Hands on Review of 1 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12

After an extensive Hands On Review of Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (Tested on Windows 7) we received a packed Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive of 1 TB capacity and 32-MB cache. Not only that, this model is specifically meant to be a green initiative by Seagate. By combining sustainable Seagate technology and components with industry-leading volume manufacturing, the Seagate® Barracuda® 7200.12 drive delivers up to 1 TB of green, low-power yet high-performance, desktop storage which has 70% of recycling material.

First Impression

The high density 500 GB per platter capacity gives it a lower access time, faster data transfer rate, low power consumption and thus less heat dissipation (due to one less platter) and a hard drive that runs very silent. Let’s go for details now.

Specification

Let’s go through the Seagate mentioned specifications as of now.

Unpacking

Barracuda® 7200.12 Desktop 1 TB came sealed in a box- First look

Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard disk being unpacked

Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard disk is lying packed over Hp Pavilion tx 2500z

Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard disk - though came from US, its originally made in China or so it says

Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard disk - the opposite side of the product

Performance Testing

Testing Configuration

1. Intel Core 2 duo 2.0 GHz processor
2. 1 GB Ram
3. Seagate 1TB hard disk
4. Windows 7 Beta Operating system (we know the OS is still in beta but its atleast quicker than Windows Vista so we decided to go with the brand new)
5. Testing software: HD Tach (a low level hard disk benchmarking utility) and HD Tune Pro (a hard disk benchmarking utility capable of performing lower-level as well as file system benchmarks and displaying the result in the form of a graph)

[Windows 7 boot up process took up 22 seconds which is pretty fast compared to the other Seagate momentus we had reviewed that took 35 secs. ]

HD Tach Testing

Upon testing HD Tach returned a171.6 MB/s in the 'core test', which is pretty impressive to say the least. The access time were 15ms for reading and 6 ms for writing, again an achiever!

HD Tune Testing

Read-Write Speed testing

HD tune testing revealed minimum read speed of 60MB/s and maximum to be 120 and a steady 100MB/s as an average speed which is pretty decent

We again did a recheck with lots of processes running in the background and the CPU was only 50% idle. The minimum speed came down considerably at 47MB/s and the top speed remained at 123. Average of 90 under high performacing is not bad at all

Write Speed Information

1. The maximum write speed = 111 MB/s
2. The averagae writing speed is= 80 MB/s

Disc monitoring

The disc monitor shows the difference when the CPU was idle and when under high load. But then again, look at that maximum read and write speed.

File Benchmark Testing

a 64 MB file size was benchmarked for file sharing and file transfer testing and look at that graph gradually increasing. Its a sign of a good and fast hard disc or any file storing device. So there you go again Its relatively faster than any recent Seagate product

The Random access test was just to prove my own point that while going for more and bigger files, Seagate 7200.12 hard drive generates more speed, which is why it is one of the better products from Seagate

Health Monitoring

We tested its health and the results came out all okay as expected. you can get some essential information like spin retry count etc

Conclusion

So here comes the all important conclusion. I will keep my opinion very crisp and short

• Energy efficient? We didn’t have a coolant in the testing room. the temp never rose from 39 deg C. You have your answer.
• Silent? Yes absolutely.
• Fast? You have the results. Only Intel SSDs and WD Velociraptor are ahead.
• VFM? At Rs 6100, its a bit expensive but worth every penny. but at that price Samsung’s much praised Spinpoint F1 is still better VFM.
• Any glitches? At first level of testing we didn’t find any of that sort.

In short, we recommend it very honestly.