Western Digital and Seagate: 320GB Grudge Match
by Gary Key on July 27, 2006 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Hard Disk Test Specifications:
The Western Digital WD3200KS drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB drive in our benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives in the 250GB and 500GB capacity ranges in the near future.
The Seagate drive comes standard with a five year warranty while the Western Digital OEM drives ship with a three year warranty. Based upon reasons that are inexplicable Western Digital ships their retail kits with a one year warranty. The user can extend their warranty by two years through Western Digital for a cost of $14.95 currently.
Hardware Setup
We recently changed our test beds to reflect changes in the current marketplace. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we have upgraded from our AMD Athlon64 3500+ to an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future. We will review our test bed requirements once we have an opportunity to thoroughly test the AM2 and Intel Core 2 Duo platforms.
We debated on the memory size for our iPEAK trace file creations and decided to move to 2GB of system memory. A system with a 1GB memory configuration is the predominant standard at this time in the enthusiast community although many are moving to 2GB memory setups. While a 1GB memory installation allows us to capture and report a higher amount of disk activity in certain applications, we decided the make the switch at this time as the difference is minimal when compared to the 1GB trace files. All drives are tested with Native Command Queuing enabled if the drive supports this technology.
| Specifications | ||
| Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS | |
| Manufacturer's Stated Capacity: | 320GB | 320GB |
| Operating System Stated Capacity: | 298.09 GB | 298.09 GB |
| Interface: | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed: | 7,200 RPM | 7,200 RPM |
| Cache Size: | 16 MB | 16 MB |
| Average Latency: | 4.20 ms (nominal) | 4.16 ms (nominal) |
| Read Seek Time: | 8.9 ms | 8.5 ms |
| Number of Heads: | 6 | 4 |
| Number of Platters: | 3 | 2 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load: | 8.75W / 9.5W | 8.9W / 12.6W |
| Command Queuing: | N/A | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty: | 3 Years | 5 Years |
The Western Digital WD3200KS drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB drive in our benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives in the 250GB and 500GB capacity ranges in the near future.
The Seagate drive comes standard with a five year warranty while the Western Digital OEM drives ship with a three year warranty. Based upon reasons that are inexplicable Western Digital ships their retail kits with a one year warranty. The user can extend their warranty by two years through Western Digital for a cost of $14.95 currently.
Hardware Setup
| Standard Test Bed Playback of iPEAK Trace Files and Test Application Results |
|
| Processor: | AMD Opteron 170 utilized for all tests. |
| RAM: | 2 x 1GB Corsair 3500LL PRO |
| Settings- DDR400 at (2.5-3-3-7, 1T) | |
| OS Hard Drive: | 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA Platform Driver - 6.85 |
| Video Card: | 1 x Asus 7600GS (PCI Express) for all tests. |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 84.21 WHQL |
| Optical Drive: | BenQ DW1640 |
| Cooling: | Zalman CNPS9500 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GamexStream 700W |
| Case: | Gigabyte 3D Aurora |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | MSI K8N Diamond Plus |
We recently changed our test beds to reflect changes in the current marketplace. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we have upgraded from our AMD Athlon64 3500+ to an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future. We will review our test bed requirements once we have an opportunity to thoroughly test the AM2 and Intel Core 2 Duo platforms.
We debated on the memory size for our iPEAK trace file creations and decided to move to 2GB of system memory. A system with a 1GB memory configuration is the predominant standard at this time in the enthusiast community although many are moving to 2GB memory setups. While a 1GB memory installation allows us to capture and report a higher amount of disk activity in certain applications, we decided the make the switch at this time as the difference is minimal when compared to the 1GB trace files. All drives are tested with Native Command Queuing enabled if the drive supports this technology.
