Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250 GB $70 Shipped from newegg

[SVOMaster]

NewEgg.com has the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250820AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $70 with free shipping. A good price to get your hands on a little bit of perpendicular action.

Link

 

[Cheetah8799]

16mb cache version is only $5 more. free shipping on both. tempting.

 

[rpf717rpf]

Do the perpendicular drives have an advantage over an identically sized 7200.9? In otherwords should I be willing to pay more for the .10 than a .9 that are both 250 gig? IE reliability, or noise, etc?

 

[Spike]

I'm not sure how typical my experience is but my 1.5 month old 500gb 7200.10 failed and is in the RMA process. At the same time when it worked it was noiser than my 7200.9 drives as well as hotter. Personally I would go for the 7200.9 drive if you have a choice, but my experience has been tainted by what probably is just a lemon.

 

[Maluno]

Originally posted by: Spike
I'm not sure how typical my experience is but my 1.5 month old 500gb 7200.10 failed and is in the RMA process. At the same time when it worked it was noiser than my 7200.9 drives as well as hotter. Personally I would go for the 7200.9 drive if you have a choice, but my experience has been tainted by what probably is just a lemon.

Yes, do remember that it is almost impossible to judge the reliability of a hard drive just from the anecdotal evidence of other users, because without a sample size of 1000+ drives, there is absolutely no valid way to make any accurate generalizations about a particular model or series of drives, (or any product for that matter, (except for special cases, where the same specific component repeatedly fails for many consumers, such as the Bose Triport's infamous headband, or the headphone jacks on the cursed old-generation creative labs Zen DAPs)).

I would generally say, (again, this is with no actual scientific data, or any intimate knowledge of the construction of any of the SG 7200 series), that the newer models should be better than their predecessors. The question, then, is "how much better?" Honestly, I don't think it will make a bit of difference if you were to choose the older drive over the new one, since they both have the same feature sets.

Spike does make a point, however, that he noticed the drive noise to be significantly greater on the newer series drive.

Take what you read with a grain of salt, including my own posts.

 

[13Gigatons]

Originally posted by: Spike
I'm not sure how typical my experience is but my 1.5 month old 500gb 7200.10 failed and is in the RMA process. At the same time when it worked it was noiser than my 7200.9 drives as well as hotter. Personally I would go for the 7200.9 drive if you have a choice, but my experience has been tainted by what probably is just a lemon.

This is why super HUGE drives are always a risk. I would rather own a few smaller drives. If you fill 500 gigs and haven't backed it up then you could really get yourself in some trouble.

 

[Showtime]

Originally posted by: Maluno

Originally posted by: Spike
I'm not sure how typical my experience is but my 1.5 month old 500gb 7200.10 failed and is in the RMA process. At the same time when it worked it was noiser than my 7200.9 drives as well as hotter. Personally I would go for the 7200.9 drive if you have a choice, but my experience has been tainted by what probably is just a lemon.

Yes, do remember that it is almost impossible to judge the reliability of a hard drive just from the anecdotal evidence of other users, because without a sample size of 1000+ drives, there is absolutely no valid way to make any accurate generalizations about a particular model or series of drives, (or any product for that matter, (except for special cases, where the same specific component repeatedly fails for many consumers, such as the Bose Triport's infamous headband, or the headphone jacks on the cursed old-generation creative labs Zen DAPs)).

I would generally say, (again, this is with no actual scientific data, or any intimate knowledge of the construction of any of the SG 7200 series), that the newer models should be better than their predecessors. The question, then, is "how much better?" Honestly, I don't think it will make a bit of difference if you were to choose the older drive over the new one, since they both have the same feature sets.

Spike does make a point, however, that he noticed the drive noise to be significantly greater on the newer series drive.

Take what you read with a grain of salt, including my own posts.

Desk/Death Star was also once the new drive on the block and we all know how the majority of those ended.

It's difficult to buy a fast and quiet hard drive right now. For silence/daily use seagates were my fav. Even my current 7200.9 is quiet, but is too slow imo. I really wanted the performance of the 7200.10, but that was a loud drive and not quite as fast as my raptor, so no good for any of my rigs. WD KS looked great and the newer AAKS were supposed to be even better. Unfortunately too many reports of failed drives on the new series. Even with the small sample of users at newegg, etc., there is enough evidence to point to either a design flaw or a very large bad batch. I'll wait for other people to buy up this over heating/failing batch of drives and grab one when they redesign, tighten up production, or do whatever it is to fix the many problems reported. By then Samsungs hybrid drives might be here and that should be just what I need depending on price.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Maluno
Yes, do remember that it is almost impossible to judge the reliability of a hard drive just from the anecdotal evidence of other users, because without a sample size of 1000+ drives, there is absolutely no valid way to make any accurate generalizations about a particular model or series of drives, (or any product for that matter, (except for special cases, where the same specific component repeatedly fails for many consumers, such as the Bose Triport's infamous headband, or the headphone jacks on the cursed old-generation creative labs Zen DAPs)).

Or the 75GXP, don't forget that one. Granted, mine ran fine up until they day that I sold it, but...

 

[Spike]

I apologize, I was not meaning to imply that the 7200.10 is a bad drive, just that my first HDD failure ever happened to be one of these.

Originally posted by: 13Gigatons
This is why super HUGE drives are always a risk. I would rather own a few smaller drives. If you fill 500 gigs and haven't backed it up then you could really get yourself in some trouble.

It pains me how right you are. I lost ~1300 of the pictures I took with my new Rebel XTI as well as ~40GB of ripped streaming music. I backup on a ~2 month cycle and was just approaching that. Obviously that was a flawed approach and I now know better.

Again, I don't mean a slam on Seagate as my other Seagates are working beautifully, this one just happened to fail and so I am somewhat weary of the 7200.10 line.

And speaking of the deatstar, my friend has a 40GB model that is still working all these many years later so it's all about the particular drive you get and less about how the line as a whole fairs.

 

[niji1875]

hmmm....i haven't been looking for drives in a while...

 

[craftech]

Count the platters. Generally less platters = quieter.

John

 

[911paramedic]

The reviews I just read said that the perpendicular had a better burst rate(?), but the caviar had a better sustained throughput of information.

Based on that info, I bought a 250GB caviar yesterday.

 

[Robor]

Thanks OP!