Single Drive and RAID 0 SATA NCQ Performance with Seagate’s Barracuda 7200

Seagate was the first drive manufacturer to put serial ATA, or SATA, hard drives on the streets. In 2003, Seagate delivered its Barracuda ATA V in a SATA version for all those early adopters starving for new technology. That Barracuda was more like an average trout when it came to performance, though. However, it did offer the low noise-level that Seagate has a reputation for delivering…
A lot has changed in the nearly two years since 2003, though. Now, the top drives from major manufacturers feature the SATA interface and twice the capacity. The competition in this space has really been heating up since early 2003. Western Digital released its Raptor line of SATA hard drives that features 10,000 RPM spindle speed and near-SCSI performance levels. And Maxtor recently released its new DiamondMax 10 family of drives, which boasts features such as a 16 megabyte buffer and dual-processor technology.

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