I’ve got another hard drive for review today; it’s another
Seagate model 7200.12 but it’s a slim style drive, it’s only one inch thick.
The drive runs quiet and cool and it’s a decent performer, it would be great
for an HTPC, or anywhere a smaller drive is needed.
Product Name: Seagate
Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Slim Hard Drive
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: Seagate
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Barracuda
7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Hard Drive
Best-Fit
Applications:
-Workstations
-Desktop RAID
-Gaming PCs
-High-end PCs
-Mainstream PCs
-USB/FireWire/eSATA
personal external storage
Specifications:
Model Number:
ST3500418AS
Dimensions: 5.8 x 4
x 1 inches
Interface: SATA
3Gb/s
Cache: 16MB
Capacity: 500GB
Areal density (avg):
329Gb/in2
Guaranteed Sectors:
976,773,168
PHYSICAL:
Height: 19.98mm
(0.787 in)
Width: 101.6mm
(4.000 in)
Length: 146.99mm
(5.787 in)
Weight (typical):
415g (0.915 lb)
PERFORMANCE:
Spin Speed (RPM):
7,200 RPM
Average latency:
4.16ms
Random read seek
time: <8.5ms
Random write seek
time: <9.5ms
Price:
$40.98 (from Amazon at time of review)
A Better Look at Things
:
So it’s a hard drive, it’s 3.5” in size but it’s only one inch thick.
Here it is compared to a regular 7200.12 drive for comparison:
Installation, Testing and Comparison
Since the last hard drive review I’ve added another to the comparison,
so now here’s the list:
Western
Digital Caviar Green WD5000AACS 500GB 5400 RPM 16 MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Hard Drive
SAMSUNG
Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Seagate
Barracuda ST31000528AS 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
Western
Digital Caviar Black 750gb 32mb Cache 7200 rpm Hard Drive
Seagate
Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Slim Hard Drive
Benchmarks are what come next of course, testing all of the drives the
same way.
First up we have Atto:
The Seagate 500gb slim HDD maxed out at 130mb/s read and 126mb/s write
speeds which is decent. The regular sized Seagate HDD hit 133 for both read and
write speeds.
The next test is using CrystalDisk Mark:
The slim drive performs almost as well as the full sized drive here, and
it looks a little better than the Samsung. In this test it does anyway.
The final test I ran is from SiSoft Sandra, the Physical Disks
Benchmark:
Benchmark hard
disks (i.e. the disk itself, not the file system). Shows how your physical
disks connected to the storage adapters or hosts compare to other disks in a
typical computer.
As the test
measures raw performance it is independent on the file system the disk uses and
any volumes mounted off the disk.
Drive Score: is a
composite figure representing an overall performance rating based on the
highest read or write speed across the whole disk. Thus the higher the better.
Access Time: is the
average time to read a random sector on the disk, analogous to latency response
time. Thus the lower the better.
In the nice little graph above I’ve got things order fastest to slowest
in terms of drive score. The Seagate slim falls squarely in the middle of all
of the drives tested.
Summary and Comments
The Seagate
Slim drive is small and quiet, and it doesn’t seem to get as warm as the
regular sized 7200.12 drive does so this type of drive would be great for an
HTPC where size and noise are an issue.
Performance is decent overall; it’s almost as fast as the full sized
72011.12 drive is.
DragonSteelMods gives the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB
Slim Hard Drive a 5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Quiet
+Slim form factor
+Relatively fast
+Runs cool
Cons:
-None really
review# 696
Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review
by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment
for the review; we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment from
companies to review their products.
To learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
please see this page.