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Everything is better in RAID!
Some people simply do not like RAID arrays, but
I've been a huge RAID fanboy for years. Some say that if one hard
drive goes down, you lose all of your data. Well I say if your
single hard drive goes bad, you just lost everything anyway right?
Regardless, RAID 0 speeds are just out of this world and it makes
everything from booting to loading games faster. Let's plug in a
pair of 1 Terabyte 7200.12 hard drives and see what RAID 0 can do!
RAID 0 Tests
HD Tach: Quick
Bench / 8MB Zones
No, that's not a chart showing my stock performance, that would be
showing zero... What you are seeing is the RAID controller on the
ASUS P6T going nuts! The burst rates are into the stratosphere
hitting 2226.2 Megabytes per second! If we could only get our true
read and write speeds that fast... Unfortunately what we are seeing
is a flaw in HD Tach while using the quick bench in RAID.
|
Burst Speed: |
2226.2
MB/s |
|
Average Read: |
177.4 MB/s |
|
Average Write: |
1167.2 MB/s (error) |
RAID 0 Tests
HD Tach: Long
Bench / 32MB Zones
Thankfully, HD Tach is actually recording true data transfer speeds
while using the long bench. Here we see the same impressive burst
speed while the average read and write speeds are back down to
planet earth. Unfortunately, the average write speed performance is
very poor for RAID 0.
|
Burst Speed: |
2253.0
MB/s |
|
Average Read: |
176.9 MB/s |
|
Average Write: |
115.4 MB/s |
RAID 0 Tests
HD Tune
|
Minimum Transfer Rate: |
129.0 MB/sec |
|
Maximum Transfer Rate: |
191.8 MB/sec |
|
Average Transfer Rate: |
168.3 MB/sec |
|
Access Time: |
13.8 ms |
|
Burst Rate: |
Error |
|
CPU Usage: |
1.5% |
With HD Tune we can only measure read speed, not write, but the
average read speed is nearly identical to that we saw with HD Tach.
The Access Time remains constant, even in RAID while HD Tune is
unable to calculate the burst rate. As for the CPU usage, we are
using only 1.5% which is extremely good compared to previous
generations.
Comparing apples to apples...
To compare the 7200.12 to the 7200.11, I have included single hard
drive, HD Tach "long benchmarks" of the 1TB and 1.5TB 7200.11 hard
drives. Here is how they compare:
|
|
1TB 7200.11
ST31000340AS |
1.5TB 7200.11
ST31500341AS |
1TB 7200.12
ST31000528AS |
|
Burst Speed: |
121.5
MB/s |
216.9
MB/s |
161.3 MB/s |
|
Average Read: |
88.9
MB/s |
106.6 MB/s |
108.0 MB/s |
|
Average Write: |
81.5
MB/s |
99.2 MB/s |
96.2 MB/s |
If you compare the 7200.12 to the earlier model 7200.11, the results
look pretty impressive. However, Seagate dramatically increased the
performance in the 1.5TB 7200.11. When compared to the 1.5TB
7200.11, the 7200.12 is slightly slower in average write and
noticeably slower in burst speed. So in the end the results are
mixed.
Conclusion
Some of the key features in the latest generation of Seagate hard
drives may be good for the planet, but are they good for your
computer? The answer is yes. The 1TB 7200.12 hard drives beat all
previous generations of Seagate hard drives EXCEPT the 1.5TB
7200.11. However, with the recent firmware issues in the 7200.11
series, I'd say the 7200.12 is the clear winner here.
Seagate has some work to do on their damaged reputation and the
latest generation of hard drives is a big step in the right
direction. I intentionally held off on releasing this review until I
could personally beat these 7200.12 hard drives into submission, but
I was unable to force these drives into begging for mercy. Over the
period of about 4 weeks of brutal testing, I was unable to find any
issues or anomalies in their performance. The Barracuda 7200.12 hard
drives appear to be the real deal with solid performance at an
excellent price. Club Overclocker Recommended.
|
 |
| Performance: |
4 out of 5 | Innovation: |
5 out of 5 | Quality: |
5 out of 5 | Stability: |
5 out of 5 |
| Aesthetics: |
4 out of 5 | Software/Drivers Pack: |
N/A |
Overclocking: |
N/A |
|
Value: |
5 out of 5 |
|
 |
 |
 | Project Skill Level
(5 being most difficult) |
3
out of 5 |
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