Any chance of reviewing the one platter 160GB?

The ~465 gigabyte Windows calculated should be called gibibyte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

Microsoft is following the old standard; many people (myself included) still are. "Gibi" just sounds too bizzare.

And (this is very important), don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia...

Great article, keep up the good work guys. I think Devon was right to highligh the high-frequency whine issue even though it may be negligible for some users as well as noticeable if not irritating for others. After all the raison d'etre of SPCR is to inform it's user base about the noise signatures of various components which have the potential to substantially reduce PC operating noise when employed appropriately, so an examination of the full spectrum of noise emission from said component is fully justified in this context.

FWIW, I probably wouldn't get the 7200.9 500GB even if I did need that much storage space; high-frequency hard drive whine is one of the hardest things to eliminate even with hard drive enclosures like the SmartDrive/SilentDrive.

A correction made in the article:



jaganath -- it was never a question of disclosure of the HF noise -- merely of its significance. I had a hard time hearing it except from certain angles in free air. With the thing set on our noise & vibe amplifying aluminum box, it's more plainly audible, but that's not exactly a normal way to use a hard drive. I haven't heard it in a system yet, tho I have no doubt it was indeed audible in Devon's system. Will have to try it soon.

That’s not to say Seagate haven’t devised other methods of quieting these new drives. Okay, so the 500GB isn’t so quiet, but there’s some encouraging feedback at NewEgg on the new NEW single platter SATA 160GB. Yes, single platter is always going to be quieter than 4 platters, but I’ve been studying NewEgg customer feedback, especially for the quieter 7200.7 PATA models. I’ve been attempting to turn words into statistics. Re. 160GB 7200.9 SATA - for 6 customers out of 8 (75%) to leave feedback, that specifically mentions the quietness of the drive, that percentage is up with the very best 7200.7 PATA (ST340014A 40GB = 71%). I know you need a lot more than 8 people to obtain relevant accuracy, but it’s some indication at least.

I have a 7200.9 160GB in my hands right now. Next on the HDD review list.

At idle, all the Seagates are pretty good -- excepting odd tones like the 1.5khz one in our 500GB sample -- but in seek, the absence of AAM is impossible to ignore. float it in suspension, and it gets a whole lot better, of course. We'll see how this 1-platter model fares.

Can't wait

ALRIGHT!! Do you think it will be out soon, im waiting on SPCR. I dont trust anyone else with noise comparisons

Same for me. I need a 160 Gb Seagate in the next few days to add some gigabytes to my RAID 0 array. I have to choose between a .8 and a .9 don't know which one to pick !

uhmmm... No comparison between these is promised; I doubt there will be any difference anyway. If you want a quick and dirty, I'd say at idle, it's very quiet, but in seek, others are better because of AAM. If you can do a "true" elastic suspension in a sturdy case, maybe with a bit of damping, then it's probably as quiet as anything else of that capacity, but if not, go with a known quiet drive that's been well reviewed and recommended by SPCR.

Hm, I wonder how Devon and Mike compare in age, as hearing deteriorates with age...(though mostly known to be in higher frequencies). No, seriously.



I wonder if placing it on soft foam as a suspension technique would help the whine, since it seems to be eminating from the bottom of the drive?

-Ken

Thanks, I guess I'll go with a Samsung Spinpoint P 160 Gb. I hope it won't cause any problems to my RAID array with 2 Seagate 160Gb

Gxcad --

He's less than half my age.

The age-related falloff in the highs starts way higher than 1.5KHz. More like 10~15KHz. 1.5KHz is generally considered to be mid-band. It's about 2 octaves higher than middle A.

Devon has better overall sensitivity. I'm sure I've exposed myself to a lot more loud concerts, bars, music on my hifi. He's probably a couple dB more sensitive. IE, if I can't hear a noise once it drops below 15 dBA, he might be able to hear it down to 13. My guess. We've never tested/compared.

Just letting my inner pedant off the leash for a moment:

Yes, there is a 32bit Unicode character set, but the commonly used one (eg: Windows NT series) is 16bit, not 32. Therefore you err in saying that the 500Gb (gigabyte, not gibibyte) drive will only hold 125 x 10**9 characters - it will hold 250 x 10**9 characters.

And it will hold even more if you use UTF-8 and text that's predominantly in ASCII

Now excuse me while I try and get this leash back onto my inner pedant...

Nice review.
I know u specialize in sound but could u also include some sort of performance benchmarks.
Ex. large file copy/read, game loads, rar unpack.
Thanx

Check storagereview for that instead, that is their speciality.

7200.9 SPCR Article Page 3



Storage Review Test Drive The 7200.9

<nitpick mode='on'>
I thoroughly approve of the use of English in this bit:

Rather surprisingly though, it's spelled "concomitant".
</nitpick>

... and now I've actually read the article:

Great review! You guys have such a wonderful style. I find I'm dying to hear how the subsequent foam-underlay silencing attempts work out, even though I'm unlikely to buy one of these drives myself.


1.5kHz may be mid-band, but it's still quite a high note. My calculations put it just above the highest note that most sopranos in a choir would be able to sing.

From reading Mike's reviews, I have to conclude that his hearing is good, as he has clearly been bothered by sounds which other people can ignore (or not hear).

I don't know very much about monitoring hearing. Is there a way to objectively measure a person's hearing sensitivity, so that the results could be shown on a graph (sensitivity vs frequency)? If there is, I would pay good money to have Mike and Devon tested!

It's called audiometry and results in a audiogram. Haven't you been sitting with headphones in one of those sound-dampened chambers and pressing a button when you hear a sound? Where I live it's a standard procedure during the health controls in compulsory school.

Age-related hearing loss might affect the really high frequencies... but exposure to more noise and loud noises in general affects the mid-frequencies quite a bit

Did you contact the manufacturer regarding the high-pitched whine? Perhaps it was only in your sample?

I´ve been in those chambers pressing the button several times during school

IM SORRY COULD YOU REPEAT THAT? No seriously, i have pretty sensitive hearing, and i have very very low ambient noise. Even more seriously, i should be sleepin. Anyone have a spare life for rent?

nice review, as always.

do these new seagate still exhibit the god-awful self diagnostic noises, as I mentioned a while ago in this thread:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=23810

I'm in no hurry to buy seagates if that is the case.

The 1560 Hz sound is ± 28 dB higher than adjacent frequencies; if all 500 GB 7200.9 Seagates have this then I think I'm gonna keep buying "old" Seagate drives

And how are you determining this +28 dB? If it really was, there would have been absolutely no question about its audibility at any time during our testing. Whatever way you are getting this #, it's wrong.

No they are not, Giga is part of the SI-standard, giga was defined loooooooong before MS was even created (and its used by all other fields as 1000 000 000, HD-manufacturers and network-numbers are correct). 500 GB is the coorect way to state the capacity, or 465 GiB, 465 GB simply is incorrect.

AtW

I'm pretty sure Newegg "filters" reviews to show more positive ones.

MikeC I've done the analysis again and it's more like +23dB. See http://bingouille.ifrance.com/ (of course it's best viewing the jpg in 100% size; many browsers will badly resize the 1280*999 picture down, if so, find the no-resize option in your browser's picture display parameters, or simply download a copy of the 412 KB jpg file and view it at 100% size).
Also you can see on this graph that 450-750 Hz frequency range has similar amplitude to 1560 Hz pike; however human ear is particularly able to differentiate between two sound samples in the 200-2000 Hz frequency range so the 1560 Hz is easily audible apart from anything else.
I can extract the 1560 Hz pike sound from the rest of the frequency range (and keep amplitude unchanged) and post a small wav or mp3 to help identify what is a 1560 Hz sound.
Really hope your 7200.9 sample was bad // Seagate's nice reputation in hard disk noise aspects would hardly survive to such a bad thing as this 1.5kHz pike...

Anyway
many thanks for your site, reviews, forums; it gave me great help a few days ago to determine what hard drives (which I seem to consume like cherries) to buy; after examining all those great mp3 samples in a multitrack audio mixer (to easily compare and switch from one to another) I just ordered 4 Samsung SpinPoint P120 (250 GB ultraATA version)