Maxtor DiamondMax 11 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9

We have already reviewed the successful 500GB hard drives Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 and T7K500. Now it's high time to review other products of this capacity. These drives use the latest technologies, and prices are becoming more and more attractive. Besides, after the release of terabyte products, 500GB capacity was pushed from the high-end segment to nearly consumer, promising huge storage and good performance to everyone.

Historically, Hitachi's 7K500 series was followed by products from Maxtor and Seagate (former rivals, now merged) - DiamondMax 11 and Barracuda 7200.9, respectively. This article will be dedicated to these very hard drives. The newer Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 as well as drives from Samsung and Western Digital will be reviewed in the near future.

HDD features and design

Barracuda 7200.9 carries on the tradition of high capacity Barracuda 7200.8 models, which had resuscitated the 3-platter desktop design, forgotten by Seagate. While Cuda 7200.8 managed to reach 400 GB with 133 GB platters (Hitachi had launched hard drives of this capacity with 5 platters), the 7200.9 series could have used 160 GB platters, but it was reluctant to use them in top models. That is Seagate's roadmap included 500 GB Barracudas 7200.9 with three platters. But in reality consumers could buy only 4-platter 500 GB models from this series, which actually used 125 GB platters. On one hand, top models of the 7200.9 series show some progress compared to the 7200.8 series (higher capacity and more platters). But on the other hand, we can see evident regress - platter capacity has dropped from 133 GB to 125 GB. So their transfer rates have dropped. We'll see how it affects test results.

Barracuda 7200.9 has another peculiarity - while Barracuda 7200.8 consisted of high-capacity models only (200-400 GB), smaller capacities given over to the previous series (Barracuda 7200.7), the 7200.9 series offers an updated line of models for all capacities from the smallest to the largest models. However, top 7200.9 models are gradually replaced with similar Barracuda 7200.10 models. To all appearances, they will soon disappear from the market.

Maxtor DiamondMax 11 storage drives were designed, when Maxtor was an independent company. They were intended to supplement the successful DiamondMax 10 series (300 GB maximum) with higher-capacity models (400 GB and 500 GB). The manufacturer managed to increase capacity of magnetic platters to 133 GB since DiamondMax 10. DiamondMax 11 400 GB models have three platters (like the top Barracuda 7200.8). 500 GB models use four 125 GB platters - this design hasn't been used for a long time in desktop drives from Maxtor.

Thus, both 500 GB models reviewed are the first hard drives in the desktop market to use the 4-platter configuration after many years (see the photo).

Both of them have fallen victims to sequestration - capacity of their platters is lower than the maximum possible value. It may affect their performance.

Key specifications on the drives are published in Table 1.

Hard drives of both families use Serial ATA II interface (up to 3 GB/s), support NCQ and other functions. IDE models are still included into the families: Maxtor - UltraATA/133, Seagate - UltraATA/100. Top models use 16 MB buffers (Seagate models may come with 8 MB). Hard drives of both series offer an enlarged range of operating temperatures - from 0 to +60°C. Hard drives of both manufacturers have the same official shock resistance and the guaranteed number of start-stop cycles, but Seagate offers a tad lower acoustic noise. In return, Seagate products have a tad higher power consumption, especially start-up current. On the whole, both products have similar characteristics.

This cannot be said about their exterior. They inherited traditional traits of products made by both manufacturers.

Note that controllers of both products under review use similar processors (SoC) from the same manufacturer: Maxtor drive uses Agere Seaglet C3-D4, while the Seagate drive uses Agere YUMACPA2-E16. However, Agere Systems was bought by famous LSI Logic in December 2006, which may affect the choice of controllers for Seagate drives. IC boards of these two drives (click the last photos to see them in higher resolution) do not contain elements on the back side (for example, ST3500641AS board, back). That is, SoC for Seagate is already equipped with the built-in 16 MB cache (E16 in the designation; entry-level Barracuda 7200.9 models use the same controller with prefix E8); and the Maxtor drive uses a special chip for this purpose. By the way, Seagate started using this approach in this very series.

Maxtor uses the SH6790A driver chip from another manufacturer here instead of usual Smooth L7250E. Seagate also uses a similar SH6960B driver. So, the way to merging these families was paved. ;) We found only one acceleration sensor in the board of Maxtor 6H500F0 (there is an empty seat for the second one). But the smaller board of Seagate ST3500641AS contains three accelerometers - in two corners and in the center of the board near the driver. Will it affect resistance of the drives to vibrations and self-vibrations? ;)

HDD "cans" differ significantly so far. :) For example, Maxtor uses spring claws for electric contacts in the spindle engine and heads.

Seagate hard drives can be set to Serial ATA 1.5 Gbps mode (for better compatibility with old Serial ATA 1.0 controllers). NCQ support is preserved in this case.

The following screenshots provide information about functions supported by these drives.

Both drives have the same capacity. We can also note that Maxtor supports Advanced Power Management, while Seagate doesn't.

Seek acoustic management is also supported by Maxtor drives only (AAM register), you can use such popular utilities as Hitachi Feature Tool, HDDLife, etc to change it. Fast seek was enabled by default (AAM disabled), but we ran some tests in Quiet Seek mode as well (AAM=128dec). The Seagate drive is set to Fast Seek mode by the manufacturer. Users cannot change this mode by changing the standard AAM register. (But you can have it done in a service center, which can use the service port to access the Seagate drive and enter proper terminal commands - but you shouldn't really do it ;)).