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Revitalizing an Older System On the Cheap: Two 160GB ATA Drives Under $80- Page /6
January 18, 2006
By Thomas Soderstrom

Everybody has them: Whether it's a second home system, the second-floor office group, or data entry points on a shop floor, old systems just seem to stick around far beyond their expected usefulness. As these systems age, worn mechanical components and limited storage capacity become primary considerations for their retirement, but both issues are often resolved with the installation of a newer hard drive -- without breaking the bank.

There's great value to be had in the realm of Ultra-ATA. Excellent foresight in yesterday's bus technologies mean that today's low-budget Ultra-ATA drives provide every bit the transfer rate of their more modern Serial ATA counterparts. Additionally, with capacity several times that of the drives they replace, these ATA100/ATA133 models cost less than 50 cents per gigabyte. In honor of maintenance technicians from corporate offices to home-build novices, we bring you a look at two 160GB Parallel ATA drives, each priced under $80. Theoretically, the enterprising system builder can find tremendous value in these older drives -- let's see how we fare.

We specifically chose 160GB units because smaller drives provide significantly less capacity per dollar spent. Part of this is due to manufacturing cost, as most 120GB drives are simply 160GB drives with part of the capacity disabled.

Smaller-capacity drives may be recommended for systems more than four years old whenever BIOS updates are not available to overcome a 128GB limit. Partition size limits also affects file systems, with Windows 9x supporting a maximum of 128GB per partition. Windows XP requires at least Service Pack 1 to support partitions larger than 128GB. Multiple partitions are an option for OS and file system restrictions, but lack of adequate BIOS support would require an add-in controller card.

All five major drive manufacturers offer 120GB and smaller drives, but at minimal cost savings.

We contacted all five major manufacturers -- soon to be four, due to Seagate's acquisition of Maxtor -- looking for drives that came in under $80, which we estimate to be a price point offering an ideal level of value without making an investment in older systems price-prohibitive (or a waste of money, considering that the price difference might best be put toward upgrading other components.)

Not surprisingly, the vendors didn't jump at the opportunity to promote their lower-budget, less-sexy offerings when they were focusing much of their marketing effort on newer drives. At any rate, circumstance and timing prompted us to restrict our survey to two companies soon to be one, Maxtor and Seagate, ironically still competing for the moment (until the acquisition closes) to win customer loyalty through the midrange upgrade and repair market. (To their credit, all the major vendors did their part to help, but Western Digital was unable to participate due to documentation issues. Hitachi put forth a good effort, but was unable to meet our deadline. Samsung's PR firm agreed, but miscommunication between PR firm and manufacturer brought us a drive with the wrong interface for comparison.)

Maxtor's DiamondMax10 represents its latest DiamondMax line. Boasting an 8MB cache and reduced seek times, this 7200RPM bare drive includes a three-year factory warranty. Its 100GB per platter capacity would normally offer still more value at the 200GB mark, but we chose the 160GB version to fit within our budget. Maxtor's ATA-133 interface is backward compatible with ATA-100 controllers.

The second drive in this comparison also features a 7200RPM spindle speed and 8MB cache, but similarities end there. Seagate's 7200.9 160GB drive uses a phenomenally high-density single 160GB platter to reduce heat, noise, and power consumption. Seagate chooses the more widely-supported ATA-100 interface, and provides a substantial five-year warranty for both bare and retail boxed units.

We compared the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and Maxtor DiamondMax 10 to a couple earlier models -- likely candidates for replacement, perhaps. An early two-platter version of the Western Digital WD800JB represents the performance-mainstream segment of four years ago, while its WD400EB presents a more average part from the same period. Finally, the previously mentioned Samsung drive, model HD160JJ, is used for comparing Ultra-ATA to Serial ATA performance.

Performance testing includes SiSoftware's Sandra File System, c'T magazine's H2benchw 3.6, and Simpli Software's HD Tach RW version 3.0.1.0. Three passes per benchmark per drive insured the most accurate benchmark results.

Proving the 40-pin Parallel ATA interface still has legs, Sandra tests show the new Ultra-ATA drives beating even the SATA reference drive in most tests.

Seagate give Maxtor a pounding in the Buffered Read test, but Maxtor shows Seagate the ATA133 advantage in Buffered Writes. Having said that, the majority of older systems will revert the ATA133 drive to ATA100 mode. The one place SATA shows any advantage over ATA is in buffered reads. Western Digital's older performance-mainstream part is completely outmatched, and its low-budget part flattened.

H2benchw shows Seagate again walking over the competition while crushing older technology, at least in transfers from the disk platters. Adding cache to the equation allows Maxtor to shine, but again this appears to be the ATA133 advantage, where older systems will revert the drive to ATA100 mode. For the second time, SATA fails to outshine Ultra-ATA, winning only the buffered read test.

Formerly a performance drive, we find the elderly WD800JB again taking the crown in read access times, even beating the SATA drive. Maxtor retains its write performance lead, but what happened to the Barracuda 7200.9? We think "QuietStep", Seagate's acoustic management technology, may have caused the write access stumble.

Compiled HD Tach graph. Click to view specific results.

