Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80 GB SATA II Hard Drive
- HDD Form Factor: 3.5' x 1/3H (Low Profile)
- Capacity: 80 GB
- Interface: Serial ATA
- Enclosure: Internal
- Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
Available From
Why are these offers here?
Smart Buy!
Lowest price from a Trusted Store
Lowest Price!
Featured Offer
- Overview
-
Reviews
- Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
A Great SATA II drive
Pros
fast, quiet and fast, low heat. Overall excellent performance!
Cons
none
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Seagate SATA II definitely sets a tone for future SATA drives.
The Barracuda SATA II 7200.9 80GB (ST3808110AS)
At the current rage of the storage technology, a hard drive with an 80GB capacity is probably not a hot debate any more. Hard drives with capacity of a hopping 750GB have appeared recently. It seems logical, especially with the vast amount of storage space required by users in the multimedia or just data storage, that the larger the capacity the more advantageous the hard drive offers.
In the SATA II technology, Seagate first introduced their Barracuda 7200.9 series with a good number of storage-capacity options. And now, Seagate already ship out the second generation of their SATA II hard drives (Barracuda 7200.10 series, presumed to be well improved)...and I'm still using their 7200.8 SATA I 250GB. The projection seems to indicate that the SATA technology will dominate the storage arena with their ever increasing data transfer rate and super large storage capacity. In contrast, the IDE technology is disappearing in the back ground. Many new motherboards are now being shipped with only one IDE port designated presumably for ATAPI optical devices instead of the IDE hard drives. Serial and parallel ports are being drop from those motherboards as well.
It seems that my review of the Seagate 7200.9 Barracuda SATA II 80GB is a little bit out of pace with the current trend of SATA II hard drives; and I have only acquired it recently for a system I built back in May/June this year. Why 80GB? You might ask, especially when a larger capacity drive could be had at a cheaper price in terms of GB per dollar. I decided to use an 80GB as a system hard drive (well, at least 40 GB of it). Designating a separate drive for the system helps speed things up a bit, especially during multitasking or that sort of things. Plus, having several hard drives in a system also provides an excellent way to manage data as well as security.
Using a single platter for its storage density, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is the smallest hard drive in its lineup. It is capable of a data transfer rate of 300MB/s and requires connecting it to a SATA II port using a SATA II cable to achieve such performance. Of course, it is backward compatible with SATA I technology. In fact, the motherboard I use for this hard drive only supports SATA I technology. The only drawback is that data transfer rate will be reduced from its optimum speed. But since the 300MB/s transfer rate of the SATA II is still a distant dream, the SATA II drive will work on the SATA I port without sacrificing speed; and only benefit is to gain since the SATA II drives can move data much faster than their first generation (that is, SATA I). Note: Only current motherboards or those introduced in the last year support SATA II technology.
Below is a quick reference of the Seagate 7200.9 SATA II 80GB specifications.
Model: ST3808110AS
Interface: SATA II 3.0GB/s
Capacity: 80GB
Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
Cache: 8MB
Average SeekTime/Latency Time: 11ms/4.16ms
Form factor: Internal, 3.5-inch
Installation
Hardware installation was straight-forward, which only requires an empty drive bay inside the system case. For us, the system case (Antec SLK-3700BQE) has four individual drive trays. Each drive can be secured onto the tray by four custom screws, with rubber grommets to prevent the drive from touching the metal tray that may cause rattling from the vibration or acoustic noise. I simply secure this drive onto the tray and slide it into the drive bay. Connect the SATA power cable and data cable, and it's done. Since this drive serves as the boot device, I connect it to the first SATA port on the motherboard. During bootup, the BIOS system detected it as the first master IDE/SATA device and everything went smoothly.
This drive serves as the system drive. Therefore, we need to set it up from scratch by installing the Windows operating system. I divide it into two partitions, using the first part (~40GB) as the system partition and second partition to store software programs and miscellaneous data. Both partitions were set as primary. Software installation went smoothly...and fast!