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patentman - Monday, July 31, 2006 - link
To avoid superparamagnetism, engineers have been increasing the coercivity, the field size required to write a bit, of the disc media. These fields are limited by the magnetic materials making up the write head that will soon effectively limit drive sizes utilizing longitudinal recording. Although additional capacities are still achievable, the drive industry will be moving to perpendicular recording technology shortly as longitudinal recording has basically hit the proverbial brick wall after being utilized for nearly 50 years."I wrote a pretty detailed post on the anandtech forums about this a while back. You can check it out http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">here" (I used to post under the nickname "klaviernista"). Considering I examined and issued a lot fo the patents that are the basis of seagate's perpendicular technology, I think I am more than qualified to speak on the matter.
Oh, and for the record, the "soft" magent under layer is never truly "written to" during the reocrind gprocess. The soft magnetic underlayer is made of a material that has magnetic domains which rotate easily in response to an external magentic field. When the write field goes across any given point in the medium, it induces the field in the corresponding point on the soft magentic underlayer to rotate perpendicular to the medium. The article is correct in saying that the result is a substantial increase in write field intensity, but neglects to mention that the fields of the soft magnetic underlayer to not remain oriented perpendicular to the media surface after the write field from the magentic head is removed, whereas the fields in the magentic recording layer do remain oriented perpendicular to the media surface.
The whole point of usuing a soft magnetic underlayer is to allow magnetic materials with very high coercivity to be used as the recoprding layer. Why do you need a very high coercivity recording layer in high density recordng media? See the post I linked to above and read the discussed about "intergranular exchange coupling."
jackylman - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
In the pulldown menu, accoustics -> acousticsSonicIce - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Even with an extra platter to lug around, the Western Digital was quieter and cooler!madfly - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
if you want to have the seagate hard drive cross shipped where they send you a replacement and you return the defective one back to them they charge $25, considering the hard drive cost $99, that there is a ripoff. I had this happen to me with a 250GB HD that I bought last year, so I'll be spending my money with one of the others unless the deal is ridiculous.Mana211 - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
SPCR uses 1 meter (aka 1000mm or 200 times your stated distance) to measure SPL."Each drive is measured for SPL one meter away from the top of the hard drive. Hard drive noise tends to be directional, the loudest position being directly over the top. SPL readings typically drop by 2~3 dBA/1m when measured from the side of the drive. The drive is placed on a soft foam to ensure that no vibration noise is produced during testing."
The there is an entire category of sounds you hear at 5mm that wouldn't be noticable from outside a case.
Take this quote from SPCR: "Consider the distance of Hardware.fr's recording microphone: 5cm from the HDD. This is a serious problem. There's no way the decibel reading can be accurate due to boundary effects. It's the same problem at storagereview.com -- not even relative differences are necessarily correct due to compression effects; the close proximity impacts every measurement similarly, reducing differences."
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article631-page1.htm...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article631-page1.htm... shows that the new audio recordings (not to be confused with the SPL Dba numbers) will use two recording distances:
* One meter so that "nominal" volume, audibility, and sound character can be judged.
* One foot (or 30 cm if you will) to capture all the details from even the quietest noise sources.
tuteja1986 - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Western digital for me since i want a quiet and cool drive.crydee - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
The WD400YR and WD500YS seem very close to performance with the Raptor, but I can't find the WD400YR on pricewatch on newegg also I read about the WD drivers having a high rate of doa?AdamK47 3DS - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
The Seagate drive has a performance advantage with the two 160GB platters. Anandtech is still ignoring the advantages of higher platter densities. Why is that? Platter density is one of the features I look at when purchasing a new drive. It's a good indication of performance when compared to another drive of the same total capacity. You have two 320GB drives reviewed with different number of platters and yet there is no mention of this other than the table. It's very odd.evilharp - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Check your "price bot" settings. Currently you list the following deals for a "Western Digital Caviar® SE16"I followed the Business Computing Network link (simply due to the crazy price) and it is for a 20 unit bulk purchase.
Booty - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
On the last page it should be listed that the WD has a 3 year warranty for retail and 1 year for OEM - you have them switched.