# 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda to Velociraptor mod....



## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

For those of you with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11* ST31500341AS*, the guys over at TechwareLabs have managed to unleash the potential of this driving bringing it on par and even outperforming the Velociraptor...



			
				Artiom said:
			
		

> It looks like Seagate inadvertently created something marvellous by creating arguably the best consumer drive on the market. As you have seen from the benchmarks, the Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS outperforms the Velociraptor in almost all categories.



... check out the article if you have the drive, don't mind losing a little bit of the capacity to gain a bit more speed. Speed of capacity, what is more important!

Enjoy!


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## tzitzibp (Jul 16, 2009)

WTF!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the link... i bought one of these toys, two days ago!


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## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

Smooth!

I really recommend reading the article a couple of times so that you can decide if you want to do it or not. Doesn't seem difficult, no firmware flashing just you lose a little bit of the capacity of an already freaking hulk of a drive!


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## tzitzibp (Jul 16, 2009)

i might just try it for benching it myself, and them restore it!

thanks again for sharing the link... great find!


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## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

Not a problem, really glad someone can get something out of it.


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## MoonPig (Jul 16, 2009)

I wonder if you can Raid 0 them after doing this mod... 1.5TB of extreme speed for near the cost of a 300GB Raptor?


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## DarkEgo (Jul 16, 2009)

I wonder if you could do this to a 1 TB 7200.12. @300GB think of the speeds!


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## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

MoonPig said:
			
		

> I wonder if you can Raid 0 them after doing this mod... 1.5TB of extreme speed for near the cost of a 300GB Raptor?



Well, you actually lose a little bit of the capacity in aid of the speed, but I honestly don't see why you wouldn't be able to RAID them at all!


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## MoonPig (Jul 16, 2009)

1 x 300GB Velociraptor = £175
2 x 1.5TB Seagate = £180

So, you get 1.2TB more space, faster speeds and longer life (guessing) for £5 more...


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## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

Makes even better financial sense!


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## Kreij (Jul 16, 2009)

There should be no reason that you cannot set two Seagates to 300GB or 819GB and put them in RAID0.
The results should be even better, and still at about the same cost as a single VR.


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## InnocentCriminal (Jul 16, 2009)

Kreij said:


> There should be no reason that you cannot set two Seagates to 300GB or 819GB and put them in RAID0.
> The results should be even better, and still at about the same cost as a single VR.





That's what I thought.


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## qubit (Jul 17, 2009)

*Not quite what it seems*

Oh darn you InnocentCriminal, I was just about to post about the same thing! 

The performance graphs are interesting, however, I don't see why you have to limit your hard drive's capacity like that. All the performance improvement comes from the higher areal density. This gives a double wammy speed increase by making the magnetic domains smaller and hence the disc needs to spin less far (smaller angle of turn) to read them and it puts that 300GB nearer the outermost edge of the platter where the data is read faster.

Hence, the performance at any point on the platter is fixed, unless you can overspin it... 

For example, take the graphs that show the throughput from start to finish. The first 300GB will always give the same results. The first 300GB range of the plot will simply be compressed to the start of the graph, that's all.

Either the reviewer didn't know what he was talking about when reducing the capacity, or he just wanted to make an article.


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## qubit (Jul 17, 2009)

In fact, I'll go with the reviewer didn't know what he was talking about, because of this paragraph:

"Because all drives are structured like disks, the data located towards the end of the drive (towards the edges), is more separated than the data located near the center, hence it takes less time to locate, read and write information to and from the drive. Since the drive is 1500 GB in size, 300 GB ends up being 20%. By setting the size to 20 % of the max, the drive uses the inside 20% of the disc thus bringing superior performance."

No, you get better performance at the outer edges, because the bit density (the areal density) is constant over the whole platter and the linear velocity gets higher the further out from the centre you go. This is standard physics.


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## Mussels (Jul 17, 2009)

the entire time reading that, one thought kept occuring.


why not partition it? The first 300GB will perform the same, with no loss of data capacity....


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## qubit (Jul 17, 2009)

Mussels said:


> the entire time reading that, one thought kept occuring.
> 
> 
> why not partition it? The first 300GB will perform the same, with no loss of data capacity....



Exactly. Dunno if you saw my previous two posts, but they explain this in detail.

I haven't done detailed benchmarks, but my WD 750GB & WD 1TB drives both feel as quick as my old Raptor X 150GB. Benchmarks in reviews have confirmed that they trade benchmark wins with the Raptor, too. And heck, they do this without driving me insane from the noise!


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## kenkickr (Jul 17, 2009)

That's cool when reading the performance #'s when @ 300Gb, http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/2/.  The only thing that worries me is that 7200.11 series I see, this series just lacked quality which made me go back to WD.


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## largon (Jul 19, 2009)

*facepalm* × n+1
Shortstroking makes no sense whatsoever! 

Shortstroking will NOT make a disk any faster, the only effect you'll get is a capacity decrease. The so called "performance gain" is _nothing but an illusion_ created by benchmarking programs as parts of the disk are not accessed.


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## Tau (Jul 19, 2009)

Shortstroking is a waste of time IMO.

and velocilraptors are a waste of money.


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