Performance
As a system drive, the unit exceeded my expectations. It is fast! Operating system installation was fast. Application software installation was also fast. It was difficult to conclude whether the smooth and fast response were due to the hard drive alone or a combined system with fast CPU and good management of the motherboard. I suspect the latter to contribute; but ultimately, if the hard drive is slow, then everything would be dragged down by it. Therefore, this hard drive had a lot to do with the excellent overall system responsiveness. The entire system depends a lot on the hard drive (it basically lives on the hard drive!), e.g., making a fast swap file, access, read and write data, etc.
Benchmark Scores
SiSoft Sandra2005: Windows XP Pro SP-2
Drive Index: 62 MB/s
Ave Read: 57.3 MB/s
Ave Write: 76.3 MB/s
Access Time: 8 ms
Its sequential read/write speeds are identical (73/72 MB/s).
HD Tach (long zone analysis):
Burst Rate: 128.6MB/s
Sequential Read:
- Inner Zone: 72.5 MB/s
- Outer Zone: 38 MB/s
Ave Read: 62.2 MB/s
CPU Time: 2 %
Access Time: 13.9 ms
An average read of 62MB/s is quite good. The results reported by SiSoft Sandra were based on averaging. Individually, the drive made a 73 MB/s sequential read and 110 MB/s buffered write. Internal transfer as usual was quite fast. External transfer rate for small data files was also impressive, making an average of 65 MB/s. This result seems to match the drive index given by SiSoft Sandra. Based on the inner zone result given by HD Tach, this hard drive makes an excellent system partition from 0GB to about 40GB. Because, according to HD Tach's sequential read graph, the drive put out a near constant graph from 0GB at 72.5 MB/s to 39GB at 60MB/s and dips down to around 40MB/s to the outer zone. Of course, this is due to its fast accessing speed at the beginning of the first and subsequent sectors. But for sustain access time, this drive (like any other SATA drives) gets slowed down. Its 13.9 ms access time reveals that.
In plain English, all in all, this is an excellent SATA hard drive I have seen, even better than its bigger brother 400GB I reviewed earlier this year.
Operation Noise/Heat
Seagate SATA drives have improved greatly particularly in operation noise. During accessing, it produced almost unnoticeable noise that often fades in the background of noise emitted by other components in the system case (cpu fan, power fan, etc). I think the noise of this hard drive has been further reduced by the drive tray that has rubber grommet to dampen its vibration and acoustics. Since this is a system drive that spins constantly during operation, heat is still low and comfortable to the touch; it is mildly warm. I think even without any fan blowing directly onto it, the hard drive still yields a good low heat (unless of course no air circulation at all in the system case -- that's a different story).
Conclusion
The advantage of the SATA technology among other things is that hardware installation is quite easy. The bonus of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is its incredible performance. Imagine how it performs when properly connected to SATA II port. The sound of that makes me watering for a new motherboard with SATA II. Based on the benchmark results and my experience using it, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is an excellent small capacity hard drive. The greatest benefit is that we can still use it on old SATA I port without having to spend money on new motherboards (but it doesn't hurt to obtain such boards to experience an increase in speed...).
The cheapest way to experience SATA II is perhaps by a PCI SATA II controller card. But speed will probably suffer greatly from a 32bit/33MHz bus on the standard PCI slot. A better way would be to use PCI-Express x1, x4, x8 or x16 bus line. But, then again, we are back to square one -- that is, only new motherboards support PCI-E slots; and those boards will probably already have built-in SATA II ports. The future of SATA technology is promising, and it's probably a good idea to invest in newer motherboards.
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB (like its large-capacity members) comes with a 5-year warranty. Since I first began using SATA devices, I have yet to experience problems with them compared to my IDE devices. If you require a small hard drive for whatever purpose you may have, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB may well impress you. With a pair of 80GB drives set as Raid 0 would probably yield one heck of a performance.
