Seagate 160GB 5400.3 2.5-inch Hard Drive

Seagate 160GB 5400.3 2.5-inch Hard Drive

Published August 25, 2008 at 01:15:53 PM, by Tim Supples

Overview

Seagate has always been an innovator in disk storage, and the new 5400.3 notebook drive is the first of its kind. This new lineup introduces perpendicular recording technology to the notebook storage market. For those of you not familiar with perpendicular recording, we've prepared a little refresher course on this new technology. This is the replacement for the 5400.2 lineup, which previously went from 40GB to 120GB with 8MB cache at a 5400RPM spindle speed. There are two major things that have changed with the 5400.3's: a new maximum capacity and a new recording method. The 5400.3 series goes all the way up to 160GB with 8MB cache and 5400RPM. While not an industry first in capacity, as Fujitsu has a 160GB 4200RPM longitudinal drive (SATA only), this is the first officially released perpendicular recording 2.5" drive. Hitachi and Fujitsu have been discussing perpendicular drives for quite some time, but when we spoke to Fujitsu at CES they indicated we probably won't see Fujitsu perpendicular drives until 2007.

If you look at the illustration below, you will see that in conventional longitudinal magnetic storage the bits are laid horizontally, parallel to the surface of the disk. This has always worked fine and brought us to 500GB 3.5" drive capacities and 120GB (or 160GB in Fujitsu's case) 2.5" drive capacities. However as drive densities increase, there is a little problem called superparamagnetism. This super-long word simply means that bits are becoming too small and too dense to hold their magnetic positions. The result is that bits flip, the magnetic north & south poles suddenly reverse, corrupting data and making the storage device unreliable.

For a neat little animation on Perpendicular Recording from Hitachi, take a look here . Sorry Seagate, but they just have a very catchy jingle!

This is where perpendicular recording comes in. With perpendicular recording the bits are laid vertically, perpendicular to the surface of the disk. Adjacent alternating bits stand with north pole next to south pole; thus wanting to attract eachother, are more stable, and can be packed more closely. Current longitudinal technology has achieved an areal density around 100 Gigabits per square inch, with experts predicting a maximum 120 Gigabits per square inch before superparamagnetism interferes. The new Seagate 5400.3 lineup sports a whopping 132 Gigabits per square inch areal density, necessary to achieve the 160GB capacity. 132 Gigabits is just the beginning for density though; Hitachi apparently demonstrated a perpendicular recording density of 230 Gigabits per square inch and it can only get better. Keep in mind that with drive density increases, we expect to see read performance increases as well. The more data you pack into a small area, the faster it can be read. Current high capacity 5400RPM drives "feel" near as fast as their 7200RPM counterparts in normal usage, and high density perpendicular drives should equalize that playing field even more.

The 5400.3 lineup doesn't just bring performance and capacity improvements, Seagate also beefed up the drives' shock tolerance. The previous 5400.2 line was rated at 250g's operating shock, and competing drives go as far as 300-325g's operating shock. The new 5400.3 is rated for 350g's operating shock tolerance, a new high in drives from Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Seagate. Seagate told us they used a lighter, stiffer suspension for the perpendicular head and even took the denser base plate from the 7200.1 series.

Setup Method

For our tests on these drives we used our trusty IBM Thinkpad T42, sporting the following specifications:

Specifications	IBM Thinkpad T42
Processor	Intel Pentium M 735 (1.7GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
Front Side Bus	400MHz
Chipset	Intel 855PM
LCD	15" SXGA+ (1400x1050)
Memory	1GB (2x512MB) DDR333 SO-DIMM
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB VRAM
Operating System	Windows XP Professional w/SP2

The Thinkpad T42 was set to run at full performance by setting the power scheme set to 'Home/Office Desk' with the AC plugged in, meaning that the CPU will not underclock while running the tests. For the battery performance test, the power scheme was set to 'Portable/Laptop'. This activates SpeedStep technology, which lowers CPU speed when not needed, thus increasing battery life. Screen brightness and audio were both set to 50% and Wi-Fi was turned off. Each test was repeated 3 times to ensure accuracy. Before each test was run, the laptop was rebooted and its hard drive defragmented.

Unfortunately we were unable to run MobileMark 2005 on the 5400.3, due to extra wear & tear on our T42's battery since the last hard drive roundup. As soon as we can obtain a new replacement, tests will be run!

Synthetic Tests

Bapco SYSmark2004SE is popular benchmark suite consists of two different performance scenarios and generates an overall score by taking the geometric mean of the individual scores.

