Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB

1.5 TB is one of the largest sizes of hard drive available today.  Seagate's model at this end of the range is the 7200.11, but the manufacturer isn't relying on size alone to sell this hard drive: it claims that its second generation perpendicular magnetic recording technology will dramatically improve performance.  According to the specification, we can expect speeds of up to 120 MB/s, which is enough to rival Western Digital's Velociraptor.

Speeds live up to expectations
As suggested by Seagate, this hard drive does reach a maximum read speed of 120 MB/s.  After comparing transfer rates for three different types of file, we found an average read speed of 94 MB/s.  For writing to the disk, the results are just as impressive, with an average of 81 MB/s for the same set of files.

These scores put the 7200.11 in second place in our speed table, just behind the Western Digital Velociraptor 300 GB.  Things are different for local and remote copying, where other disks are faster, like the Caviar Black 1 TB, which is 5 MB/s faster on aveage.

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB   Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB
Write speed (MB/s)   Read Speed (MB/s) Local Copy (MB/s) Distant Copy (MB/s)

Impossible to alter sound leels

When it's in use, the 1.5 TB 7200.11 makes a whistling sound.  Unfortunately, it's impossible to turn on AAM to reduce this noise, as, like all of Seagate's drives, this one doesn't have any noise management system.  It's a real drawback when the competitors demonstrate how easily and effectively it can be done.

Launching Applications

This hard drive has rather long access times.  We measured 15.1 ms using the HD Tach software, which has an impact of loading software and makes this drive more suited to storing data.  For a system hard drive, you'd be better off with a Samsung or a Western Digital hard drive.

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB   Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB
Crysis (s) Winrar (s) OpenOffice (s) Photoshop (s)    Access time (ms)   Boot to Windows (s) Temperature (°C)