just ordered a new general use HD

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:07 pm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148140

Seagate 320GB SATA w/ 16MB cache drive. $99.99

i normally wait for something to be on sale, have some kind of rebate, etc...but this seemed like a heck of a good deal for a regular price...and NO REBATES.

i'm beyond done w/ dealing with those annoying hoops...i'd rather pay a few extra bucks and save the hassle.

this drive will be added as a secondary drive for regular storage.

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:26 pm

Wow, not bad... if I had the money, I'd be look into that

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:55 am

What is nice is that it is one of the new models, and ofcourse the great Seagate five year warranty.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:33 pm

as a follow-up...i installed the new 7200.10 sata2 drive and ran HDTach. when comparing it to the 160GB sata2 drive that came with the dell pc (also a seagate, but a 7200.9 w/ 8mb cache) i found that the older 160GB drive was performing much faster. hmmm. burst rate was much better on the older drive w/out the perpendicular recording technology. strange, eh?

well, i poked around trying to find how to tell what speed sata drives are operating at (not as obvious as looking at the IDE controller modes for DMA5, etc). finally found it in the BIOS listed as "drive link speed". the new drive was only linking at 1.5Gb/s and the primary drive was 3.0Gb/s. hmmm again. what's up with that?

sooooo, i think maybe i am dumb and there is a difference in sata vs sata2 cables...nope...google tells me otherwise.

luckily (can't believe i found this) i find an article on Seagate's website:

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/sat ... 812as.html

a jumper came FROM THE FACTORY set to 1.5Gb/s...basically crippling the sata2 drive out of the box. WTF.

so, i remove the jumper (which sets it to "normal" mode) and it links up at 3.0Gb/s w/out issue.

HDTach before: burst = 128.8MB/s
HDTach after: burst = 234.9MB/s

(older 7200.9 160gb drive = 205.6MB/s)

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:53 pm

Nice to know!

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:14 am

The best I could figure, is that it is set like that for compatibility reasons. Only other guess would be that someone was stupid... Both are possible I suppose...

MegaVectra · Post by **MegaVectra** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:45 am

Nice find!

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:29 am

after searching more (and knowing what to look for)...this is fairly common and looks like the jumper is set to 1.5Gb/s mode on the seagate drives. since mine was OEM i didn't get a setup book w/ it (not that i would have read it anyway), so maybe the retail packaging has a note about this.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:26 pm

For that price I couldn't resist. I need to upgrade from the 160Gb IDE drive in my main rig - getting tight on space - and it supports SATA2.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:16 pm

OH even better. It's on sale this weekend for $94.99 with free shipping.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:19 am

yup...a few days after i ordered mine it dropped another $5...i used their online customer support chat and they credited my account $5 toward my next purchase.

DaMaN · Post by **DaMaN** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:54 am

Got two myself, they rock. When i get more $$ I will buy two more.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:07 pm

damn it...i want another one...and for no good reason other than they are awesome. my dell 9150 only has three drive cages (two official and one where the floppy would go). funny, since the mobo has 6 sata ports.

DaMaN · Post by **DaMaN** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:29 pm

get one of them 5in 3 SATA thingamabobs caddies.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:57 pm

Just installed the new drive and cloned the old one. Made sure to unlock the drive for full 3Gbit/sec performance. NICE speed improvement! Looking forward to my games to load maps faster.

Here's a HDTach comparison of the old 160Gb EIDE drive (blue) and the new SATA2 drive (red):