Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Seagate Barracuda IV 80Gb Hard Disk
Need somewhere to store all those MP3s? Iain Laskey gives the Barracuda IV a whirl
| Product | Barracuda IV |
|---|---|
| Company | Seagate |
| Web | www.seagate.com |
| Price | £105 |
| We like | Fast, quiet, large capacity |
| We don't like | Nothing |
| Rating | 9/10 |
| Requirements |
I fondly remember my first hard disk. It came in a huge external SCSI casing that sat on a shelf above an Atari ST and provided 48Mb (yes, Megabytes) of storage for the bargain price of £550. Was I happy! Better yet, it romped along at a phenomenal 300k/bytes per second.
Installation
I bought the Barracuda online for £105 which gets you the basic drive in a box. No leads, no screws, no software for systems that can't cope with bigger hard disks. At this price though, who is quibbling? Seagate's retail boxed drives come with Disk Wizard software which allows older PCs and operating systems to work with 80Gb drives properly. If you feel your PC might need the Disk Wizard software you'll have to pay a little more for a retail version or visit www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html to download the software and other Seagate tools.
Like all hard drives, installation is fairly straightforward. Motherboards generally have two IDE connectors onboard and each of these can take a cable with two connectors totalling a maximum of four IDE devices. IDE devices have to be set to master or slave via a small jumper with each cable having one of each attached. If you only have one device, it must be set to master.
Having set the drive, it is merely a case of finding a suitable place for it to go. You should have a 'drive cage' in your case with pre drilled holes that line up with the holes down either side of the drive, two each side. Slide in the drive and screw it in place. If you can, try to leave a gap around the drive for airflow to help keep it cool. Most drives have the electronics exposed on one side but the Barracuda IV has a metal plate protecting this area which makes it much easier to handle when installing.
With the drive in place, plug in the IDE cables and power cables to finish things off. If you get stuck, Seagate provide installation manuals online with the Barracuda IV's being at www.seagate.com/support/disc/iguides/ata/snowmassig100129216.pdf .
As I was using the drive on a fairly new Windows XP based PC, it worked fine with the drive just as it was. All I needed to do was to format it as NTFS and it was ready to go.
In use
The Barracuda IV is an ATA/100 drive and as such isn't the quickest on the block with some ATA/133 drives starting to appear. However it does sport a 7200RPM spin speed and a 2Mb cache which helps enormously in the speed stakes. There are marginally quicker drives out there but this one is still at the top of the heap.
Another key feature is the low noise levels produced by this drive. Seagate have tried very hard to reduce the background noise generated by the Barracuda IV and given that it is a 7200RPM unit, it is indeed extraordinarily quiet. It would be ideal in a RAID set up as two or more of these would barely be noticeable unlike some of its peers.
The drive also runs fairly cool. Many fast drives can suffer from heat dissipation problems but even after being on 24/7 for some days, I found the drive temperature to be quite reasonable. As long as your case is properly ventilated, you'll have no problems here.
Whilst this is a difficult thing to test for, Seagate claim enhanced reliability via their 3D Defence System which includes Drive Defence, Data Defence and Diagnostic Defence. It also includes S.M.A.R.T drive monitoring and reporting for systems that can make use of this useful failure warning system. Between all these it is claimed the drive has enhanced protection against physical handling, drops and internal failures. If you move your PC about a lot, this can be an important feature.
Conclusion
Seagate is to be congratulated on a fine drive. It is fast, big, cheap, almost silent and with a 3 year warranty and 600,000 hour MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) you can be confident it won't let you down. Highly recommended.
