Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

Here's a couple of HDTune results that confirms what I said earlier: better avoid 320GB, go for 250GB or 500GB.

500GB


320GB


Then a couple of IOPS benchmarks in HDTune, between 7200.4 and Scorpio Black.

7200.4.


WD1600BEKT


The WD was performed on my Atom based netbook, which may have a negative impact on the performance, I'm not sure.

 

Question: Dell has the 7200.4 500gb seagate drive for $87 or so. What are the chances that these will have the latest firmware on them? I would want to make sure that the 7200.4 drives indeed are faster before pulling the trigger.

 

It will be hard to determine unless you find someone who has purchased from Dell very recently that can tell you the firmware version... If they have 7-day money back guarantee (without any restocking fee) or something like that, you can get one and try that out...


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mine should come next Wednesday. I will post some benchmark once I get it.

 

Where did you get it? Dell? Newegg? Somewhere else?


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Dell.........

 

Nice compilation Phil. Those IOPS and MB/sec readings show that the WD1600BEKT you have based on the WD3200BEKT platform is indeed faster
than the 7200.4

It is strange how some manufacturers use limited head movement, and others will just space the data throughout the platter, yielding lower drive speed.

K-TRON

 

Very true. I remember the 250GB 7200.3 being slightly faster than the 320GB. So Seagate did it different back then.

 

so Phil, you're saying that the 320Gb 7200.4 is not as good?

 

Yeah look at the HD Tune scores I posted above. The 320GB reads about 10MB/sec slower than the 500Gb.

The 250GB seems to get the same read speeds as the 500GB.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...s/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1110.html

 

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/21279/DellSeagate-500GB-2-5-7200-rpm-Serial-ATA-Laptop-Hard-Drive-96

its cheaper now!

 

Amazing, my drive isn't even ready for pickup and the price has already dropped by $8!!

For those that can't find stock, meet NCIX, where they have seemingly every 7200.4 in stock and in relatively high numbers (those stock numbers have barely moved in a week)...

http://www.ncix.com/search/?categoryid=0&q=7200.4

160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, they are hidden though... (the 160 is even incorrectly named)

DAMMIT PHIL, haha, you're making me regret getting a 320 and I might instead get a 250 now..

 

I got my 500Gb today Firmware 0002SDM1.
I'm waiting for the new windows 7 RC, then will install the drive and post some benchmark.

 

My M860ETU chassis won't be here until the 12th, so my 250GB benchmarks will come then.

 

Looking forward to it. If possible I'd like to see some real world benchmarks if you know what I mean.

 

Sure phil, I will have it up soon

 

Finally some real world benchmarks of the Seagate 7200.4:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/8

Verdict: WD5000BEVT is often faster.

PS. I'm not sure what firmware they had.
PS2. WD3200BEKT is slightly faster than WD5000BEVT

 

I'm downloading the new Windows 7 RC right now, expecting benchmark to be up tomorrow.

 

Great test with strange results.
What drive is faster in real life now?
The Seagate is pretty slow in the file copy test, but much faster in the multi-tasking test, but it's possible that the drive is only that much faster in the multi-tasking test because of the much larger cache.

However, I'm happy that I've cancelled my Seagate order and bought 3 Hitachi drives. Even if the WD is the Editors choice the Hitachi seems to be the best balanced drive in this test. In some tests slower (File copy), in some tests faster (multi-tasking) than the WD, while consuming less power.

All in all, after I've read this test, I doubt if a 7200 RPM drive is really necessary. It is louder, consumes more power and the speed difference is negligible, according to this test.
Maybe they should just produce a 5400RPM drive with 16MB cache or more.

And at the moment I also use a large (512MB) external HDD cache, so the difference between the different hard drives should be almost zero on my computer.

 

they should have worked on the frimware some more. lol.

 

I don't see that. I see in some multi tasking benches the Seagate is faster, in some the WD is faster:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/5

 

I have the same firmware, is that the latest?

 

Yes, the initial firmware was 0001 and the updated one (latest one also) is 0002.