*******
Hardware System and Components
Motherboard: Abit AV-8 (supports SATA I technology)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GH Venice core (single-core) 2000MHz HT
RAM: Patriot PDC1G3200LLK 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 DDR400
AGP: ATI Radon 9600XT 128MB 8x
Hard Drives: Seagate 7200.9 SATA II 80GB, Seagate 7200.7 SATA I 160GB
OS: Windows XP Pro SP-2
At the current rage of the storage technology, a hard drive with an 80GB capacity is probably not a hot debate any more. Hard drives with capacity of a hopping 750GB have appeared recently. It seems logical, especially with the vast amount of storage space required by users in the multimedia or just data storage, that the larger the capacity the more advantageous the hard drive offers.
In the SATA II technology, Seagate first introduced their Barracuda 7200.9 series with a good number of storage-capacity options. And now, Seagate already ship out the second generation of their SATA II hard drives (Barracuda 7200.10 series, presumed to be well improved)...and I'm still using their 7200.8 SATA I 250GB. The projection seems to indicate that the SATA technology will dominate the storage arena with their ever increasing data transfer rate and super large storage capacity. In contrast, the IDE technology is disappearing in the back ground. Many new motherboards are now being shipped with only one IDE port designated presumably for ATAPI optical devices instead of the IDE hard drives. Serial and parallel ports are being drop from those motherboards as well.
It seems that my review of the Seagate 7200.9 Barracuda SATA II 80GB is a little bit out of pace with the current trend of SATA II hard drives; and I have only acquired it recently for a system I built back in May/June this year. Why 80GB? You might ask, especially when a larger capacity drive could be had at a cheaper price in terms of GB per dollar. I decided to use an 80GB as a system hard drive (well, at least 40 GB of it). Designating a separate drive for the system helps speed things up a bit, especially during multitasking or that sort of things. Plus, having several hard drives in a system also provides an excellent way to manage data as well as security.
Using a single platter for its storage density, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is the smallest hard drive in its lineup. It is capable of a data transfer rate of 300MB/s and requires connecting it to a SATA II port using a SATA II cable to achieve such performance. Of course, it is backward compatible with SATA I technology. In fact, the motherboard I use for this hard drive only supports SATA I technology. The only drawback is that data transfer rate will be reduced from its optimum speed. But since the 300MB/s transfer rate of the SATA II is still a distant dream, the SATA II drive will work on the SATA I port without sacrificing speed; and only benefit is to gain since the SATA II drives can move data much faster than their first generation (that is, SATA I). Note: Only current motherboards or those introduced in the last year support SATA II technology.
Below is a quick reference of the Seagate 7200.9 SATA II 80GB specifications.
Model: ST3808110AS
Interface: SATA II 3.0GB/s
Capacity: 80GB
Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
Cache: 8MB
Average SeekTime/Latency Time: 11ms/4.16ms
Form factor: Internal, 3.5-inch
Installation
Hardware installation was straight-forward, which only requires an empty drive bay inside the system case. For us, the system case (Antec SLK-3700BQE) has four individual drive trays. Each drive can be secured onto the tray by four custom screws, with rubber grommets to prevent the drive from touching the metal tray that may cause rattling from the vibration or acoustic noise. I simply secure this drive onto the tray and slide it into the drive bay. Connect the SATA power cable and data cable, and it's done. Since this drive serves as the boot device, I connect it to the first SATA port on the motherboard. During bootup, the BIOS system detected it as the first master IDE/SATA device and everything went smoothly.
This drive serves as the system drive. Therefore, we need to set it up from scratch by installing the Windows operating system. I divide it into two partitions, using the first part (~40GB) as the system partition and second partition to store software programs and miscellaneous data. Both partitions were set as primary. Software installation went smoothly...and fast!
Performance
As a system drive, the unit exceeded my expectations. It is fast! Operating system installation was fast. Application software installation was also fast. It was difficult to conclude whether the smooth and fast response were due to the hard drive alone or a combined system with fast CPU and good management of the motherboard. I suspect the latter to contribute; but ultimately, if the hard drive is slow, then everything would be dragged down by it. Therefore, this hard drive had a lot to do with the excellent overall system responsiveness. The entire system depends a lot on the hard drive (it basically lives on the hard drive!), e.g., making a fast swap file, access, read and write data, etc.
