Seagate 1TB 7200.12 Hard Disk

I wish this was released a little earlier, as I think this looks a better drive than the F1. Surely using 2 platters means less power, and therefore heat, and probably reliability as a result. Speedwise, there's not much in it, but I've had a long and pleasing history with Seagate drives.

I use 2 Samsung F1s in this rig, but I'm somehow reassured that my back up drive is a Seagate :)

£10 is a big price difference for such a small amount of performance, especially as it only seems to have the edge with large files, but there's something reassuring about a Seagate drive for me. I've always used them.. these Samsungs is the first time in almost 15 years that I've used a different make of drive as my main drives, in my main rig.

I'm very much the same pookey - the Samsung's big performance lead convinced me to switch, but all my older drives are Seagate. It's very common for people to just find that brand they like and stick with it, unless there's a big reason not to.

This Article comes at a good time for me - we're just about to get a TB drive, as we haven't got more than 5Gb free on any drive in the house :(
However, with Saverstore doing the Spinpoint F1 for just £69.95, I still might go with that. As long as I order today though - I think it's an Easter weekend special.

It does beg the question, what are Samsung going to come out with next? And if it's been almost a year since the F1 came out, when can we expect the F2(/G1/F0 or whatever)?

(Personally I've never been too bothered about brand of HD, having at one point in my work been working with 100s each day I merely have a slight distaste for Seagates for being a bit sharp on the edges occasionally, and for WD having easy to open packaging.)

Too bad it's Seagate. It is one of the brands i would never buy. I had a 7200.10 400GB drive, noisy, high temperatures and the best of all, it was able to make Antec Solo vibrate when mounted via silicon mount system. Just imagine that, a vibrating Antec Solo. That is something impossible to do, yet Seagate managed to do it.
Then there is the firmware problem with latest drives...

Due this, i simply don't trust Seagate. Too bad their drives are the only 500GB/platter and 7200RPM drives. Would like to see same from WDC or Samsung.

A friend of mine has 2 7200.11 500GB drives in his rig and he says they're BRILLIANT.
I'd love to give a couple of the single-platter 500 gig ones a go in the near future.
Nice review ;)

Nice review as always, so that's 2 of the big 3 released, so what does WD have to compete as i'm a WD man, although i do like Seagate.

Sam

Originally Posted by samkiller42
Nice review as always, so that's 2 of the big 3 released, so what does WD have to compete as i'm a WD man, although i do like Seagate.

Sam

We've been desperate to get the Cavalier Black in for a while.

very nice performance, can't wait to see the 2TB version of this drive.

in terms of vs WD Black, i can tell you from my experience, WD Black is about the same as Samsung F1 1TB, just a little faster with random access and a little more in burst read, but lower in average read speed.

I'm done with Seagate, 1.5TB Seagate freezes on me randomly, 320GB Seagate looses data randomly, and my external 320GB just died after 2weeks of use for no apparent reason... Western Digital 4TheWin!

The risk in buying this drive is that you don't necessarily know how well it's going to hold up. I've always had good luck with Western Digital drives but I'm not prepared to assume they are infallible. This drive is marginally faster than the 3-platter 1TB black and only slightly more expensive, but it's also untested whereas the previous iteration has a track record of very good user experience. The last thing I want is a failing 1TB drive so personally I think I'll wait and see how it holds up for other people before buying one myself.

I've had more failures with WD than seagate.. had one doa seagate though but that was a long time ago- this looks like the drive to get for that price.. I remember the 6 gb drives too =] can still remember standing in best buys one holiday with a bunch of guys looking to buy the 8 gig for under a hundred bucks lol god those were the days- thresh was in deathrow, but never played in pubs, does anybody remember makaveli? he used to pub alot in q2 back then

Originally Posted by faugusztin
Too bad it's Seagate. It is one of the brands i would never buy. I had a 7200.10 400GB drive, noisy, high temperatures and the best of all, it was able to make Antec Solo vibrate when mounted via silicon mount system. Just imagine that, a vibrating Antec Solo. That is something impossible to do, yet Seagate managed to do it.
Then there is the firmware problem with latest drives...

Due this, i simply don't trust Seagate. Too bad their drives are the only 500GB/platter and 7200RPM drives. Would like to see same from WDC or Samsung.

