Impressions of Seagate's latest Ultra 160 SCSI drive. The volume and weight of the disk is impressive, but...

The Eastern European representative office of the company provided the Compuferra laboratory with a pilot sample of the largest (at the moment) three-inch hard drive in the world - a 180-gigabyte Ultra 160 SCSI drive Seagate Barracuda 180 - for testing. significant event. Discs of the Barracuda family have long deserved a good reputation, so the next record of the seventh generation of “toothy fish” looks like a worthy continuation of rich traditions. It is also promised that these drives will have the lowest cost per megabyte among SCSI models, although in any case the price in the region of two green mowers does not allow recommending these drives for home entertainment.

The total formatted capacity of a kilogram "baby" is 181.6 billion bytes. The drive consists of 12 double-sided platters of 15 GB each, that is, it has as many as 24 heads (for comparison, modern IDE hard drives usually have no more than three platters). Such a package of "pancakes" required a thicker case compared to standard 3.5-inch hard drives - 40 mm instead of 25 (see photo). The package rotates at a speed of 7200 rpm. (as it should be for the Barracuda), while the internal read speed reaches 508 Mbps, and the average seek time is 7.4 ms for reading and 8.2 ms for writing. I note that this is about 1 ms faster than the Barracuda ATA series drives, despite the several times “heavier” head block.

All models in the series have the same capacity and differ only in the built-in buffer capacity and interface, which is reflected in the letter indexes at the end of the model number ST11816877xxx. Models are available for both Ultra 160 SCSI (index L) and 200MB-per-second Fiber Channel (F). Index V means that the disk cache has been increased to 16 MB (instead of the usual 4 MB) and the model is designed for video and graphics. Of the features, it should also be noted the use of a special Advanced Multidrive System technology that improves disk performance in server and RAID applications, and relatively low power consumption facilitates its use in disk arrays. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the appearance of the controller board, the Barracuda 180 and another Ultra 160 SCSI drive are identical (see photo) despite more than a twofold difference in rotational speed and access time between these drives.

Thanks to special anti-noise measures, the drive is the quietest among direct analogues (37 dB when rotating). But the shock resistance of the drive is noticeably lower than that of Seagate IDE models - only 10 g in operation and 150 g in the off state. Nevertheless, increased reliability is promised for the disk, in particular, due to the use of new technology Rotational Vibration Sensor, which reduces the influence of external vibrations. I note that the maximum operating temperature of the disk is also low - 50 degrees (usually 55).

The "baby" was tested using a controller (see "CT" #385 for details). For performance comparison, last year's Seagate Cheetah X15 SCSI superdisk (15,000 rpm rotation) and the brand new Barracuda ATA III with 20 GB platters were selected (see ). In terms of maximum linear read speed, our hero overtook both of these drives, showing as much as 42.8 million bytes / s (a new record from Seagate?). The highest write speed was 27.6 million bytes / s, and the average access time was 12.2 ms. On the other hand, the reading graph was discouraging with large and regular dips in the places where the capacity of the cylinders changed on the surface of the magnetic plate (see the screenshot of the HD Tach 2.61 program, a similar picture was obtained for the WinBench 99 test).

Fortunately, when recording, these dips are not so noticeable. A slightly similar picture is also observed for the Cheetah X15 disk (see ), but these dips are not large there. This is apparently due to the design features of disks, but such "holes" cannot in any way favor the operation of a disk with high-stream video applications (for example, recording / reading uncompressed high-quality video).

