In addition, the 7200.11 series, is less noisy and produces less heat, even at full load.
The 500GB model (ST3500418AS) we tested today retails for about €52 (including VAT) and it is backed by a 5-year warranty! It is obvious that this product offers a great value for its money and it is one of the best hard disk drives available at this price range. Let's hope that it will not suffer from any reliability issues seen with the previous 7200.11 series (1~1.5TB).