• Internet Content Creation: In this scenario, the content creator creates a product related website targeting a broadband and narrowband audience. The user first renders a 3D model to a bitmap, while preparing web pages using a web site publishing tool. The user opens a video editing package, creates a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and
  starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into an image-processing package; modifies it and saves the results. Back in the 3D modeling software, the user modifies a 3D model and exports it to a vector-graphics format. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using one of the modified images as input. The user extracts content from an archive. Meanwhile, he uses an animation creation tool to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches and the system is scanned for viruses.
• Office Productivity: In this scenario, the office productivity user creates a marketing presentation and supporting documents for a new product. The user receives email containing a collection of documents in a compressed file. The user reviews his email and updates his calendar while a virus checking software scans the system. The corporate web site is viewed and
  the user begins creating the collateral documents. The user also accesses a database and runs some queries. A collection of documents are compressed. The queries' results are imported into a spreadsheet and used to generate graphical charts. The user then transcribes a document.. The user edits and adds elements to a slide show template. Finally, the user looks at the results of his work (both the slide show and the portable document) in an Internet browser.

Futuremark PCMark 2005 1.0.1 is the latest update to Futuremark's popular overall system benchmarking program. The 2005 version adds multithreading, DirectX 9, Windows Media Player 10, virus scanning, High Definition video playback (WMVHD), and a vast number of other tests to its suite. Testing your computer's CPU, RAM, hard drive and graphics card, PCMark05 drives your computer to the max to determine its strengths and weaknesses.

IOMeter 2004.07.30 is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool, originally developed by Intel. We ran four different tests using IOMeter, consisting of two different tests performed at both 100% read and 100% write. CPU utilization is also measured during each test. To obtain an idea of CPU utilization, we averaged the read & write utilization during each of the Maximum I/O and Maximum Throughput tests.

• Maximum I/O: This test simulates maximum I/O performance using 512 byte packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.
• Maximum Throughput: This test simulates maximum drive throughput using 64KB packet sizes in 100% sequential order, performed at both 100% read and 100% write.

WinBench99 is a subsystem-level benchmark that measures the performance of a PC's graphics, disk, and video subsystems in a Windows environment. We ran the Disk Transfer Rate test.

Real World Tests

Note: All of the timed tests were repeated three times, with the drive defragmented and rebooted between test runs. The final score is the average of the three scores.

Windows Startup Time is measured from the moment the power button is depressed until the Windows password protected logon appears. Please note these numbers may not be replicable on a different system, as the Thinkpad BIOS startup takes a fair amount of time.

400MB File Copy Time is measured as the time is takes to copy a 400MB file from the Windows desktop to the root folder of the drive (C:).

400x1MB File Copy Time is measured as the time is takes to copy 400 1MB files from the Windows desktop to the root folder of the drive (C:).

Half Life 2 Game Start Load Time is measured as the time from when "Half Life 2" shortcut is run until the main interface menu is displayed. Intro videos were disabled, but no other settings were altered. Game resolution was set to 1400x1050.

Half Life 2 Level Load Time is measured as the time from when the new level is selected until the "Half Life 2" intro sequence is displayed. The first level in the game was used. Game resolution was set to 1400x1050.

Idle Temperature is measured with the machine sitting on a table for thirty minutes after bootup, with no activity on the machine and power scheme set to "Home/Desktop." MobileMeter is used to measure the temperature.

Load Temperature is measured with the machine sitting on a table running IOMeter. IOMeter fills the hard drive's empty space with a file for use in its own testing. We measured the peak temperature during this time period of heavy drive writing.

Noise is measured purely qualitatively. Unfortunately we have no sound testing equipment suitable for this use, so we resort to using the good ol' human ear. Tests were performed in a quiet room, comparing the drives from a normal sitting position.

SYSmark2004SE

As we've seen before, SYSmark's Internet Content Creation is not very hard drive dependant. We'll see a better correlation in the Office Productivity test.

The 5400.3 outperforms its predecessor, the 5400.2, and only gets edged out by Toshiba's excellent drives. These are definitely the least interesting of all our tests, but provide a good standard reference point.

Since SYSmark2004SE simulates real world usage through general internet and office applications, we don't see a huge disparity in performance due to RPM or areal density. What is notable is the 5400.3 again outperforming the 5400.2, and providing scores a hair below that of the speedy 7200RPM drives. Perpendicular recording is showing its promise already!

