Western Digital and Seagate: 320GB Grudge Match
by Gary Key on July 27, 2006 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Hard Disk Test Specifications:
The Western Digital WD3200KS drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB drive in our benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives in the 250GB and 500GB capacity ranges in the near future.
The Seagate drive comes standard with a five year warranty while the Western Digital OEM drives ship with a three year warranty. Based upon reasons that are inexplicable Western Digital ships their retail kits with a one year warranty. The user can extend their warranty by two years through Western Digital for a cost of $14.95 currently.
Hardware Setup
We recently changed our test beds to reflect changes in the current marketplace. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we have upgraded from our AMD Athlon64 3500+ to an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future. We will review our test bed requirements once we have an opportunity to thoroughly test the AM2 and Intel Core 2 Duo platforms.
We debated on the memory size for our iPEAK trace file creations and decided to move to 2GB of system memory. A system with a 1GB memory configuration is the predominant standard at this time in the enthusiast community although many are moving to 2GB memory setups. While a 1GB memory installation allows us to capture and report a higher amount of disk activity in certain applications, we decided the make the switch at this time as the difference is minimal when compared to the 1GB trace files. All drives are tested with Native Command Queuing enabled if the drive supports this technology.
| Specifications | ||
| Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS | |
| Manufacturer's Stated Capacity: | 320GB | 320GB |
| Operating System Stated Capacity: | 298.09 GB | 298.09 GB |
| Interface: | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed: | 7,200 RPM | 7,200 RPM |
| Cache Size: | 16 MB | 16 MB |
| Average Latency: | 4.20 ms (nominal) | 4.16 ms (nominal) |
| Read Seek Time: | 8.9 ms | 8.5 ms |
| Number of Heads: | 6 | 4 |
| Number of Platters: | 3 | 2 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load: | 8.75W / 9.5W | 8.9W / 12.6W |
| Command Queuing: | N/A | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty: | 3 Years | 5 Years |
The Western Digital WD3200KS drive we are reviewing today will be compared directly against the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB drive in our benchmark test suite. We have also included the results of drives from our previous articles and will provide additional reviews of drives in the 250GB and 500GB capacity ranges in the near future.
The Seagate drive comes standard with a five year warranty while the Western Digital OEM drives ship with a three year warranty. Based upon reasons that are inexplicable Western Digital ships their retail kits with a one year warranty. The user can extend their warranty by two years through Western Digital for a cost of $14.95 currently.
Hardware Setup
| Standard Test Bed Playback of iPEAK Trace Files and Test Application Results |
|
| Processor: | AMD Opteron 170 utilized for all tests. |
| RAM: | 2 x 1GB Corsair 3500LL PRO |
| Settings- DDR400 at (2.5-3-3-7, 1T) | |
| OS Hard Drive: | 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA Platform Driver - 6.85 |
| Video Card: | 1 x Asus 7600GS (PCI Express) for all tests. |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 84.21 WHQL |
| Optical Drive: | BenQ DW1640 |
| Cooling: | Zalman CNPS9500 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GamexStream 700W |
| Case: | Gigabyte 3D Aurora |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | MSI K8N Diamond Plus |
We recently changed our test beds to reflect changes in the current marketplace. Based upon the continuing proliferation of dual core processors and future roadmaps from AMD and Intel signifying the end of the single core processor on the desktop in the near future, we have upgraded from our AMD Athlon64 3500+ to an AMD Opteron 170. This change will also allow us to expand our real world multitasking benchmarks in the near future. We will review our test bed requirements once we have an opportunity to thoroughly test the AM2 and Intel Core 2 Duo platforms.
We debated on the memory size for our iPEAK trace file creations and decided to move to 2GB of system memory. A system with a 1GB memory configuration is the predominant standard at this time in the enthusiast community although many are moving to 2GB memory setups. While a 1GB memory installation allows us to capture and report a higher amount of disk activity in certain applications, we decided the make the switch at this time as the difference is minimal when compared to the 1GB trace files. All drives are tested with Native Command Queuing enabled if the drive supports this technology.
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Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Actually, as strange as it sounds, Gary is correct on the WD warranty. You can check it out for yourself at http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp">http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp. OEM (bulk) drives carry a 3-year warranty and retail drives carry one year with an option to add 2 more years (to 3 total) for $14.95. Enterprise drives like Raptor carry a 5-year warranty.Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Corrected.archcommus - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
I'm guessing it should be "...where heavy read requests were prevalent." Just a heads up.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Typo fixed.Zaitsev - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Nice article, Gary. I enjoyed the background info on the two companies.A quick question: Is it possible the str of the Seagate is higher because of a higher areal density due to having only two platters vs. the WD's three? Or have I overlooked something and need to go to sleep :)
AkumaX - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
Nice article. We win either way!!! I'd rather go with Seagate though because I've had to RMA too many WD's in the past few years.Does anyone know of an app that measures HDD throughput (as in MB/s, read/write or both) in realtime?
Calin - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
I found strange how big a difference is in some bencmarks between one drive and the other (losing or winning). Anyway, each drive looks good value for moneyGooger - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
HDTACHPerformanceTest 6.0 (PassMark Software)
PC Pitstop @ PC Pitstop.com (requires internet explorer)
Googer - Thursday, July 27, 2006 - link
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?req...">http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?req...AkumaX - Saturday, July 29, 2006 - link
Sorry, HDTach is a benchmark. I'm looking for something that actually tells me how my hard drive is doing at the moment