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so, is it safe to say that the 7200.4 500GB is the best secondary drive i could get for Audio production/video editing on a laptop? outside of SSD's (i'm poor)

i see that the real world tests show the 7200.4 to not be so great, but what i need out of the drive besides storage space, is the best sustained writing and reading speeds.

edit; i mean the best 500GB drive. if i opt for less space, i'd get another scorpio black 320 prolly.

 

That could be accurate, but it's also possible that it's not.

There's some multi media benchmarks at the bottom of this page.

One thing is certain, the performance difference between WD5000BEVT and Seagate 7200.4 is very small.

 

this drive is confusing. i don't get how a 5400 rpm could be bsically even with this 7200.4 for stuff like sustained data transfer and writing.

 

Ah, I don't get that too so you are not alone !

 

The speed of a drive is influenced by many factors like rotational speed, firmware, data density, interface performance, acces times etc.

That's why some 5400rpm drives outperform 7200rpm drives.

 

So Seagate has failed with this drive then

 

at this rate, my best option for performance, not regarding size is the Scorpio Black 320gb. outside of SSDs that is.

very disappointing - i thought the 7200.4 would at least own in sustained write and reads and data throughput.

 

Well it does own if the throughput is measured with a synthetic benchmark.

In real life/application performance it does not do as well.

But there may be some video encoding applications that may benefit from the maximum write and read speeds of the 7200.4

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/967/2/

synthetic test here?

at first i was al excited to see it do so well....

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didnt the 320 GB 7200.3 do the same thing? IIRC it performed better in synthetic benchmarks when compared to the WD Black but the Black destroyed it when using actual programs and Windows startup. For a while it was cheaper than the Black, but the Seagate eventually went down slower. I suspect that Seagate has decided to playthings like ATI and Nvidia: tailor theirhardware to perform better in synthetics benchmarks than it performs for the real world user. Dirty shame, I got a friend who swears by them.

To play devil's advocate, perhaps the firmware is optimized for battery life at teh expense of performance. Or we have nearly reached the physical ceiling on performance for spinning discs in the 2.5 formfactor (Raptors not withstanding). Perhaps that is why Hitachi and WD have not released the 7200/500GB drives of their own

 

Possibly...
Hmm, no word yet from Hitachi and WD for 500GB model...

 

they are probably scrambling to enter the SSD arms race. they sense that mechanical drives are going to be extinct soon.

 

mechanical drives aren't going anywhere. get that out of your head.

 

Yes all those benchmarks at Legit Reviews are synthetic.

Yes. And so did the 7200.2. Seagate Momentus has had mediocre I/O performance for a while now.

 

Shame Seagate is having a rough downward spiral. I was actually looking forward to this drive because I thought it would be a worthy upgrade for my Thinkpad in the future (prcie comes down).

Incidently I bought a Hitachi 5K500.B for the UltraBay (backups and lots of stuff I don't need on my primary HD) and I am having a hard time NOT buying a second for the primary.

 

system testbed
Q6600 3.6Ghz @ 400*9
Asus P5WDG2 WS PRO
4x2Gb DDR2-800 1:1
2.5" connected to Intel ICH7R
3.5" connected to 3ware 9650SE 8port
3.5" drive is 7200.11 500Gb Firmware SD3A


ST9250421AS=7200.3/250Gb firmware: HP14 ( HP 8730W original drive)
ST9500420ASG=7200.4/500Gb firmware: 0002SDM1
AMC9650-8LPML=7200.11/500Gb x8 Raid5 HDD firmware: SD3A


the third image is my workstation thrown in as a comparison.











ok this is the weird one. this test was conducted in IDE mode for the 2x2.5"
the CPU may be higher but the burst is so much higher. I wonder why







I'll do a 7200.4/500Gb vs WD3200BEKT in a few days. my wife's laptop is using WD3200BEKT.

from what i remember. her laptop is nc4400 whilst my laptop is 8730w.
her laptop loads and shutdown faster than my laptop hands down.


wife's laptop spec
dual core merom 2.0Ghz
2x2Gb DDR2-667
945 chipset

my laptop
quadcore qx9300
2x4Gb DDR2-800
45chipset.

will update again when my wife brings her laptop back from work.

