Western Digital SE16 750GB: "Quiet" a Performer
by Dave Robinet on August 9, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Drive Specifications
The 750AAKS has technical specifications similar to its competition from Seagate and Hitachi. Seagate continues to offer the most attractive warranty, though the power consumption at load of the Western Digital is by far the lowest among its peers. Other specifications (seek time, latency, etc.) are all close enough as to be virtually indistinguishable among the drives.
The current street price for the Western Digital 750AAKS is around $190, while the Hitachi drive comes in at about $235 and the Seagate 7200.10 750GB at $199.
Feature Set
The 7500AAKS drive is equipped with all of the standard features found in the SE16 line, but has had two additional features added which are not present on the smaller capacity drives: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), and StableTrac. PMR, which we've described in previous articles, is a means of achieving a higher data storage density (without changing the disk media). This is different than the more traditional method of longitudinal magnetic recording, which has nearly reached its limit in terms of data density. StableTrac, which is a proprietary technology by Western Digital, essentially means that the motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce the effects (and generation) of vibration in the system.
The 7500AAKS is a 3.5" form factor drive, with the standard white Western Digital sticker outlining the basic specifications (capacity, drive parameters, etc).
Western Digital has followed the lead of other manufacturers in removing the 4 pin MOLEX connector on this drive which was used in older ATX power supplies. The SATA power port is therefore the only available power option.
| Hard Drive Specifications | |||
| Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS |
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721075KLA330 |
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS-RK |
|
| Stated Capacity | 750GB | 750GB | 750GB |
| Interface | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed | 7,200 RPM | 7,200 RPM | 7,200 RPM |
| Cache Size | 16 MB | 16 MB | 16 MB |
| Average Latency | 4.2 ms (nominal) | 4.17 ms (nominal) | 4.16 ms (nominal) |
| Read Seek Time | 8.9 ms | 8.5 ms | 8.5 ms |
| Number of Heads | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Number of Platters | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load | 8.6W / 10.7W | 8.1W / 12.8W | 8.6W / 12.6W |
| Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty | 3 Year - Retail or OEM | 3 Year - Retail or OEM | 5 Year - Retail or OEM |
The 750AAKS has technical specifications similar to its competition from Seagate and Hitachi. Seagate continues to offer the most attractive warranty, though the power consumption at load of the Western Digital is by far the lowest among its peers. Other specifications (seek time, latency, etc.) are all close enough as to be virtually indistinguishable among the drives.
The current street price for the Western Digital 750AAKS is around $190, while the Hitachi drive comes in at about $235 and the Seagate 7200.10 750GB at $199.
Feature Set
The 7500AAKS drive is equipped with all of the standard features found in the SE16 line, but has had two additional features added which are not present on the smaller capacity drives: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), and StableTrac. PMR, which we've described in previous articles, is a means of achieving a higher data storage density (without changing the disk media). This is different than the more traditional method of longitudinal magnetic recording, which has nearly reached its limit in terms of data density. StableTrac, which is a proprietary technology by Western Digital, essentially means that the motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce the effects (and generation) of vibration in the system.
The 7500AAKS is a 3.5" form factor drive, with the standard white Western Digital sticker outlining the basic specifications (capacity, drive parameters, etc).
Western Digital has followed the lead of other manufacturers in removing the 4 pin MOLEX connector on this drive which was used in older ATX power supplies. The SATA power port is therefore the only available power option.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
Dave Robinet - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
Actually, the difference is that the EIDE drive only is offered up to a 500GB capacity. This precludes it from having the additional features given to the 750GB drive, as mentioned in the article.If you're only using the single drive under "normal" desktop usage, however, you're not terribly likely to see a big difference in performance between a 500GB SATA and 500GB EIDE, all things being equal.
Thanks for reading!
dave
semo - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
i understand the sata vs. pata arguments. it's just the new features and low power draw that interest me and since the model numbers look so similar i thought that they would share the same characteristics.Frumious1 - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
Besides the one using a slower, outdated interface? Probably not. Thankfully, the 750GB drive is NOT available in PATA format as far as I can tell. WD's EIDE offerings top out at 500GB on their website. Seriously, who buys a top-end hard drive in EIDE format these days? Hell I only have one IDE connection on my motherboard, and that's no longer in use!semo - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
the 750gb version may be a top end part but the 500gb is very reasonably priced. anyway, you can never convince me that a hard drive is "high end", whatever the cost. real world performance does not vary much and depends very much on usage patterns. now an ssd or a revolutionary redesign of hdd i can consider to be high end.Dave Robinet - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
Agreed - if you can use SATA, you will. Some people can't, however, and the EIDE interface isn't an incredible bottleneck to the system (like, for example, the move from ISA to PCI graphics cards was in adopting the new bus).You're right, though - there's no reason to intentionally buy EIDE anymore if you have SATA available in your system. :)
Thanks for reading!
dave
Basilisk - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
'Won't there be negligible P-ATA demand, with none from manuf's? So, 'probably no P-ATA version, or a hefty premium on it.If my Linux distro supported the S-ATA controller chip, I'd spend the $20-$25 on a PCI or PCI-e S-ATA card and ignore the P-ATA. It would be a shame to have that P-ATA 750GB and later find yourself w/o a m/b having P_ATA to make good use of it! [Okay, you could probably buy a P-ATA controller card....]
wilburpan - Thursday, August 9, 2007 - link
Who buys a large capacity EIDE hard drive? I did recently.Why? I have an old computer that I've repurposed into a file server running Linux. This computer is old enough that it doesn't have SATA connections.