Date:
Monday , September 15, 2003
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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SATA Roundup

Thinking about another upgrade and wondering if it's time to jump on the SATA bandwagon? We evaluate drives from Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital in a side by side comparison to help make your drive buying decision a little easier.

Author: Dave Graham

Introduction

Serial ATA has finally made enough of a dent in the consumer storage market that it is time to take it seriously. The promise of this new technology was shown early by Seagate with their release of the Barracuda V drives. While not an outstanding performer, it did provide the world with the first glimpse at what cabling and bus transfer speeds would look like in the future. Now, the early promises of better performance have only been met in recent months with the advent of Western Digital’s 10,000rpm Raptor, Maxtor’s Diamond Max Plus 9, and Seagate’s 7200.7 drives. Today, we’re going to dive in to find out what each of these drives is made of and how they perform.

Drive Specifications

To understand hard drives, it helps to gain an appreciation for what they’re “made of.” Breaking down the individual stats will enable us to see operational differences from a hardware standpoint. That being said, let’s dive in.

Seagate 7200.7 – 160GB

The first drive for our roundup is the latest and greatest from Seagate: the 7200.7 (ST3160023AS). This drive was priced at $149.00 at the time of this review and promises a good value at $0.93 per gigabyte. This is a true second-generation drive and represents the latest technology from what can only be called the leader of Serial ATA technology. Sporting an average seek time of 8.5ms, a large 8MB cache, and 2 80GB platters rotating at 7,200rpm, this drive is a silent force to be reckoned with. To find out more information, go here.

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You’ll notice in the pictures above that this particular drive is lacking the SeaShield cover over the circuitry. While this may not bother a vast majority of you, this does represent quite a change over previous models. Warranty-wise, this drive is shipped with a 1 year manufacturer’s warranty.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 – 200GB

Second in the line-up is Maxtor’s DiamondMax Plus 9 drive. A little later to the game than Seagate, Maxtor focused on releasing a high-speed, high-quality drive into the marketplace. Priced at $209.00 at the time of this review, this drive represents a good value at $1.04 per gigabyte. The basic specifications are similar to that of Seagate’s 7200.7: 7,200rpm rotation speed for its short-stroked 67/68GB platters (3 of them), sub-9.3ms access times, and a large 8MB cache. For more information, please go here.

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The interesting items to note here pertain to the rather tiny PCB and the Marvel SATA controller chip. This drive is also offered with a 1 year warranty.

Western Digital Raptor – 36GB

Finally, we come to the racehorse of the bunch. No other drive in recent history has created the same stir that Western Digital’s Raptor has. True to its name, the Raptor is a fast and efficient drive with a focus on Enterprise storage. Priced at $125.00 at the time of this review, this drive represents a rather expensive deal, costing $3.41 per gigabyte. Featuring a spindle speed of 10,000rpm turning a 36GB platter, a 5.2ms access time, and 8MB of onboard cache, the Raptor is ready to tear into your data and gaming needs. For more information, go here.

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Pay attention to the “overbuilt” nature of the chassis on this drive. Notice the cooling fins which are very effective at removing the excess heat that this drive puts off. Coupled with a standard 5 year warranty, this drive represents a good long-term value.

Now that we’ve examined the drives' specifications, let’s move on to the benchmarks and the test platform.