PCMark 2005

Below we have a breakdown of the individual PCMark05 hard drive test results:

Hard Drive	XP Startup (MB/s)	Application Loading (MB/s)	General Usage (MB/s)	Virus Scan (MB/s)	File Writing (MB/s)
Seagate 160GB 5400.3	6.215	4.884	3.901	29.146	34.666
Seagate 100GB 7200.1	7.146	5.576	4.256	54.219	37.297
Hitachi 100GB 7K100	7.445	5.876	4.928	54.441	37.801
Hitachi 60GB 7K60	6.411	4.92	4.215	56.947	31.605
Seagate 120GB 5400.2	6.288	4.826	3.762	48.929	29.44
Hitachi 100GB 5K100	6.045	4.773	4.115	51.169	29.931
Toshiba 100GB MK1032GAX	6.077	4.929	4.203	26.882	28.338
Western Digital WD800VE	5.954	4.23	3.3	42.532	30.376
Toshiba 80GB MK8032GAX	5.929	4.877	4.096	27.626	28.324
Fujitsu 100GB MHV2100AH	6.136	4.833	4.017	59.143	31.368
Hitachi 120GB 4K120	5.261	4.093	3.554	50.544	24.631
Seagate 120GB 4200.2	5.207	4.249	3.383	31.502	24.642
Fujitsu 120GB MHV2120AT	5.279	4.234	3.479	56.35	26.771

Surprisingly the 5400.3 does poorly in PCMark05. All of the individual hard drive test results are much lower than almost any other drive we've tested before. We know PCMark favors certain drive characteristics and conditions, but we really don't have an explanation for the disappointing performance here. We re-ran the test twice and obtained nearly identical results, equally dismal. This doesn't worry us about the 5400.3's performance, but does make us wonder why PCMark penalizes it so heavily.

IOMeter

This test shows us the maximum theoretical Input/Output operations per second these drives can attain. While almost no user will come close to these levels, it is a good measure of overall drive performance.

IOMeter really shows the potential this new technology stands to offer. The 5400.3's I/O capability is superb, truly only exceeded by the 5400.2. However the really surprising numbers come in the Maximum Throughput test.

Seagate's new drive sets a new record here, holding a lead in throughput over every drive we've tested; including its predecessor and the 7200RPM hard drives. Perpendicular recording's advantages really shine through here, with the more efficient recording technology allowing for higher throughput on this 5400RPM model than Seagate's flagship 7200.1 or Hitachi's excellent 7K100. We can't wait to see what a 7200RPM perpendicular drive can do!

WinBench99

Surprisingly we see less of a lead with the 5400.3 here, although still more competitive with the 7200RPM drives than any other hard drive. Only a few MB/s shy of the 7200.1, the 5400.3 continues to impress.

CPU Utilization

Given the large number of data transfers going on in our Max I/O testing, it is no surprise we see higher CPU utilization in this test. Utilization is reduced from the 5400.2 and near identical to that of the 7200.1.

The 5400.3 shows a 0.49% higher CPU utilization this time around, again near the 7200.1. Nothing major to note here, as none of these drive's CPU utilization is anything to be worried about.

Windows Startup Time

As in our previous roundup, there is no clear correlation of drive RPM, areal density, or cache to Windows startup time. Since we measured startup time from the moment the power button was pressed until the Windows login screen loaded, we eliminated the time during Windows actual loading the user profile.

In retrospect, we feel that using a tool like Bootvis will provide a better idea of Windows startup disk dependancy, as that allows us to take software loading into the boot time. While hindsight is as always 20/20, what we can take from this test is that you shouldn't choose a hard drive for boot time alone. Higher areal density within a specific RPM class will help boot times due to increased read performance, and of course higher RPM enables faster reading of data.

File Copy

This real world test helps confirm some of the trends seen in our synthetic benchmarks. The brand spanking new 5400.3 improves on the 5400.2's time, closing in on the 7200RPM pack. Once again, a 7200RPM perpendicular drive should be smoking!

This test is generally much more strenous than most and really puts these high performance drives to the test. Once again we are impressed with the 5400.3's performance, moving up from the 5400.2 to be neck & neck with the 7200.1. Only Hitachi's 7K100 beats the 5400.3 and 7200.1, but I'd imagine we'll see those tables turn when a "7200.2" perpendicular drive emerges.

Half Life 2 - Updated 03/06/09

While Half Life 2 is slowly becoming the "last generation" game, it is still a great benchmark for drive performance. Here we take a look at loading the game and then the first level.

Game load times are improved slightly, again closing in on the 7200RPM drives. Oddly our roundup results show the 7K60 leading the pack here, but we are currently investigating the strange results with the help of Hitachi themselves.

