Seagate 750GB Barracuda 7200.10

[Rob Williams]

Seagate has introduced to us once again the largest consumer drive available, and we have it on our testbench. Surprisingly, not only does it have much more space than the previous 500GB model, it also proves to be much faster. Let's take a close look at the drive, and see just what perpendicular magnetic recording can offer us.

Read my review here, then discuss/flame/question here.

I was reading your review of Seagate's 750GB hdd and noticed something that doesnt seem right. When you tested the drive, was it connected to a SATAII controller? I have seen several other reviews and the burst speed in each review has always come close to the theoretical limit of SATA II, but your burst speeds are not even hitting the theoretical limit of regular SATA I. That leads me to believe that the 750GB drive was tested on with SATA but the 500GB drive you were comparing it too was tested using SATA II. It doesnt really matter, but it seemed like you were trying to make a direct comparision to the 500GB drive, but if they were not both using SATA II then the results would obviously be skewed.

[madmat]

Since Rob didn't list the system tested I looked up both of his mobos and neither one has SATA I ports on them. His Intel based rig has 8 SATA II ports and his AMD rig has 4. The only thing I can say is it's a hiccup. Sometimes we run across anonmolous results and it would appear this is the case with the 750.

But keep in mind, the drive ships with a jumper restricting SATA-I so that would need to be switched inorder to run full SATA-II.

Other sites are repoting this as well - and incorrectly benchmarking w/o changing the jumper.

[Rob Williams]

Is this something common that happens on S-ATA drives? Lo and behold, the switch was on the 1.5GB setting. Seagate didn't inform me about such a switch.

I ran a couple benchmarks now that it's on 3GB mode. The only difference that it seems to be making is the burst rates, which now actually surpasses the 500GB. I am not going to redo every benchmark, but I will throw an addendum at the end of the review.

Thanks a lot Blackened for bringing this to our attention.

Matt, thanks for reminding me about my system specs. I tend to always forget to add them lately =/

nForcer from Driverheaven.net

*was me from before*

Yeah I read a couple other reviews that made mention of this jumper switch and noticed you had not - figured I'd share the knoweldge so you're review is accurate Otherwise its a very informative review.

FYI, I own 4 of these and am absolutely, completely, estatically impressed.

Hello all,

I have purchased two of these drives in the IDE interface. Both idle in my Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case @ 33C in comparison to my Raptor 150 that idles at 31C. Now there is a factory installed 120mm fan blowing through the hard drive cage but I find that the stated temperatures in the report seem slightly skewed.

I had one 750 sitting outside of the case whilst I transferred my entire music/movie collection to it and the highest temperature reached was 42C.

R