once upon a time, i asked whether there were new models around the corner, models to succeed either the sp80 or the 7200.7.

well according to storage reviews, seagate will introduce the 7200.8

www.storagereview.com/Seagate_Barracuda_7200-8.pdf

the following commentary presupposes the unverified factual nature of that pdf.

of relevance to us here, seagate lists their idle whine for 7200.7 as "2.5" bels, whereas the pdf lists 7200.8 idle whine at "2.0 bels"

if a direct comparison to samsung sp80 is possible, samsung sp80 idle whine is 2.7 bels. this would represent a substantial improvement.
this reverses a trend, that 7200.7 is "louder" than V, which in turn is louder than IV. if 2.0 is verified, it would be the most quiet desktop 7200 rpm drive ever..more quiet than even the cuda IV.

it is not clear to me how seagate manage to reduce sound by an order of magnitude over its previous generations. seek noise is not listed.

evidently seagate has gotten wind of competition in silence from samsung and wants the crown back ... much like the extremely fierce competition that erupts between intel v.s amd, or nvidia v.s ati, also 16mb is extremely impressive and generous.

after all, silicon accoustics DUMPED seagate for samsung, which may have been due, in part, to silentpcreview and our forum here.

the single platter aureal density is 133mb unformatted, up from 80 and 100 respectively.

on top of this, it features native command queing and 8 or 16mb of cache.
NCQ requires SATA-II support.

unfortantely for us silent pc enthusiasts, it appears that there is no single platter model available, and i am not aware of any serial ATA-II compliant controller cards, and will not ship until Q3 2004.

samsung...your turn

wow, might be worth waitng for since I dont upgrade my hardrives very often. Hopefully seagate has their legal troubles concerning AAM settled.

Good find, hopefully this is a start of a silence war.

If two big guns like Seagate and Samsung start 'upping the pace' we should see some genuine improvements and more hopefully a 'spill' over into other area's as the industry starts to take note.

Could be good all round.



If the quoted 2.0 bels is correct, do you think the noise difference with a single platter model would be noticable? I realise in theory it should make a difference when seeking as there's only one head moving etc. but would it translate into something perceptible?

I suspect it will depend more on the noise signature than an absolute bel measurement.

Damn good almost exciting news none the less.

Let's hope the figures are realistic and not marketing, though I suspect and hope neither Seagate nor Samsung are silly enough to risk their reputation by quoting bullshit.

As you said...

"Samsung, your turn..."


Pete.

If you look closely at the pdf it states 2.0 bels for the single platter version. We'll have to wait and see how quiet it is, in my book I hope it is the best (quietest) drive.

Edit: If I read the other posts more carefully I might have noticed that this has already been mentioned...

I keep checking this area of the forum. Each time I hope for the magic silent drive to be announced. I was initally settled on Samsung, but given that some people have had drive failures, and others have had very noisy idle whine I've not purchased my new drives.

If Seagate brings back AAM, I'll be buying their new products. I'm after a pair of 400Gb SATA drives for my machine. I'll also need another drive for a spare machine.

So if you are monitoring this forum Seagate, now is the time to deliver

That is quiet.

Comparing to a notebook drive, Samsung 2.5 inch 5400 rpm M-series Spinpoints are listed at 2.2 idle, 2.4 random read/ write (single disk models).

(Samsung 3.5 inch Spinpoints -- 2.7 idle, 2.8 read/write)

More about the new Seagate in this older thread

oddly enough though the smallest capacity 7200.8 listed is 250GB, which must be dual-platter. for me 120gb single platter is enough.


[quote="nova"]If you look closely at the pdf it states 2.0 bels for the single platter version. We'll have to wait and see how quiet it is, in my book I hope it is the best (quietest) drive.

Are these all native SATA?
how long until they will be readily available?
i have been thinking about getting a 7200.7 120gb IDE drive and am now wondering weather i should wait for the 7200.8.. especially if it offers better performance aswell as noise.
could i get a SATA to IDE converter to run a SATA drive through a motherboard with IDE only [and lose the 'performance increase'] or would i need a SATA motherboard?

In response to the questions above:
-Yes, the SATA versions of the 7200.8 series are all native.
-Q3'04
-This remains to be seen; I will wait, though. I want native SATA all the way.

IDE versions have been announced too.

How soon will top mobo makers start integrating SATA 2.0 Raid?

I'd like to point out that the main reason for SATA II is not the speed increase, but the possibility to have more than one device per cable (read: motherboard connector), and external devices (maybe even working hot-swapping). NCQ/TCQ should not be forgotten either. There is no need for 300 MB/s for one device when current need is ~75 MB/s max.

Cheers,

Jan

If you look at the announcement here http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/new ... 70,00.html you will see this: Barracuda 7200.8 is extremely quiet, emitting as little as 2.0 bels at idle in the 120GB version.

Anyone know when exactly the new Seagate drives will ship and what will be the prices? I need some massive amount of storage fast (~1Tb) while maintaining low noise level. I finally settled for Hitachi 7K250, but the new Seagate drives look very promising and might be worth waiting. I just don't know how long I can last without running out of disc space...

Fall of 2004 is the most specific I've seen.

Q3'04 is the official "date."

Q3'04 = Fall of 2004 the last time i checked.

There is a difference between business quarters and non-business, yearly ones. You're all basing your assumptions that Q3 in Seagate press-release refers to a yearly quarter, not buseness one. However we don't know this for sure, that's why I wanted to know a clear date.

Release dates are rarely accurate. What is a business quarter? And why does it deviate from the solstices and equinoxes?

Hello:



Not "down under" is ain't! Anywhere south of the equator, Q1 is the Autumn/Fall and Q3 is Spring...