Mirrors my experiences with the 500gb 7200.10 drives.
loud slow and hot things, never again

i replaced them with spinpoints a month or so ago, my PC is now quiet AND faster now :)

Ya I have two 1.5tb Seagate drives in my HTPC that Im building and one 750gb Seagate that will be for the OS and Apps and a few games lol. Im really liking the performance from those drives.

HourBeforeDawn, 7200RPM performance drives in HTPC ?

Originally Posted by cyrilthefish
Mirrors my experiences with the 500gb 7200.10 drives.
loud slow and hot things, never again

i replaced them with spinpoints a month or so ago, my PC is now quiet AND faster now :)

We use .10s in the office all the time - never had an issue. I've got a 500GB for storage at home too, again, never an issue.

My only suffering has been from Maxtors - but it seems like everyone has had issues with one manufacturer or another at some stage.

I'm due for a refresh on my file server, and so far I've had 6x320GB hard drives up now for over three years. When I built the server, I used WD drives due to getting a deal on near-line drives but as long as the drives hold up well, I'm a big fan.

Also, can't wait to see if Samsung has any plans to release a successor to the F1.

Originally Posted by samkiller42
Nice review as always, so that's 2 of the big 3 released, so what does WD have to compete as i'm a WD man, although i do like Seagate.

Sam

The Caviar series drives?
I've got a couple of the Caviar 'Green' 1Tb drives in my NAS box and so far I've been very impressed with them - fairly cool running, low power consumption (hence the 'Green' label, I guess) and very, *very* quiet. My confidence in Seagate drives took a fairly serious knock after the dodgy firmware debacle, and I haven't given house room to a Maxtor drive for a long, long time.

Think that the Caviar Black and Blue(?) series drives are more performance-oriented, although I've not tried these yet - got a couple of 1Tb 'Black' drives on order for work machines, and, to be honest, I only bought the Green drives because there was an offer on at the time which made them a tenner cheaper than the SpinPoint F1 :-)

Originally Posted by badders
This Article comes at a good time for me - we're just about to get a TB drive, as we haven't got more than 5Gb free on any drive in the house :(
However, with Saverstore doing the Spinpoint F1 for just £69.95, I still might go with that. As long as I order today though - I think it's an Easter weekend special.

Only £1.04 more at ebuyer in case anyone already has an account there. On paper it looks a lot more, but it comes with free shipping, so pretty much equal :)

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
We use .10s in the office all the time - never had an issue. I've got a 500GB for storage at home too, again, never an issue.

My only suffering has been from Maxtors - but it seems like everyone has had issues with one manufacturer or another at some stage.

How very strange...

I brought those Seagate .10's on the back of positive reviews everywhere, i received absolute lemons. They really are the loudest drives i've used in years... spin noise is negligible, but HDD seek activity is as loud as 4-12GB GB drives from the late nineteen-nineties.

i'm currently trying to build a backup server out of these leftover 500gb seagate drives from my PC... i may have to give up on the idea (or buy sound dampening enclosures for each drive) as they're the loudest piece of IT equipment i currently own bar a DVD drive spinning at full speed.

what's the comparison to the 1TB Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar???

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
We use .10s in the office all the time - never had an issue. I've got a 500GB for storage at home too, again, never an issue.

My only suffering has been from Maxtors - but it seems like everyone has had issues with one manufacturer or another at some stage.

Maybe the point is the word "office". In office you probably don't hear the extremly loud seek (just google for silentpcreview of 7200.10 drive), in office the most common setup is with one HDD (so temperature doesn't matter). And with their recent firmware fiasco - sorry, i'm not the adventurous type.

The quantum bigfoot 1.2GB drive, that was a big drive ;)

How about Noise and heat? Didn't read about that, or did I miss that?

in an office i don't see a need for 1T you would have your stuff centrally and smaller drives are way cheaper which management always looks at for IT budget.

i thought heaps of people got burnt recently with the seagate thing...

that being said i run a raid setup with different manufacturers and batches. wouldn't trust any one of them tbh

Originally Posted by faugusztin
Maybe the point is the word "office". In office you probably don't hear the extremly loud seek (just google for silentpcreview of 7200.10 drive), in office the most common setup is with one HDD (so temperature doesn't matter). And with their recent firmware fiasco - sorry, i'm not the adventurous type.

Fair enough - but temperature doesn't matter unless you encase them in lead tbh - we leave ours out in the open with no extra cooling and by office I mean every test bench. The Firmware fiasco is BS though, I agree.

The .12 noise is very good - ever so slightly lower noise than the Samsung 1Tb in my opinion and far lower noise on spin-up.