Single Disc 3.5" HDDs, Round One: Seagate & Hitachi

December 23, 2005 by Devon Cooke

It's no secret that the quietest desktop hard drives tend to be low capacity models that use only a single platter. There's a simple reason for this: Fewer platters have fewer read/write heads, and thus produce less air turbulence. They also have less inertia and are less taxing to keep spinning.

In spite of this advantage, quality reviews of single platter drives are few and far between, SPCR included. The reason for this is... somewhat political. Review sites like SPCR depend on manufacturers to supply samples, which means we get products that they want reviewed. These usually are the flagship products that draw lots of attention and drive sales for the rest of the line. But this time around, we went on the hunt specifically for quiet, 3.5" single platter drives.

Why? Well, some of you might recall that the Seagate Barracuda IV of quiet fame, the quietest 3.5" HDD to date (by a small margin) was available in single and dual disc models. The single disc 40G is long discontinued, and we have not come across any single disc HDDs from any brand that matches it for low noise. The Samsung P80 series are very quiet, just a hair louder than the B-IV but audibly better than the newer, higher capacity P120 models. This is a hunt, then, for a new quiet 3.5" drive. Our reference is the Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB single disc model, of which we still have several good working samples on hand.

SEAGATE BARRACUDA 7200.9 ST3160812AS

This is the largest single platter drive on the market: The 160 GB Barracuda 7200.9. This drive represents quite an accomplishment for Seagate. It's not easy cramming that much capacity onto a single platter. In fact, it's so difficult that they still haven't perfected the process. According to Storage Review, none of the higher capacity 7200.9 models use platters of this high a density because of problems "implementing these disks with larger associated head counts".

HITACHI DESKSTAR 7K80 HDS728080PLA380

Hitachi also stepped up to the plate with a Deskstar 7K80. Here, the capacity is a bit more modest: At 80 GB, it can only store half as much as the Seagate. Of course, capacity isn't everything, and the 7K80 delivers a number of features not found in the Barracuda. The 7K80 supports both Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) and Automatic Power Management (APM), both of which are useful in the context of quiet computing.