The behavior of the Barracuda 180 disc in our usual tests (see method) also raised questions. Thus, it noticeably outperformed the Barracuda ATA III in all Disk WinMark tests from WinBench 99 (especially in the office tests, see the diagram)! When copying many small files and in the Adaptec ThreadMark test, the “baby” won back, but when copying one big file(analogue of a video stream) - catastrophically "dipped". Thus, the model with a 4 MB cache is not very well optimized for streaming video (this is also confirmed by the results of the Nbench test, where the Barracuda 180 is inferior to its IDE sister). Perhaps the situation is different in the model with 16 MB cache. But for server applications, the disk is quite successful. So, according to the Intel Iometer test, the "giant" is 1.5-2 times faster than the Barracuda ATA III on server tasks (file and web servers), but, of course, it is inferior to the Cheetah X15 (the "Barracudas" are approximately equal in streaming writing/reading). And this, in fact, is required from a good and super-capacious SCSI disk.

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A source: slon.ru

1. Laptop sleeve - $11 million

The world's most expensive Diamond Laptop Sleeve from the Dutch company CoverBee is hand-decorated with 8,800 rare diamonds from around the world. The cover is trimmed with natural black sable fur from Siberia - the designers claim that they used only the fur of animals that died of natural causes. The diamonds are attached to the skin, and the fur, located on the inside of the cover, will reliably protect the laptop and warm it in sub-zero temperatures. It took two years to create the diamond case.

2 iPad 2 with Tyrannosaurus rex bone - $8.1 million

The world's most expensive laptop, the gold-hued iPad 2, was designed by British jeweler Stuart Hughes, who specializes in premium gadget design. To decorate the tablet, 2 kg of gold (24 carats) and 750 grams of ammolite, the oldest precious stone of organic origin, were used. The design of the iPad 2 uses fragments of a Tyrannosaurus rex bone with a total weight of 57 grams. The Apple logo is made from 53 diamonds. A large 8.5 carat diamond is inserted into the center of the home button. The designer gadget is offered to customers in only two copies.

3. Diamond iPhone 4 - $8 million

The world's most expensive phone, the 32GB iPhone 4, was also designed by Stuart Hughes. The body of the phone is encrusted with 500 diamonds with a total weight of about 100 carats. The navigation of the phone is made of platinum, and the main button in the center is a solid pink diamond of 7.4 carats. The back cover of the phone is made of rose gold, the Apple logo on it is adorned with 53 diamonds. The smartphone is provided with an individual box made of granite. Such an iPhone was created in only two copies by order of an unknown Australian rich man.

4 Organic Harmony Speaker System - $6.95 million

The world's most expensive Hi-End Organic Harmony speaker system was created by Shape Audio in a limited edition. As the main materials for its manufacture, precious and precious metals were used, thanks to which, according to the developers, it was possible to achieve the highest sound quality of acoustics and combine the qualitative and aesthetic characteristics of the device. The system was developed with the active participation of Shape Audio President Luciano Pasquarelli and is a five-way active acoustic system. Organic Harmony has almost pie chart orientation and is presented in three versions - with a case coated with 18 carat gold (at a price of $6.95 million), 925 silver ($416,000) and bronze ($87,400). The system includes a 1000W Class D amplifier with stereo analog input and DSP, S/PDIF, USB and Ethernet digital inputs.

5. Supreme Rose TV - $2.3 million The world's most expensive TV, the 55-inch PrestigeHD Supreme Rose Edition, once again featured Stuart Hughes with support from Metz and PrestigeHD. The model was released in only three copies. The frame of the TV is made of 28 kg rose gold and is set with 72 round 1-carat diamonds, as well as encrusted with amber and amethysts. The reverse side of the TV is trimmed with crocodile skin.

6. Beats by Dre headphones - $1 million

The most expensive headphones in the world were created by Beats By Dre in collaboration with Graff Diamonds, one of the most famous and innovative gemstone dealers in the world. Decorated with 114 carats of diamonds, these headphones were created especially for the Super Bowl American football finals: traditionally, music stars perform at halftime, and these headphones were worn by LMFAO's SkyBlue during their show with Madonna. According to the manufacturer, this wireless headphones high-definition, so comfortable that you feel the music, not the headphones. The velvet ear cushions are lined with ultra-soft, breathable material to keep your ears from sweating.

