Terabyte Round II: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11

Note that that reads "Round II / 7200.11", not "Round 11 / 7200.II", or some other combination thereof.

no HD performance benchmarks?
even a HD Tach image would go a long way.

Typo patrol: At the discussion of AAM, the Momentus 7200.2 is mentioned, but I assume you're talking about the Barracuda 7200.11 that doesn't have AAM settings available, considering the Momentus isn't mentioned anywhere else.

This comparison between the mentioned drives is somewhat apples to oranges.

It seems to me, that hard drive use cases fall pretty often in the following categories:

[list="extreme system"]
SSD units; they are all silent, so you don't really need to review them
[/list]

[list="expensive single hdd system"]
2.5" HDD units; these need reviews, because there are large differences in noise between them
[/list]

[list="cheap single hdd system"]
3.5" HDD 0GB-333GB size. cheapest option, modest storage space, single platter solution is next in silence to 2.5" hard drives, but can have HIGH performance. need reviews
[/list]

[list="333GB-5TB system"]
3.5" HDD 333GB-640GB size, 1-8 units in single system. This size group has most storage per money, so as long as you can connect them all, it's the cheapest way to achieve several TB of storage. need reviews
[/list]

[list="750GB-8TB system"]
It seems to me that 2 500GB drives would often be better than a single TB drive, because they have a hefty premium in price. But if you want to minimize the number of hard drives, or keep the number under some hard limit (so you don't have to buy a larger case or extra controller cards), you might want to pay more per GB. Need reviews too, but imo the 2-platter category is more important
[/list]

I can't figure much other uses for a TB drive than

a) single drive system with almost 1 TB of required storage space. it also needs to be fast, because it's your system disk, so WD GP is not so good.

b) huge storage system; WD GP is a pretty good option

c) commercial dataserver -> servers in a server room -> not spcr stuff

I guess what I'm trying to ask is this: If you need a bit less than 1TB of storage inside your computer, but you also want it to be fast, what would be the best combinations of drives with different budgets?

Extreme budget: SSD all the way
Almost extreme budget: SSD system/app disk, WD GP storage disk
Dunno what budget: Any option that I miss here?
Medium budget: single TB drive, but WD GP is too slow, so what is best?
Cheapest: 2 * 500GB, but is this quieter or less quiet than 1TB drive?

One Seagate hard drive that I'd really like SPCR to review is the 7200.10 250GB ST3250410AS . According to the manual, it is one of those drives that have been set to "Quiet seek". What does that mean in terms of real world acoustics? What does that mean in terms of real world power consumption? I hope it lands in your lab soon.

500 and 750 gbyte drives already have the same relative price. Yes, 1 tbyte drives aren't yet a smart choice price-wise.
Whether 2x 500 gb or 1x 1 tb is quieter, I don't know.

It'd be nice to see some reviews of new one and two platter drives (250 and 500 gbyte now), as the reference drives (P80) are getting a bit old.

Hello,

All else being equal, I would say that one 1TB unit would be quieter than two 500GB units.

It's a good thing that they flipped the controler board. Just yesterday, summum of back luck, as i was switching cases for my system, i pulled out my seagate 7200.10 and one of those small squarish roundish electromagnet, from what it looked like once it came off, broke and fell off. Now i'm in big crap. Will try to solder it back on but i'll never trust it even if that did work.