Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA Hard Drive Review

Overall, the 7200.7’s specs are pretty much what you’d expect from a new 7,200RPM hard drive. What is a little unexpected, however, is that 7200.7 SATA drives with 8MB of cache carry a three-year warranty. One-year warranties have become a new standard for consumer-level hard drives, so it’s nice to see Seagate offering three years on some of the 7200.7s. In addition to a longer than average warranty, the Barracuda 7200.7 can apparently withstand 350Gs of non-operational shock, which should help the drive survive even the most abusive UPS employees. Seagate also claims the ‘cuda has the lowest idle acoustics in the industry, which we’ll be putting to the test. Unfortunately, exerting 350Gs of force is a little beyond the capabilities of my Benchmarking Sweatshop, so we’ll have to take Seagate on its word there.

. . . At only $95 online for a 120GB drive, the Barracuda 7200.7 is one of the cheapest Serial ATA drives around. "Parallel" ATA versions of the drive are available online for as little as $85, but I’d pay the price premium to get my hands on thin and flexible Serial ATA cables any day. The Serial ATA Barracuda 7200.7’s price also looks good when compared with the DiamondMax Plus 9, which sells for as low as $102 online. Considering that the ‘cuda outperforms the DiamondMax in the vast majority of our tests, Seagate’s drive looks like a pretty good deal. While we’re talking about prices, I should mention that Western Digital’s 36GB Raptor WD360GD sells for $111 online. That’s a lot to pay for only 36GB of storage, but if performance comes before capacity on your list of priorities, it’s hard to go wrong with the Raptor’s stellar performance and five-year warranty. At the end of the day, the Barracuda 7200.7 is a fast, quiet, and very affordable hard drive that’s perfect for enthusiasts and mainstream users who have been eyeing Serial ATA and holding out for three-year warranties. Bravo, Seagate.

The Tech Report
Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA hard drive