X-bit labs

500GB HDD Shootout: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 and Others! (page 10)

Category: Storage

by Alexey Volkov , Nikita Nikolaichev

[ 10/31/2006 | 02:57 PM ]

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB (WD5000KS)

This is a representative of the new generation of WD drives for desktop computers called Caviar SE16. It has four 125GB platters, a 16MB cache and a jet black coloring.

Western Digital Caviar RE2 500GB (WD5000YS)

WD didn’t stay aloof from the common trend to produce professional hard drives based on desktop models. But this is the single company that puts some more or less solid foundation under the division of its products. Thanks to TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery – a limited time to correct a write error) and RAFF (Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward – the drive uses accelerometers to measure vibrations and corrects current disk operations appropriately) and to an increased MTBF (1.2 million hours), WD’s Raid Edition 2 drives can more rightly claim the title of “professional” than any other product in this review.

So, we’ve got quite a lot of drives in this review. Hitachi is represented by two models from the Deskstar 7K500 series. These are also the only five-platter drives in this review. There are four drives from Maxtor here, two models from the DiamondMax 11 and MaXLine Pro 500 series each.

Seagate has the largest presence: three models from the Barracuda 7200.9 series plus the closely related NL35.2 model (it is intended for continuous 24/7 operation in servers and workstations), and two drives from the Barracuda 7200.10 series.

WD provided us with two models, Caviar SE16 and RE2. The former is meant for desktop computers, and the latter, for servers and workstations.

The following table lists the versions of firmware the drives have: