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Introduction

Serial ATA (SATA) is taking over the IDE market. Smaller cable size and higher bandwidth are among its welcomed offerings. With Seagate's new line of Barracuda 7200.7 hard drives, you could be among the first to hop on the SATA bandwagon.

The model number for this hard drive is ST3160023AS. It sports an 8MB cache and SATA Interface, which should prove to be very promising. Let's get our hands dirty...

Features/Specifications

Here are some feature this drive has from www.seagate.com:

If you're wondering about SATA, the last 3 thumbnails on the right show you the data cable, power cable converter and the SATA controller. The major difference between PATA and SATA is that serial uses simple single data lines, while parallel uses data line after another. While PATA might allow you to hook up many hard drives, it won't be as fast as SATA.

I also noted that these hard drives generated much less heat than the Seagate Barracuda V hard drives. The Barracuda V could cook an egg after a hour, while the 7200.7 couldn't cook and egg if it was left on all night.

Seagate did a wonderful job packaging these hard drives. Even if the delivery man was horribly drunk and he dropped the box, these hard drives shouldn't be damaged. Every hard drive has it's own foam section. Not to mention the SeaShell protection, explained below.

The Three Ds

The Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 comes with drive and data protection. With the added diagnostic tools, you have a complete system to make sure your hard drive stays alive and healthy for a very long time. Here are some of the things these Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 drives offer:

Disk Protection:

G-Force Protection - Extends the non-operating shock threshold by ensuring that the drive can continue to read and write if a disc slip occurs.

SeaShield® Covers - These under-covers provide ESD and handling safety, particularly to the Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) board.
*Strangely enough, the 7200.7 drives I was shipped did not have these...

SeaShell - Before we just had static bags to keep our components secure. Now with these revolutionary packages, much more error due to handling and shipping will be prevented. Not to mention these make for great containers for hard drive storage when you're not using them.

Data Defence:

Seagate's Advanced Multidrive System (SAMS) - SAMS reduces the rotational vibration (RV) effects of multiple drives seeking inside a cabinet.

ECC (error-correction code) - provides on-the-fly hardware correction.

Safe Sparing - ensures that the drive knows to return to the same sector it was sparing after a power outage.

Continuous Background Defect Scanning - proactively identifies and eliminates defects.

On-the-Fly Triple Interleave Reed-Solomon Code - for thermal asperity (TA) recovery and resultant data integrity.

End-to-End Path Protection - ensures data integrity from host to disc.

Drive Diagnostics:

Enhanced S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) - S.M.A.R.T is very handy because it can predict and prevent problems before they happen. There is no software to install, it's all automatic.

Sea Tools - Seagate provides several web-based or downloadable files for you to install, partition or even run diagnostics on your Seagate hard drives.

DLD (Drive Logging Diagnostics) - Captures unrecoverable failure data that is essential for interactive diagnostic work.

With all these protection tools and devices built-in the hard drive, it's no wonder why Seagate makes the most secure hard drives. But what about how well these drives perform? Let's find out...

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