You might remember that we returned to the parallel Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
several times until the official drive with the v3.06 showed acceptable performance.
That is why I didn't hurry to review the SATA version. But I've recently got three
drives at once - two 160GB ST3160023AS (one of them is the official sample) and
one 120GB ST3120026AS. All have the same firmware - 3.05.
It should be noted that Seagate is the only company that doesn't makes
SATA drives out of the parallel drives by simply using a bridge. Just have
a look at the photos.
On the left is the electronic part of the SATA ST3160023AS drive and
on the right is the parallel ST3160023A with the 8 MB buffer. The difference
is well noticeable.
The specs of the new line can be compared to the previous one in the
table below.
| |
Barracuda 7200.7 |
Barracuda ATA V |
| |
ST380013AS
ST3120026AS
ST3160023AS |
ST380023AS
ST3120023AS |
| Size |
80/120/160 GB |
80/120 GB |
| Rotation speed |
7200 RPM |
| Buffer size |
8 MB |
| Heads |
2/3/4 |
3/4 |
| Platters |
1/2/2 |
2/2 |
| Avg. Sustained Transfer Rate, Mbytes/sec |
>58 |
>44 |
| Latency |
4.16 ms |
| Average search time |
8.5 ms |
9 ms |
Tests
The testbed is standard.
-
Mainboard - Iwill WO2-R (BIOS ver. 6.00PGN);
-
Processor - Intel Pentium III 800EB;
-
Memory - 256 MB PC133 SDRAM;
-
SATA controller - Iwill IS150 (Silicon Image SataLink SiI3112,BIOS Ver.
4.2.0.0, Driver Ver. 1.0.0.22)
-
System disc - IBM DTLA 307015;
-
OS - Windows 2000 Professional SP4.
The test suite is standard as well.
-
Ziff-Davis WinBench 99;
-
HDTach 2.61;
-
Intel IOMeter.
We tested all three drives. The scores are the same, but anyway, you can see
scores of both the 160GB and 120GB drives. The 120 GB ST3120026A
with the same buffer size and firmware version, as well as the 160GB ST3160021A
drive with a 2MB buffer and v3.06, will be used for comparison.
Ziff-Davis WinBench 99 / HDTach 2.61
Well, we didn't expect the linear read speed to change.
ST3160023AS
ST3120026AS
ST3120026A
The diagrams of the SATA drives do not look so smooth. There's a peculiar
drop near the 40GB mark in case of all drives irrespective of their size.
I decided not to use the HDTach benchmark anymore for measuring average
read and write speeds as the results are too incorrect. Let's just jump
over to the access time.
What a surprise! The drives with the serial interface are faster in
this respect, and their scores coincide with the specs - 8.5 ms + 4.16
ms = 12.66 ms. I just don't get why can't the drive with the same firmware
version and parallel interface reach the same speed? In my humble opinion,
the access time doesn't depend on the interface.
The scores of the Ziff-Davis Disk WinMarks of different drives can be
compared only if the controller is the same as there's a lot that depends
on the drivers. Nevertheless, the SATA drives score good results here.
Intel IOMeter
The lower access time should better the scores. Let's see.
The buffer size doesn't help much in this benchmark. The SATA drives
perform as well as we expected. The advantage is considerable.
Look! The firmware version 3.05 of the drives with the serial interface
helps much more than the v3.05 or even 3.06 of the "usual" drives.
Here the situation improves. The problem of writing in the Barracuda
7200.7 isn't solved completely in the SATA drives but the progress is noticeable.
The SATA drives work worse with smaller blocks but it's not that important
compared to the overall results.
Conclusion
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA drives definitely look better than their
counterparts with the parallel interface; maybe it's just because Seagate has
focused on SATA drives or because the company released them later and therefore
had more time for working on them. In the SATA
Drives Roundup you can see how they compare to SATA drives from other companies.
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