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March 10, 2011 by Lawrence Lee
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Product
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Barracuda Green ST2000DL003
2TB 3.5" HDD
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Momentus ST9750420AS
750GB 2.5" HDD |
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Sample Supplier
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Street Price
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US$80~90 |
US$95 |
Today we look at a pair of new drives from Seagate that have the potential to be quiet contenders. The Barracuda Green 2TB is the latest variant of their low power/noise 5900 RPM desktop drive, which go up against 5400 RPM offerings from WD and Samsung. The Momentus 750GB has the same heritage as the surprisingly quiet Momentus 7200.4 and XT.
Incidentally, both of these drives use the new 4K advanced format. If you've been out of the hard drive game for awhile, there's an informative article about the new format at bit-tech. The ramifications are only for legacy operating systems like Windows XP. One good thing about these Seagate drives is a feature called SmartAlign that takes care of all 4k issues at the hardware level so you don't have to mess with jumpers or alignment tools to get optimal performance.
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The Barracuda Green 2TB and Momentus 750GB.
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The Momentus 750GB is a break from Seagate's traditional naming scheme of including the rotational speed and affixing a revision number to the end of their notebook drive models. Instead of Momentus 7200.x, this latest drive is simply the Momentus 750GB. Its predecessors were surprisingly quiet for 7200 RPM drives and we expect more of the same with this one. Our sample weighed in at approximately 110 grams (similar to the Momentus XT and 5400.6 500GB) suggesting it is a two platter model. Going from 250GB to 375GB disks means a massive 50% increase in areal density, which should bode well for performance, too.
Seagate's LP (low power) series has been around for awhile, but thus far their offerings have not matched the low noise of their main competitors, the WD Caviar Greens and Samsung EcoGreens. WD and Samsung have a distinct advantage as they have put performance on the back burner by using 5400 RPM motors. Seagate decided that 5900 RPM would provide differentiation and a performance advantage without sacrificing noise and power consumption. So far it hasn't really worked out, particularly for their high capacity drives. Their first 2TB drive, the Barracuda LP was louder, had a higher level of vibration, and used more power than the competition.
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Barracuda Green's new housing.
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The new 2TB LP, dubbed the Barracuda Green, looks to buck the trend. Our sample weighed about 630 grams, compared to 4-platter Barracuda XT's 690 grams — it is a 3-platter drive. Furthermore, the Barracuda Green sports 64MB cache, twice as much as the old model, and uses the new SATA 6 Gb/s interface, though that feature is purely for show as mechanical hard drives can only dream of pushing that much data at once. The drive also has a new casing with a hollowed out portion around the motor supported with ribs extending out from the hub. The design reduces internal space to fit the new 3-platters configuration. Fewer platters means lower moving mass, and often, lower vibration and noise.
Specifications:
Barracuda Green 2TB & Momentus 750GB
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| Model Number |
ST2000DL003 |
ST9750420AS |
| Capacity |
2TB |
750GB |
| Cache |
64B |
16MB |
| Interface |
SATA 6 Gb/s |
SATA 3 Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed |
5900 RPM |
7200 RPM |
| Avg. Areal Density |
422Gb/in2 |
541 Gb/in2 |
| Transfer rate (sustained) |
144 MB/s |
? |
| Average Latency |
4.16 ms |
4.2 ms |
| Power: Idle / Seek |
4.5 W / 5.8 W |
0.96 W / 2.5 W |
| Acoustics: Idle / Seek |
2.1 bels / 2.3 bels |
2.3 bels / 2.5 bels |
| Weight (typical) |
635 grams (630 grams measured) |
115 g (110 grams measured) |
| Warranty |
3 years |
3 years |
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