Conclusion:
Seagate really does have the Steve Austin of hard drives on their hands with the Barracuda 7200.10, as it really is better, stronger, faster. Better in terms of the lower noise, and lower heat production provided in part by the implementation of perpendicular recording technology. Stronger thanks to greater shock tolerance and reliability also provided by perpendicular recording technology. And faster as proven by testing. Native Command Queueing, a 3 Gbps SATA interface, 16MB of cache memory, and yes, perpendicular recording technology all chip on that.
One thing the 6 Million Dollar Man didn't have going for him was being "bigger", which is obviously something the 7200.10 does have. At 750 GB, it is the industry leader in size and 50% larger than its 'little' brother, the 500 GB 7200.9. It may be hard for many to imagine filling this drive, but with a vast collection of digital multimedia files, digital home videos, or other large files, typical drives can fill up fast.
On a side note, one thing worth considering on a drive of this size is how to back it up. No matter how reliable or how long the warranty is, important data should be backed up, as data loss isn't always the fault of the hard drive. But, considering the size of this drive, your options for complete redundancy are rather limited, aren't they?
Taking a look at
PriceGrabber shows that for right around $500 (US) you can pick up one of these drives as places like Newegg, mWave and CDW.
Just thinking that a single hard drive costs more than many complete OEM systems is a shock, but considering you are getting 3/4 TB for your 1/2 G may make it seem more appealing. At this price, that equates to about 67 cents per GB, which is quite competitive when compared to other drives with somewhat similar specifications.
Given the industry leading capacity, incredible performance in testing, and low cost per GB, I award the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA Hard Drive a final score of five out of five stars and the award of "Highly Recommended".
Final Rating (5 out of 5 stars):
Pros:
» Big (understatement)
» Fast (another understatement)
» All the benefits of perpendicular recording technology
» Low cost per GB
» Seagate's 5 year warranty
Cons:
» High total cost
Special thanks to
Seagate for providing the Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA Hard Drive to Bigbruin.com for review!