We compiled several HD Tach graphs to allow five drives to be compared simultaneously, proving the extent of Ultra-ATA advancements. Seagate's ATA100 7200.9 quite obviously is not limited by the old interface technology here, but Maxtor's ATA133 DiamondMax 10 catches up at the end. Both exceed the transfer rate of the "faster" Serial ATA drive. The old drives simply look pathetic, even the high-performance version is irrelevant.

Read rates taken from the original charts again show the 7200.9's superior transfers from the platter, but Maxtor provides the faster cache access. While the SATA reference drive has even faster cache and slower transfers from media, all three modern drives show gains against their older counterparts.

HD Tach again shows the elderly WD800JB providing the best read access time, and the SATA drive with marginal improvement over the modern Ultra-ATA versions.

Seagate took a hammering in H2benchw's random writes, but we suspect it's due to its QuietStep acoustics management. And if the noise difference between the 7200.9 and DiamondMax 10 hadn't been so severe, we probably wouldn't address it.

At idle, the Maxtor drive was just barely louder than Seagate's. Maxtor publishes a range of 25-29dB idle noise for one- to three-platter drives, and 32-38dB during seeks, which should work out to 27dB idle and 35dB seek noise for this two-platter drive in a simple world, but real physics might throw in a curve.

Seagate, on the other hand, provides 25dB idle and 28dB seek noise. This means that the Barracuda 7200.9 in full head-bobbing seek mode is nearly as quiet as the DiamondMax 10 at idle! It also means Maxtor's seeks are nearly twice as loud as Seagate's! Ouch!

Without perspective, this might seem harsh, so here's a bit to consider: Seek noise for the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 falls between the original P4 Prescott and the original Athlon 64 Venice CPU fan noise levels. Owners of noisy systems wouldn't notice the added noise, but owners of quiet systems will be annoyed. By comparison, the Barracuda 7200.9 is quieter than even the stock Athlon 64 Venice CPU cooler.

The Samsung SATA drive provided similar acoustical characteristics to the Barracuda, at 25dB idle and 28dB seek. Had Samsung sent a drive with the correct interface for final evaluation, it could have been a good race!

Test data for the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 compares Transfer Rates and Seek time, while published specifications are used for Noise and Warranty. A scale of 10 for each of these follows:

Since older systems use a 100MB/s interface, transfer rates from Sandra, H2benchw, and HD Tach are divided by 10 to put them on a scale of 10. The DiamondMax 10 managed to exceed 100MB/s a few times thanks to the drive's 133MB/s interface, but the average still falls well below 100. Adding the 12 transfer rates and dividing by 12 gives the DiamondMax 10 a combined average of 75.49MB/s, or 7.55 out of 10 points. The same method gives the 7200.9 a combined average of 71.63MB/s and 7.16 out of 10 points.

For seek times, we had to set a baseline for worst performance and compare both drives to it. Using 20ms as the baseline, we can average the read/write seek times from H2benchw and HD Tach, subtract them from 20, then divide by two to put 20ms on a scale of 10. This method provides the DiamondMax 10 a score of 3.53 out of 10 points, and the 7200.9 a meager 2.05 out of 10 points.

Averaging transfer and access points gives Maxtor a 5.54 combined performance rating, and Seagate a 4.61.

Noise was so great an issue during our test that we had to create a scale for it. We used a baseline of 20dB as "perfect 10" and 50dB as a worst-case scenario, subtracting 1 point for every three decibels each drive exceeded 20dB. Averaging Maxtor's idle and seek noise provides 31dB, offering the same courtesy to Seagate provides an average 26.5dB, for a noise score of Maxtor a 6.33, Seagate 7.83.

The best hard drive warranty available for Desktop drives belongs to Seagate, with five-year coverage being exemplary. Simply doubling that number gives this perfect warranty period a 10. Maxtor's more typical 3-year warranty gives them 6 out of 10 warranty points.

The first thing we notice is that ATA100 is perfectly capable of keeping up with Serial ATA, great news for anyone maintaining an older system. Simply replacing an old, worn drive with a new Ultra-ATA part indeed provides a substantial increase in both performance and capacity, even when comparing upper-end drives from a few years ago to today's more economical units.

Seagate's extra-long warranty plays an obvious trump card in declaring overall value, but that may be an insignificant factor when prolonging the usefulness of an older system for a shorter period of time. On the other hand, Maxtor's ATA133 interface gives them a huge advantage in cache transfers, but most Ultra-ATA systems will loose that advantage to their ATA100 controllers.

For buyers who find neither the five-year warranty nor ATA133 interface beneficial, could this be a tied race? The deciding factor just may be noise, as the 7200.9 is extremely quiet whereas the DiamondMax 10 is anything but. Considering everything, we'd choose Seagate's 7200.9 for upgrades and repairs of typical Ultra-ATA systems, but those coaxing along an old, noisy gaming system may choose the Maxtor for its faster cache.

Seagate 7200.9 160GB ATA100
Pros:

• Fast transfers from disk medium
• Ultra-Quiet design
• Five-Year Warranty

Cons:

• Slower Write Seeks

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB ATA133
Pros:

• Fast Cache Transfers

Cons:

• Noisy

The Verdict: Maxtor makes impressive performance with its ATA133 interface, but with most Ultra-ATA systems reverting it to ATA100 speed, Seagate's low-noise design and longer warranty puts the 7200.9 in the winners circle.

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