Seagate's 0.5TB HDD Benchmarked

[Steve]

Earlier this month we brought you news of Seagate's latest 500GB SATA hard drive, and you were joyous. Now, our friends over at Anandtech have taken one for a spin, to see if it's actually a worthwhile purchase.

The 500GB 7200.9 does not perform better than some of the older 3.0Gb/sec drives that we had looked at a few months back, but its capacity may be enough to give Hitachi's 500GB offering some competition. We actually do have Hitachi's 500GB unit on hand and will be following up this review with a look at that drive as well as Western Digital's new 400GB Caviar. Right now, the 500GB Barracuda is a bit on the pricey side for the performance that it gives in our test suite, but it is a known fact that the higher transfer rates are attained more with multi-drive RAID.

If you're looking for capacity, the 500GB 7200.9 might be right for you, but with current prices, it may be more cost-effective to get your hands on a couple of 400GB units. For those who are speed hungry and don't mind giving up the disk space for it, you're better off working with a 10K RPM Raptor for now.

[Anandtech]

Give it time, folks, give it time.

[ca-uk]

you can get 2x 250gb disks for £160, whereas this costs £260 (scan)..

of course it will get cheaper, and therefore more feasible, but not for me atm..

i remember when i bought a 540mb drive for £200..

[TheAnimus]

sorry if they're friends of hexus's but that review is terrible!

It dosen't take into account history and progression of drives.

[Stoo]

not friends, just news

[Apex]

The fact is this is 500gb in one drive and not two, less point to fail....means that in my shuttle i could have 1tb to 1.5tb of storage if not 2tb if i throw the dvd drive away and fit 4 hdds

[DR]

i'd prefer 5 300gbs over 3 500gbs....

[Steve]

I've never gone for the biggest capacity available. However, the fact that it's there is still a good thing - it means smaller drives get cheaper.

[TheAnimus]

i'd prefer 5 300gbs over 3 500gbs....

get some RAID-5 action with a parity drive for failure!

[Xaar]

i'd prefer 5 300gbs over 3 500gbs....

hmm.. i'm thinking of dumping my 6 x 400gb raid 5 in favour of 4 of those on raid 0. Could really use some space in my case, and the performance boost.

knowing my luck, they'll prolly fail within the 1st month too

[impossible]

I go for smaller number disks instead of one huge mofo disk.


Its alot of data to loose if the disk dies.


But going back tot he bad old days, having 6 hard disks inside one case makes it a bitch to carry to lan partys!



Imp