We worked with Hitachi investigating why our initial test results showed the 7K60 beating the 7K100 in load tests. After careful re-testing, we've determined that the first test results were simply a fluke; despite us running the test three times and using the average of those results as our final score. The updated results are reflected above.

Unfortunately level load times don't improve much here. We aren't terribly surprised by this, as when loading a game or level the operating system is requesting numerous large files from the hard drive. Little more than a cache or RPM increase will provide noticeable improvements, but perhaps as software is optimized for Native Command Queuing (a feature on SATA drives) we can see more efficient game loading.

Temperatures

For the most part we don't see a huge disparity in temperatures. Idle temperatures of the 7200RPM drives are a couple degrees higher than the rest of the slower drives, as are load temperatures. The 5400.3 features the lowest temperatures of the bunch, never breaking 35 degrees Celcius during the IOMeter "filler" file creation. None of these temperatures are really anything to worry about, but it is a plus that the 5400.3 runs so cool relative to its competitors.

Noise

As mentioned in the Setup Method section, our noise observations were made purely qualitatively with the good ol' human ear. Observations were made with the laptop sitting in a normal position on one's lap. We also listened closer to the drive after we made our initial impressions, to better examine the type of noise emananted by each drive. There are three descriptions we used for our noise observations: Low, Medium, High, and a combination of them (i.e. Medium/High).

Specs	Seagate 120GB 4200.2	Hitachi 120GB 4K120	Fujitsu 120GB MHV21 - 20AT	Seagate 100GB 5400.2	Western Digital 80GB WD800VE	Toshiba 100GB MK103 - 2GAX	Seagate 160GB 5400.3
Sound Levels (Operating)	2.9 bels	2.7 bels	2.3 bels	2.9 bels	2.1 bels	?? bels	2.9 bels
Observed Noise	Low	Medium/High	Low	Low	Medium	Low/Medium	Low
Specs	Hitachi 100GB 5K100	Fujitsu 100GB MHV21 - 00AH	Hitachi 80GB MK80 - 32GAX	Hitachi 100GB 7K100	Hitachi 60GB 7K60	Seagate 100GB 7200.1
Sound Levels (Operating)	2.7 bels	2.6 bels	3.0 bels	3.0 bels	3.3 bels	2.9 bels
Observed Noise	High	Low	Low/Medium	High	High	Low

As you can see here, Seagate and Fujitsu produce the quietest drives we inspected in this roundup. It is very difficult to tell which is quieter, but Seagate's appear to have a slightly higher pitched whine when listening with your ear to the drive. Both are effectively silent during just about any computing situation. The 5400.3 did not change in any noticeable way from the 5400.2 or even the 7200.1's; Seagate's hard drives are as silent as ever.

Toshiba's hard drives are quiet enough for the average user, but noise freaks will notice volume of the Toshiba's over Fujitsu or Seagate. Western Digital's WD800VE falls square in the middle, even though its performance does not.

As mentioned in our roundup, Hitachi drives are the loudest of the bunch. Noise sensitive people need not apply here, and even those less picky will likely frown at Hitachi's noise. There is a distinct, lower pitched noise when the drive is seeking. However, Hitachi does have a feature none of the other drives do: Acoustic Management. This is a noise management option enabled through a bootable CD (downloaded from Hitachi's website), which we found to change Hitachi's noise level to "Low/Medium" with no discernable performance impact.

Conclusion

We've been looking forward to seeing perpendicular hard drives hit the market for quite some time now, the technology shows quite a lot of promise. Seagate, while not the first to discuss perpendicular recording, is certainly the first to bring it to market. Fujitsu won't be releasing any perpendicular 2.5" drive in 2006 last we heard, and Hitachi hasn't peeped about perpendicular in quite a while. However in our discussions with Seagate it is their intention to phase out longitudinal recording across the board, just not entirely in 2006. Also the drives are going to be aimed at the same price point (or darn close) as their longitudinal counterparts, which is an excellent strategy to encourage adoption of a new technology. Now if only we could see the same for SATA drives, at least with Seagate they are still currently priced above the PATA models. Lastly, SATA perpendicular drives are going to be introduced, just not until later this year.

Overall we are extremely encouraged with the promise perpendicular recording brings to notebook storage. Performance of the new 5400.3 model is better than any previous 5400RPM lines, close to 7200RPM drives, and the 160GB capacity is matched only by Fujitsu's slower SATA-only 4200RPM 160GB model (MHV2160BT). Alienware is already offering dual 160GB drives featuring the 5400.3 in their mobile workstations and hopefully other OEM's will start to offer this magnificent drive in their machines.

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Technical Specifications

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