Seagate Barracuda Question

[Marko]

Does anyone know how the Seagate Barracuda St380021a hard drive differs from the Seagate Barracuda St380011a hard drive?

Which would be better for Gigastudio samples?

Thanks.

Marko

[Scott Cairns]

Have you checked the specs on the Seagate site? One might have a bigger cache or faster spin.

Ok, curiosity got the better of me. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

The 21A;
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,,381,00.html

The 11a;
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,581,00.html

At a glance it seems that the 11A has a faster seek time. It doesnt mention the cache size though. THe 11A appear to have a 2mb cache.

Seagates are great. Very quiet drives. For streaming samples I like the Western Digital drives better. They have an 8mb cache.

Cheers, Scott.

[Marko]

Scott,

Precisely what does an 8 mb cache do better than a 2 mb cache?

[Scott Cairns]

Hi Marko,

Precisely what does an 8 mb cache do better than a 2 mb cache?

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">- Imagine that your hard drive holds water and that it tips some into a small bucket (a 2meg cache) and then carries it to the ram. The bucket (cache) gets emptied and then has to go back to the hard drive for more water.

If you have an 8 meg cache you simply have a bucket four times bigger. Hence fewer trips back and forward to the hard drive. (Actually fewer trips is not entirely accurate but I\'m trying to keep this simple)

Its a pretty rough analogy but hopefully I have explained it clearly enough! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

BTW, a similiar analogy can be used for RAM. The more RAM you have the fewer trips back and forward to the hard drive. A cache on your hard drive is like a temporary holding area between the two.

Hopefully I\'m not oversimplying things too much.

Cheers, Scott.

[Larry Negro]

Marko

Any Seagate is a great drive. Its the dominant brand in most servers out there in the IT world (albeit the SCSI version).

The great thing about Seagates is their reliability, which is why they are used in almost all corporate servers. Great warranty, and the Baracudda series specifically are the ones with glass coated plates which make them less susceptible to deterioration over time.

Larry

[Hudson]

Don\'t forget that barracudas also use the fluid drive bearing which should eliminate that annoying high pitched whine problem that I inevitably get with all my western digital drives. If the new Barracuda V series starts making them in sizes bigger than 120gigs, i\'m definitely getting one. That\'s the only advantage WD has right now...bigger drives...I think they just came out with a 250gig!
-Hudson

[§eth]

Originally posted by Hudson:
That\'s the only advantage WD has right now...bigger drives...I think they just came out with a 250gig!
-Hudson

<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">not quite- WD hd have a much better seek time! especially the one i posted onn here that is getting 5.2ms compared to 8.5 or 9.5 on the seatgates...

[Simon Ravn]

Seth: Yeah the new WD\'s look interesting. But dont forget that they are at 10000RPM - which means they are even noisier than current WD\'s...

[JonFairhurst]

BTW, the new Serial-ATA Seagates have 8 MB buffers - and they\'re in sealed cases with the fluid drive bearings. Quiet and fast. Not the fastest, but fast enough for GS 160.

Of course when GS 3.0 comes out, we may be buying 15,000 rpm SCSIs to let our engines breathe for full power. Nitrous anyone? =8-o

[Hudson]

I have 4 WD drives, one of which is the Special Edition with the 8mb cache. I have never seen their seek times go below 9ms with hdtach, and I\'d love to know how you could possibly get 5.2ms when the company specs don\'t even go below 8.5ms.
-Hudson

[/qb][/QUOTE]not quite- WD hd have a much better seek time! especially the one i posted onn here that is getting 5.2ms compared to 8.5 or 9.5 on the seatgates... [/QB][/QUOTE]