7 Nintendo Wii Supreme Game Console - $481,250

The British have also created the most expensive game console in the world by covering a standard Nintendo Wii with two and a half kilograms of 22 carat gold. In addition, the front buttons of the console are decorated with 78 diamonds weighing 19.5 carats. It took the designer half a year to make this luxurious device: only four months less than the previous work of the master, the diamond iPhone 4, took. In total, only three such consoles were released.

8. Gold Remote Control Gold RC1 - $55,000

Created by Danish manufacturer Lantic Systems, the Gold RC1 universal remote control boasts a glamorous design and the ability to control almost any electronic device in the house - TV, video and DVD-player, music center, Internet, email, home alarm system, lights, blinds and curtains, air conditioning, video surveillance and navigation system. The solid gold console was first introduced in 2007 at the METS show in Amsterdam and has almost doubled in price since then.

9. Magic Mushrooms Flash Drive - $16,500 to $36,900

Swiss jewelery company La Maison Shawish has turned the flash drive into a luxury item with the launch of Magic Mushrooms, the world's most expensive USB flash drive, shaped like diamond-encrusted mushrooms. The maximum data size of these flash drives is 32 GB. Depending on the gems used, the cost of the device varies from $16,500 to $36,900. The cheapest pink "mushroom" is covered with 11.34 carat pink sapphires and white diamonds, the middle version, which costs $24,400, is made in red and decorated rubies of 11.34 carats, and the most expensive flash drive is decorated with emeralds of 9.18 carats, giving the product a green color. According to the designers, appearance flash drives should take us back to childhood and be associated with the fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland".

10. The most expensive in world hard disk

The most expensive in the world HDD was developed by the French radioactive waste management agency ANDRA on behalf of the government. It is made of artificially grown sapphire and platinum. It is assumed that a sapphire hard drive, consisting of two twenty-centimeter thin fused disks, can last one million years, so you can not be afraid of losing important data. The disc is capable of storing up to forty thousand miniaturized pages printed with platinum micro-patterns. These data can only be read with a microscope.

11. Diamond Mouse - $25,700

Diamond computer mouse by Pat Says Now is a standard three-button USB optical mouse with a 300 dpi sensor resolution. The mouse is made of 18k white gold and set with 59 diamonds. In addition, the mouse can be personalized with your name in diamonds. There are two design options - "Diamond Flower" and "Scattered Diamond" - and a choice of yellow, red and white gold. The top cover and buttons of the "Diamond Flower" are made of 750 white gold. Gold gets its color from an alloy with palladium, a precious metal close to platinum. The amount of palladium in the alloy is 13%.

We have long recommended installing OS to solid state drives. Regardless of which HDD you use, SSDs perform better. But magnetic hard drives It's still too early to be scrapped. Their advantage lies in their huge capacity and relatively low cost. And as users demand more and more storage space, manufacturers are looking for ever more sophisticated technical ways to enlarge it. According to forecasts by the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium, which unites storage manufacturers, by 2025 the capacity of magnetic hard drives should increase to 100 TB.

Test Winner
with helium filling
Seagate Enterprise is one of the highest capacity drives. Access time and data transfer speed are also impressive

And today we have what we have. Traditional 3.5-inch drive capacity is limited to 10TB. So, Seagate Enterprise Capacity 10TB is a measure of all HDDs, not only in terms of capacity. It occupies the first position in the 3.5" internal hard drive category in the CHIP rankings and is therefore the winner of the 8TB vs. 10TB hard drive comparison test. It would seem that eight or ten terabytes means, first of all, only a large capacity. But no, both numbers also point to interesting changes regarding data storage and recording: after all, conventional technologies cannot provide more than 8 TB, because the basic principles of magnetic disk drives have not changed over the past decade.