Benchmark Scores
SiSoft Sandra2005: Windows XP Pro SP-2
Drive Index: 62 MB/s
Ave Read: 57.3 MB/s
Ave Write: 76.3 MB/s
Access Time: 8 ms
Its sequential read/write speeds are identical (73/72 MB/s).
HD Tach (long zone analysis):
Burst Rate: 128.6MB/s
Sequential Read:
- Inner Zone: 72.5 MB/s
- Outer Zone: 38 MB/s
Ave Read: 62.2 MB/s
CPU Time: 2 %
Access Time: 13.9 ms
An average read of 62MB/s is quite good. The results reported by SiSoft Sandra were based on averaging. Individually, the drive made a 73 MB/s sequential read and 110 MB/s buffered write. Internal transfer as usual was quite fast. External transfer rate for small data files was also impressive, making an average of 65 MB/s. This result seems to match the drive index given by SiSoft Sandra. Based on the inner zone result given by HD Tach, this hard drive makes an excellent system partition from 0GB to about 40GB. Because, according to HD Tach's sequential read graph, the drive put out a near constant graph from 0GB at 72.5 MB/s to 39GB at 60MB/s and dips down to around 40MB/s to the outer zone. Of course, this is due to its fast accessing speed at the beginning of the first and subsequent sectors. But for sustain access time, this drive (like any other SATA drives) gets slowed down. Its 13.9 ms access time reveals that.
In plain English, all in all, this is an excellent SATA hard drive I have seen, even better than its bigger brother 400GB I reviewed earlier this year.
Operation Noise/Heat
Seagate SATA drives have improved greatly particularly in operation noise. During accessing, it produced almost unnoticeable noise that often fades in the background of noise emitted by other components in the system case (cpu fan, power fan, etc). I think the noise of this hard drive has been further reduced by the drive tray that has rubber grommet to dampen its vibration and acoustics. Since this is a system drive that spins constantly during operation, heat is still low and comfortable to the touch; it is mildly warm. I think even without any fan blowing directly onto it, the hard drive still yields a good low heat (unless of course no air circulation at all in the system case -- that's a different story).
Conclusion
The advantage of the SATA technology among other things is that hardware installation is quite easy. The bonus of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is its incredible performance. Imagine how it performs when properly connected to SATA II port. The sound of that makes me watering for a new motherboard with SATA II. Based on the benchmark results and my experience using it, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB is an excellent small capacity hard drive. The greatest benefit is that we can still use it on old SATA I port without having to spend money on new motherboards (but it doesn't hurt to obtain such boards to experience an increase in speed...).
The cheapest way to experience SATA II is perhaps by a PCI SATA II controller card. But speed will probably suffer greatly from a 32bit/33MHz bus on the standard PCI slot. A better way would be to use PCI-Express x1, x4, x8 or x16 bus line. But, then again, we are back to square one -- that is, only new motherboards support PCI-E slots; and those boards will probably already have built-in SATA II ports. The future of SATA technology is promising, and it's probably a good idea to invest in newer motherboards.
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB (like its large-capacity members) comes with a 5-year warranty. Since I first began using SATA devices, I have yet to experience problems with them compared to my IDE devices. If you require a small hard drive for whatever purpose you may have, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 80GB may well impress you. With a pair of 80GB drives set as Raid 0 would probably yield one heck of a performance.
*******
Hardware System and Components
Motherboard: Abit AV-8 (supports SATA I technology)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GH Venice core (single-core) 2000MHz HT
RAM: Patriot PDC1G3200LLK 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 DDR400
AGP: ATI Radon 9600XT 128MB 8x
Hard Drives: Seagate 7200.9 SATA II 80GB, Seagate 7200.7 SATA I 160GB
OS: Windows XP Pro SP-2
