This review depressed me because of how competitive other drivers are with the Raptor now.

Am I the only one who has no idea what the colour scheme means in the charts? Two colours for 24 drives??

And why isn't the drive being reported on in a compeltely different colour so that it stands out? Using just a slightly darker yellow doesn't relly help very much; a green would stand out a lot more, for example.

Seagate's still having firmware troubles, apparently.
http://www.fluffles.net/articles/seagate-AAK-firmware
AAM firmware update from Seagate fixed it for me and my 500GB drives, but they're being very selective about who they give that out to for some reason. Looks like they've got more work to do with their latest drives, too.

edit - http://blog.noegruts.com/2007/12/seagate-freeagent-pro-esata-proble...

Would switching the jumper from SATA-150 to SATA-300 make all that much difference? I ask because I've got a .10 and gave up on trying to get the stupid jumper out.

Oh man, those numbers are horrible. What the hell happened to seagate? Here comes all the seagate fanboys and their 5 year warranties. Give me an AAKS or raptor anyday.

They must be using a lot of the old Maxtor technology. But, things do go in cycles. Western Digital seems to be the drive of choice right now, but as we all know, one maker or another in the tech world can fall in and out of favor at any time.

When you say you measure voltage across a resistor and use Ohm's law, I'm left wondering what tool you use to measure the voltage. Cheap 30$ multi-meters from Radio Shack have horrible response times, while 200$ Fluke handhelds try things like "True RMS" to grab power from AC signals. A good 1500$ lab multimeter can sample a few thousand points a second with some accuracy, but even then, are you truly grabbing the spikes on the power drain due to head reversals?

Just wondering is all - I'm not saying you're inaccurate, nor that more expensive equipment would help. I'm just wondering if anyone's considered it.

According to the manual, removing the jumper entirely forces the drive into 300 Gb/sec Sata 2 operation.

Placing it on the two left most pins forces it into) 150 Gb/sec Sata 1 operation.

And leaving it in the shipping position - the two rightmost pins - places the drive in 'autonegotiate' mode, where it will talk to a controller and hopefully determine Sata 1 or Sata 2 operation.

This information from the PDF drive manual on the Seagate site.

It would be interesting to see if placing the jumpers back in the default shipping positions, changed any of the results.

>Charlie

the Raptor's day has come and gone.

However, that's hardly depressing. I consider it cause for rejoicing that cheap, mainstream HDs deliver the performance today that once could only be obtained from exotic, expensive "enthusiast" drives.
So true.
I'm disappointed by Seagate once again. WD offers better performance and quieter drives for less money. I thought that buying Maxtor would bring some nice firmware developers to Seagate who would improve performance. I was wrong.

Looking for the Spinpoint F1 review. Those areal densities should give a nice performance boost.

Boring result. Any chance of reviewing a Samsung Spinpoint F1 soon?

Seagate seemed to be burning pretty bright for a little while there but it seems like they have been in a downward spiral as of late.

Their ESATA solutions are IMHO garbage, they only offer a a consumer grade product now, although to their credit no one else has a real solid offering. I have preferred the WD RE drives in my systems over anything from seagate. Plus it's easy to lust after the Raptors. WD has a solid product for the 2.5 portable crowd too.

I can't think of a single seagate product that I would want to own over a competitor. I went from buying nothing but seagates to not buying any seagates at all.

At any rate, great article.

I read TR for the writing. No other techly site is as well written. Nice article!

Where's the overclocking section?