Home > Categories > Computer Hardware > Onboard Storage Devices > Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 1Tb Hard Drive - ST31000340AS review
Combining proven components, state-of-the-art technology and expertise in volume manufacturing, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive - the 11th generation of this award-winning desktop hard drive family - delivers 1Tb of high-performing, eco-friendly digital storage. Designed with industry-leading acoustics and power levels, and award-winning Seagate PMR technology, the Barracuda 7200.11 drive offers the ideal combination of world-class technology and lowest total cost of ownership.
Key Advantages:
• Delivers 1Tb capacity
• Ships with the industry's most reliable and proven perpendicular magnetic recording technology
• Delivers high performance
• 105 MB/s sustained data rate
• 32-MB cache buffer
• Environmentally friendly
• Idles at only 8.0 Bels, enabling customers to build low-power systems
• Meets strict RoHS environmental requirements
• Leverages best combination of technology (areal density, PMR) and proven components for volume availability
• Ships with an industry-best 5-year limited warranty
Product reviews...
Hard drives are funny critters. You treat them well and they perform for a few years then tend to click a bit then die. Or worse. Years ago, data protection would have required the purchase of an external high-capacity drive such as the ZIP drive, a tape-drive, or some fancy removable hard-drive racking. Nowdays, you have so much more choice, ranging from writable optical discs, spacious removable storage devices, or even online backup services offered by drive-farms. But I tell ya... it's getting mighty impressive when you can slap a terabyte of storage into your own machine and spend a few months downloading like a robot to fill it!
Now I must clarify here that the storage industry doesn't see volumes the way we do. For them, values are decimal, not binary... so 1tb is 1,000gb, 1gb is 1,000mb, 1mb is 1,000kb, 1kb is 1,000 bytes... which means this little beauty actually holds more like 930gb in 'real' binary volumes. But let's face it folks... that is still a WHOPPING amount... eg.
• 198 full DVD-R's
• 1361 entire CD's
• 190668 MP3 tracks (like, 15889 HOURS of music!)
• 2723 45-minute AVI's (That's all of the Stargate SG1 episodes 10 times over, and more!)
But how fast is it? Well, with all throttles wide open, the cache fully utilised, and with a pile of typical Windows crud running in the background, I managed to pump this baby up to 96mb/sec write, and a blazing 102.4mb/sec read speed... I tell ya, Photoshop never ran so smooth and zippy! In the end, I decided to partition the drive up and allocate a full 20gb partition solely as virtual memory, and my system ain't never run'd so good, baby!
I have been thrashing this little stunner for a good solid 5 weeks, hammering it with all sorts of nifty little utilities designed to break-test it... and she just won't fail under a loading that killed a lower-spec'd drive in less than a week! I am so impressed, I might actually have to go and buy a few for the main server!
Overall, if this isn't the best there is in this price bracket, I am at a loss to say what is! Worth every penny, and with prices all over the place you might want to snap one up fast before shipping charges alone put them back out of reach. My only bug with this unit is that under extreme loads, such as would be found in a server-farm, this unit can heat up quite a bit, and may require some serious coolant options... but let's face it, for the home user, this is the best thing since hyper-caffeinated cola!
Random listing from 'Computer Hardware'...
Designed for performance enthusiasts and anyone who simply wants to get more out of their system, Crucial Ballistix Sport performance memory helps you do just that. Give your processor the resources it needs to perform and make your computer faster and more responsive.
Make your system go Ballistix.
Memory is fun ... more...
All trademarks, images and copyrights on this site are owned by their respective companies.
KIWIreviews is an independent entity, part of the Knock Out News Group. This is a free public forum presenting user opinions on selected products, and as such the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinion of kiwireviews.nz and are protected under New Zealand law by the "Honest Opinion" clause of the Defamation Act of 1992. KIWIreviews accepts no liability for statements made on this site, on the premise that they have been submitted as the true and honest opinions of the individual posters. In most cases, prices and dates stated are approximate and should be considered as only guidelines.
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
Mark Twain