Introduction

As the technologies change so does the demand for storage. With more applications comes a greater need to store information. There are many different types of media available out there for the average user but not all of them might seem to worth a buck sort of speak. The Solid State Drives are pretty pricey and USB sticks just don't provide enough storage now a days. The biggest USB stick storage available on the market today is 128 GB stick. This goes roughly for 300$ and very expensive if you ask me. The SATA storage on the other hand is pretty reasonably priced. You can pick up a 2 Tb hard drive for about 150$. Today we are going to explore a 1.5 Tb 5900 RPM Barracuda by Seagate. Barracuda has a lot to offer as it is reasonably priced for its storage. Lets take a look at Barracuda and see what it has to offer for us.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Seagate website.

Key Features and Benefits

• SATA 3Gb/s and NCQ interface for greater throughput and reliability
• No jumper settings and thinner cables
• 16MB/32MB cache buffer
• DiscWizard software for effortless installation
• 5900 RPM spin speed
• Fast performance
• Superb reliability
• Fluid dynamic bearing motor for whisper-quiet acoustics
• Built-in self-monitoring technology
• Exceptional value
• Five-year warranty

Engineered for high performance, Seagate 3.5-inch internal hard drives are compatible with the following operating systems:

• Windows Vista, XP, 2000 Pro
• Linux
• Mac OS

A better desktop from the inside out.

Give your machine the capacity and speed you want.

• Up to 2TB capacity
• Up to 3GB/s data transfer
• SATA connection
• 5900 RPM performance

All the little things that make it easier.

It’s your data. Make sure it's safe.

• Simple installation with award-winning DiscWizard software
• Easy backup with BounceBack Express backup software
• Built-in self-monitoring technology checks data security and drive performance

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at Barracuda.

Closer look

Front Shot		Rear Shot

Barracuda comes in a very simple yet stylish package. The actual theme of the package is grayscale but it still gets the point across to the customer. On the back of the packaging we found features and specification of Barracuda.

3.5" Barracuda		5 Year Limited Warranty

This particular Barracuda is designed to be compatible with following OS systems: Windows Vista , XP, 2000 Pro, Linux and Mac OS. The maximum capacity of Barracuda is 2 Tb and it has a transfer speeds up to 3Gb/s. Very handy for the need of fast transfers. What jumped in to our eyes is the whooping 5 year limited warranty which will cover for pretty much anything that might go wrong with the hard drive (not that it should).

Out of the box		Barracuda

Barracuda comes neatly packaged in the static free bag which is embodied in the plastic housing for keeping the hard drive in the place while in transport. We also discovered a simple installation cd with power and SATA connector cables. You can have this drive up and running in just under five minutes with this helpful software. Physical state of Barracuda is just like every other SATA hard out there. There isn't much to mention here on the factor of physical appearance.

SATA board		SATA connector

The SATA IO board is very similar to pretty much every SATA hard drive also. Since the SATA connector is also a standard one, you won't find anything out of ordinary here either.

1.5 Tb 32 Mb cache 5900 RPM		Size comparison

It is important to mention that this particular model of Barracuda has a rotational speed of 5900 RPM. Kind of odd number to hear now a days but I am guessing Seagate uses that 32Mb cache to manage burst speeds in low rpms, therefore saving power and noise. We have taken a screen shot of comparing 2.5" Seagate Momentus, 3.5" Western Digital Caviar and 3.5" Seagate Barracuda to each other just for the reference.

Now that we have gotten the pictorial out of the way, lets take a look at some test data.

Testing

What we are going to do here is use Barracuda as a storage hard drive for our existing testing machine. We are going to use HD Tune Pro and HD Tach to perform read and write benchmarks to see just what kind of speeds you might expect out of Barracuda.

HD Tune Pro Read

Our first benchmark was performed with HD Tune Pro in read mode. The maximum speeds Barracuda was 103.4 MB/s and the minimum speed of 43.4 MB/s. The average read speed was 74.6 MB/s The access time as what we expected as we have gotten an 15.6 ms. The burst rate of the Barracuda was 128.6 MB/s.

HD Tune Pro Write

Our second benchmark was done with HD Tune Pro in write mode. The maximum speeds Barracuda was 73.1 MB/s and the minimum speed of 28.8 MB/s. The average write speed was 47.6 MB/s The access time was slightly higher in this benchmark as we have gotten an 16.6 ms. The burst rate of the Barracuda was 119.5 MB/s.

HD Tach 8 Mb vs 32 Mb SATA

Our last benchmark was performed with HD Tach. This time we have compared a 8 Mb and 32 Mb benchmarks. Average read speeds were reached of 81.5 Mb/s with burst rate of 152 MB/s with 15.2 ms random access speed.

Conclusion

It looks like we have a winner here. Barracuda name has been out for a very long time and has established itself as one of the best on the market. Today it continues to turn heads as it accomplishes great results at low rotational speeds. Going back to our benchmarking of the unit we have gotten burst speeds of up to 153 MB/s running only 5900 RPM and 32 Mb cache. It is highly impressive. With higher rotational speed such as 7200 RPM Seagate could possibly achieve higher speeds with Barracuda. The random access time of this unit is about 15-16ms which is isn't all that bad comparing to some of the drives out there which run on 7200 RPM. Our overall experience with Barracuda has been pleasant one. I would like to highly recommend this particular model for storage of files of all sizes.

Some pros we found:

Great performance under low speeds.

Very low sonar levels.

Great value for a buck.

Whooping 5 year warranty.

Keeps cool.

Some cons we found:

None that we could find.