Seagate 7200.7 units available now? Barracuda drives R.I.P.

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Dru
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Seagate 7200.7 units available now? Barracuda drives R.I.P.

Post by Dru » Fri Feb 07, 2003 4:30 pm

It looks like the new 7200.7 drives are already getting to suppliers! PCNation.com claims to have the 40GB 7200.7 drives in stock.

It's sad to see the aging Barracuda line drop from the production lines according to this little story. :cry: However, I believe the Cuda IV line has made a great impact to shutting up computers!

I still don't get why they are stopping production on the Cuda Vs because they are still fairly new.

If you haven't read about the 7200.7 drives yet, they are supposed to aggressively compete with the current top performers.

The 7200.7 line has 80GB platters (40GB per side). I'm "patiently" waiting for the 80GB to be available since I would like to have a 1 platter HD to minimize the noise for my new PC as much as possible.

I'm sure you guys have outdone me but my Cuda IV inventory consists of: 1x30GB, 3x40GB, and 1x80GB. Since my first 30GB Cuda IV, I haven't bought any other brand since. :)

seishino
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Post by seishino » Sat Feb 08, 2003 1:55 pm

The cuda 5's were a stopgap... a cuda IV with SATA bolted on. I can understand why they dropped the line, especially if they managed to get single-chip HD IO implemented. The advances mentioned in the article seem to be basic design changes that will save everyone some money while keeping up the standards of the Barracuda name.

If Seagate keeps producing the strongest, quietest drives, I want them to rock the bottom line. Anything that keeps the Barracuda viable is a good thing.

And in case anyone is reading quickly, they're not retiring the entire Barracuda line... just the IV's and the V... which are being (basically) duplicated for cheaper in the 5400.1, 7200.7, and 7200.7+ lines.

I honestly don't see why anyone would mourn the evolution of our little friend... Perhaps we should throw a coming out party?

Dru
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Post by Dru » Sat Feb 08, 2003 8:50 pm

seishino wrote:I honestly don't see why anyone would mourn the evolution of our little friend... Perhaps we should throw a coming out party?
I think it's awesome to have the 7200.7 and Plus line coming out! But I believe the Seagate Barracuda IV is the one drive that proved the industry you can have 7200rpm drives with decent perf. and yet be quiet. Seagate is charging forward and coming out with some top notch drives now. I don't even think I'll wait for a review of the 7200.7 drives. I'm picking one up the moment they're available! I'm still debating between getting a 2mb or 8mb buffer one.

BladeRunner
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Post by BladeRunner » Sun Feb 09, 2003 4:51 am

Make sure you let us know if they are significantly noisier than the single platter IV's. From what I heard the V's were not as good nosie wise so I hope the trend is not for more performance and more noise.

Ralf Hutter
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Post by Ralf Hutter » Sun Feb 09, 2003 5:13 am

BladeRunner wrote:Make sure you let us know if they are significantly noisier than the single platter IV's. From what I heard the V's were not as good nosie wise so I hope the trend is not for more performance and more noise.
This is exactly my concern too. Some reviews of the V's claimed they were actually louder than the IVs, others said they were quieter so I don't know what to believe. It seems like the natural tendency is that "More and Faster is Better", especially here in the US. Hopefully Seagate is aware of how much people appreciate their quiet drives and won't overlook that for the sake a few tenths of a millisecond of transfer rate.

Dru
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Post by Dru » Sun Feb 09, 2003 7:53 am

Will do. Regardless of how quiet the 7200.7 drive will be, I plan to either suspend the drive in elastic or get the NoVibesIII from SiliconAcoustics to suppress the seek noise.

Like others, when I silenced my system, I was finally able to hear my Cuda IV 1 platter drives during seeks. During idle, it's still the quietest drive.

Destron
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Post by Destron » Wed Feb 12, 2003 1:16 am

It looks like the 7200.7 drives are more expensive than the B IV's. :( Is this a trend that will continue?

korsch
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Post by korsch » Wed Feb 12, 2003 2:14 am

Yeah the noise issue will be key. I want to pick up a couple Seagates and want to read more about the new models before the Barracuda V's become unavailable.

The only objective measurements I've seen of both seek and idle noise of the Barracuda IV versus V were the c't test results posted in the forums here:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com//viewt ... uda+maxtor

These results are consistent with my experience: V is quieter and produces less vibration at idle, but has louder seek noise (though not much if you use the acoustic mgmt software). For me, the seek noise less bothersome than the idle vibration which grates on my nerves. And I'm not as impressed as others with NoVibesIII which did very little for a noisy old IBM I have.

I hope jojo4u will keep us up to date with any new test results.

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