File Copy - No HDD Load

Read speeds tend to be quite quick in a RAID-0 setup and we see the best performance with the RAID configurations in the file copies. Higher densities are better here which is why we're seeing better numbers with the 7200.8 drives compare to the 7200.9. The 7200.10 takes the test by a fairly wide margin.

File Copy - Virus scan on test drives

The same result as earlier, but with slightly longer times. The 7200.10 is significantly faster here.

Noise

The Barracuda 7200.10 fairly quiet, but slightly louder than the 7200.8 drive. Unless you're building a silent setup, we do not think the hard drive noise will be a factor at all.

Final Words

Before Perpendicular Recording Technology, we were not sure how drive manufacturers would deal with the demands for more storage space. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 was a good performer, but as we saw then, the lower capacity drives with denser platters tended to outperform the larger drives.

The Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 has much denser 188GB platters which accounts for many of the benchmark wins in our real-world tests. Not only does denser platters make for faster throughput, but 750GB drives (and up) are much easier to design and manufacture than trying to figure out how to make a big drive using traditional methods.

Our IPEAK tests were the only ones where the Seagate struggled and we're not quite sure why. What we are suspecting after discussing this with some colleagues is that the IPEAK tests do have a lot of randomly sized bits of data scattered about the drive. This caused the drive to look harder for the information and caused some delays. Compared to game loading or data copying, where the data is more sequential, the drive excelled.

That said, we think the latest Barracuda is much more of a jump from the 7200.9 than the 7200.8 and 7200.9 series were to the 7200.7. Perpendicular Recording Technology is certainly the star of the show here, but Adaptive Fly Height and Clean Sweep are supporting players that simply get the job done in keeping data intact without any intervention from the user. Add NCQ, huge storage capacity, 5-year warranty, and solid performance, and you have a drive well worth picking up.

One thing we never really talked much about is the reliability. Over the 15 years I've been working within the IT industry, Seagate has generally been the most reliable of all drives I've worked with. While the jury is still out on the 7200.9, the 7200.7 we looked at last year are still working away in our various test beds with no problems during this period. If something does go down, the 5-year warranty is tops in the industry, though it's no excuse for not maintaining regular backups.