 

Hi Phil
As I have looked all those benchmarks tests and everything what is rolling,rolling about spin hard drives there will never be perfect exact of test
because u will run tests all over again and results will be (slightly) different
othervise those charts what they shoving all the hard drives are almost on the same line little bit les little bit more ..
in real life it's calculated , If I will have to wait 1 ,2 or 3 seconds less or more depend of HDD .. doesn't matter ..
well ,
I tought the seagate is fastest and now I can see it's slowest ??
hmmm not bothered few sec.
anyway my priority is lowest noise reasonable price and mainly; quiet hdd head .. that's for sure ..

 

Lol yeah you're right the differences are really small. Usually impossible to notice unless you're using a stopwatch.

I think WD5000BEVT is relatively cheap and performs well.

 

yeah that's right
I had it and wasn't so quiet but even noisy and head was wery calm ! (WD5000BEVT ) I sold it (need to change signature)
gonna order that seagate ..
was looking on samsung one (250GB) result : it's not efficient
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive,2006-5.html
dunno if should order :
this: Seagate MOMENTUS 7200.4 250GB SATA 2.5IN 7200RPM 16MB
or : Seagate MOMENTUS 7200.4 250GB SATA 2.5IN 7200RPM 16MB G-FORCE

 

I don't think you're walking around with your AW when its on... so get without G-Force.

 

Ok then
gonna order that without G-F

 

Yeah,I have the similar burst rate speed too (7200.4 500GB) and I thought my drive was bad. Apparently something is wrong with HD tune.

 

once intel x25m 320Gb is out, I'm gonna sell the 500Gb drive. I so want to get 160Gb, but it's just not enough size for me.. vista x64, adobe cs4 suite, 3ds, lightroom, all the 3 nikon apps and fonts already consume nearly 60Gb. and that's before my imaging files.

as for hd tune AHCI mode with low burst, my workstation desktop, laptop, atom and even spare system are reporting 60MB+ with hd tune.

one thing i find odd is that i feel that my 250Gb is faster than my 500Gb
especially in booting up. i kinda regret getting the ASG.. should have just gotten the AS.

 

Hey guys, didn't even know this thread existed. And it has for a while Just want to share some of my experience with these drives. A have three w/out any RAID in my D901C. I can't remember what brand the previous drive was but it was 250GB 5400RPM. My startup times have actually increased. It's in the BIOS load screen, it takes 15-20 seconds longer than before at this particular load screen. I haven't run any benchmarks, but thats the only noticable difference i can tell so far. In the D901C two of the drives are actually stacked on top of eachother. This, as you can imagine, creates alot of heat, 55-58C. I'm now thinking about ditching one of those drives in the double stack and replacing it with a SSD. Probobly the Intel x-25M 80GB, the SuperTalent Ultradrive ME 60GB, or the OCZ Vertex 60GB.

 

The 320GB is the 7200.3 though. So wouldn't you think the 320GB 7200.4 would be the same speed as the 250 and 500?

I'm in the market for a larger faster HDD to add to my soon to own 13in MBP and I'm just getting really confused, lol. But from what I have read I am really digging the 7200.4

 

Actually ST9320423AS is Seagate 7200.4. Source.

It does about 10 MB/sec less than the 500GB. I have not seen HDTune results of the 250GB yet.

After reading this review I would buy WD5000BEVT over 7200.4. It performs slightly better, uses less power and makes less noise. Oh yeah, it's also cheaper.

 

WOOW WEEWW OOH DEAR
I just received the hard drive seagate 7200.4 250GB
And this harddrive is AMAZING !!!
All hdd's can go to ...
this is the best what I bought ..
quiet like old fujitsu 400GB 4200rpm..!
I even don't know if it's there or not
no even one small F KLICK nothing !
the guys from seagate are the best !
gonna do some tests tmrw ..