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Seagate Pushes Hard Drive Platters to 160GB

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the more-data-crammed-in dept.

TheRainDog writes "Although perpendicular recording has yet to make its way into desktop hard drives, Seagate continues to push platter densities the old fashioned way. The company's 160GB platters have the highest areal density in the industry by over 25%, allowing Seagate to create a 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 hard drive that uses a single platter and costs under $90. The single-platter design has lower noise levels and power consumption than multi-platter designs, and a lower probability of a catastrophic head crash. Higher areal densities also allow the drive head access the same amount of data over shorter physical distances, improving performance dramatically in some instances. The Tech Report has an in-depth review of the 160GB Barracuda 7200.9's performance against eight competitors from Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital."

6 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Warning to those who buy Seagate by VolciMaster · · Score: 3, Informative
    don't include the SATA cable with the hard drive, and it is damn near impossible to find it in stores, or at least they were two and a half years ago when I bought mine.

    A lot has happened in two years, my friend. Finding SATA cables is really easy and cheap now. Shoot, 2 came with each of the motherboards I recently bought when I built a pair of computers for a friend.

    --
    antipaucity
  2. Re:Warning to those who buy Seagate by MindStalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mwave.com will include a cable with your order for an additional $3.50. Most online hardware places seem to carry cables in this price range as well, while yes shipping just a cable by itself is extranious you can still order them independantly.

  3. Re:Risk of High Data Density by John.P.Jones · · Score: 5, Informative
    Scratches on optical media come from handling the media, this happens at all sorts of velocities and thus there are a wide variety of scratches with varying degrees of damage.

    Scratches on Hard disks come from the freakin' head smashing into the disk while it is spinning at 7200rpm, there is no such thing as a benign head crash, when it happens it is bad, the head is gonna skip off the surface of the disk like a pebble on a lake. It is going to be bad no matter what the data density is.

    So the difference between scratches and head crashes is miles apart, not just due to data density. In actuality the data density differences are insignificant compared to the other issues.

  4. Re:Correction to this slashvertisement by non-poster · · Score: 5, Informative
    the fact that the drives are spinning faster
    Interpreting as "the platters are spinning faster".

    Faster than what? All 7200 rpm drives have platters that spin at... 7200 rpm. Drives of this speed have been around for years and years. 10k and 15k rpm drives have been around for a while, too.

    Just what, exactly, are you making a comparison against?
  5. easy by Deitheres · · Score: 3, Informative

    Agreed. I work for an ISP in a small somewhat-rural Ohio town. *We* sell SATA cables and power adapters.

    They are not that hard to find.

    --
    Just like driving a car:
    (D) to go forward
    (R) to go backward

  6. Re:Warning to those who buy Seagate by DarkSarin · · Score: 3, Informative

    did you buy an OEM model or a retail model?

    If you bought an OEM, then you shouldn't have expected it to ship with a cable.

    OTOH, what kind of geek doesn't have spare cables laying around (SATA OR IDE)?

    --
    "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)