Ways to Increase Storage Density

Today's hard drive cases have thin magnesium or aluminum alloy plates coated with a very thin layer of magnetic material. Movable read/write heads magnetize microscopic areas of the platters as they spin at breakneck speed, delivering data transfer rates of up to 200 MB/s. But this technology has its limits. Up to six magnetic plates can be installed in one 3.5-inch case, placing them one above the other. Each of them currently can store up to 1.33 TB of data. That is, if nothing is done, the maximum capacity will be 8 TB.

If you follow our test winner and second and third place finishers (HGST Ultrastar He10 and Seagate IronWolf) and fill the case with helium, you can reach capacities of up to ten terabytes. The advantage of using an inert gas, which is lighter than air, in the sealed area of ​​the hard drive is to reduce the turbulence that occurs during the rotation of the plates, and reduce the power consumption of the spindle motor. As a result, manufacturers were able to reduce the thickness of the magnetic plates, increase their number in a 3.5-inch package to seven, and achieve a capacity of 10 trillion bytes - in binary terms, it turns out 9.3 TB.

Big means fast

The largest hard drives we've tested read and write the fastest. We used the CHIP Diskbench benchmark, which shows the data transfer rate when reading and writing, as well as the access time to hard drives. We pay more attention to read speed, because in typical use in desktop PCs or network storage, data is read more often than it is written.

Three 10 TB hard drives showed excellent results in terms of read and write speed. The test winner Seagate Enterprise achieves speeds of 201 MB/s and a very short access time of 12 ms - results that no other device can challenge. In terms of write speed, the HGST Ultrastar He10 is slightly faster, showing 200 MB / s and an access time of 6 ms. The reason for such high performance of ten-terabyte hard drives is the use of the already proven technology of perpendicular magnetic recording (perpendicluar magnetic recording, PMR) instead of the new tiled magnetic (shingled magnetic recording, SMR). Tiled magnetic recording is another way to increase the capacity of hard drives.

Unlike helium-filled hull technology, SMR does not require special costs. High storage density using SMR technology is achieved by reducing the distance between tracks on magnetic platters: each subsequent track partially overlaps the previous one, like a tiled roof. The width of the read head is less than the width of the write head, so a narrow part of the tracks is sufficient for the read head. But writing data using this technology becomes more difficult and much slower, since the wider recording head overwrites the data on the adjacent track every time.

Therefore, before changing, all relevant data is read and temporarily stored, and only then can the recording head update and overwrite it. Of the tested devices, only Seagate Archive uses SMR technology. In terms of write speed (157 MB / s), it lags far behind the top models, and the access time of 284 ms makes it impossible to compete with hard drives that can be used to store system files. But it costs about two to three times cheaper than ten-terabyte ones with helium - the price of a gigabyte is 2.2 rubles.

Small means cheap

Speaking of prices. Top drives with a capacity of 10 TB are on average the most expensive hard drives. The 8TB models tend to be cheaper than their larger counterparts - with the exception of the Seagate IronWolf. From a purely economic point of view, larger discs are only beneficial if large space used regularly. For the home, the best in terms of price / quality ratio are drives with a capacity of 4 to 6 TB. Higher-capacity HDDs are currently relevant primarily for data centers, since a six-terabyte drive takes exactly the same amount of space as a ten-terabyte one needs.

If the financial question is not worth it, then good option it would acquire the leader of our testing. Seagate Enterprise 10TB with a price of 3.2 rubles per gigabyte will cost even less than the top drive HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB with its 6.1 rubles per gigabyte - one of the most expensive drives. Both devices come with a five year warranty. Seagate IronWolf, which took third place, clearly demonstrates that helium-filled disks do not have to be expensive - 2.9 rubles per gigabyte. It is perfect for building a huge network storage. In general, users usually buy high-capacity hard drives just for network storage. All devices are equipped SATA interface 6 Gb/s and, according to the manufacturers, are designed for long-term use, even if the characteristics of any drive do not record that it is optimized for network storage.

Ideal for NAS

In addition to IronWolf, two eight-terabyte Enterprise NAS and NAS HDD models are ideal for building home network storage. Their speed is high both when writing and when reading; data is transferred at speeds over 190 MB/s. Other eight-terabyte devices are quite far from them: the data transfer rate of the HSGT Ultrastar He8 is about 160 MB / s, Western Digital Red or Western Digital Purple - about 150 MB / s. The 8TB Seagate models we tested benefited from a 256MB cache, while the others only had 128MB.

In addition, Western Digital's drives spin at 5400 rpm - the rest go up to 7200. The Seagate Enterprise NAS is affordable, so it's great for the home, even though it's intended for corporate use. If you are not planning to buy network storage, take a closer look at the Seagate Archive 8TB - the most inexpensive drive with a price of 2.2 rubles per gigabyte.

High capacity alternatives

Huge disk space is required not only for PCs and network storages, but also for mobile devices and laptops. We present leaders of various categories.

2.5" SSD

The Samsung 850 EVO, the largest solid state drive currently available, has a whopping 4TB of storage. The top model from our rating gives the best results in terms of read and write speed. It uses 3D V-NAND flash memory technology and a huge cache.

3.5" external drive

The Seagate Innov8 is one of the world's largest 3.5" external hard drives. It will fit as much as 8 TB of information.

However, a large amount of data is transferred slowly: the write speed and access time of the disk is not impressive. But the reading speed is decent.

SSHD drive 2.5"

Until now, the capacity of 2.5-inch hard drives for laptops was limited to 1 TB. The Seagate FireCuda expands storage space to 2TB and at 7mm thin it fits in any laptop.

Built-in 8GB flash memory greatly improves reading speed.

2.5" external drive

The practical advantage of the five-terabyte Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive enclosed in a 2.5-inch external case is that it does not require a separate power supply.

The disc is great for use on the road. But due to SMR technology, the write speed is not the best.

PHOTO: manufacturing companies; CHIP Studios

08/27/2014, Wed, 14:08, Moscow time, Text: Sergey Popsulin

At the end of 2014, Seagate plans to start mass deliveries of the world's first hard drive with a capacity of 8 TB. The company believes that this is not the limit, and by the end of 2015 they plan to reach a capacity of 20 TB.

American Seagate Technology has announced the development of the world's first hard drive with a capacity of 8 TB. The device is made in a 3.5-inch form factor and is equipped with a SATA interface with a data transfer rate of 6 Gb / s. Other parameters are not marked.

Designed for commercial and public sector data centers, the new hard drive delivers the highest storage density available today, according to the release.

"Private and public data centers are striving to achieve maximum storage efficiency for large amounts of unstructured data," commented IDC Vice President of Hard Drive Market Research John Reidning(John Rydning). "The Seagate 8TB hard drive offers IT departments the opportunity to increase storage density and thus have the tool to cost-effectively house one of the largest and fastest growing categories of information."

The capacity of the new drive is 33% higher than the capacity of the hard drive released by Seagate in April 2014. And this is exactly the amount (6 TB) achieved in the line of Seagate's main competitor - Western Digital. Western Digital, when it launched the 6TB hard drive in November 2013, said it had to fill the device's cavity with helium to increase capacity, as this gas reduces friction and places the platters closer together. In turn, Seagate decided to do without gas, as they found a way to increase the surface recording density.

Seagate still doesn't use helium in the new 8TB drive. At the same time, the manufacturer does not specify how he managed to increase the capacity.

Seagate to start shipping 8TB hard drives next quarter

Using the technology of perpendicular magnetic recording (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording, PMR) in the latest generations of its hard drives, last year Seagate reached the maximum recording density, which allows placing no more than 1 TB of information on one plate. Therefore, the company moved to Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology. Seagate expects that by the end of 2015 it will be able to produce 20TB hard drives based on the new method.

The vendor plans to start deliveries of the world's first hard drives with a capacity of 8 TB in the fourth quarter of 2014. The cost is not reported.