Seagate ES series?

[Katreat]

General question on Hard Drives.

What is the difference between the Seagate Barracuda ES series and the Seagate Barracuda 7200.xx series?

From what I had read the ES series was built a bit tougher but ran a bit slower. It was a server HD primarily. But now that the ES comes with 32 mb cache on units as small as 250 GB while you need to go up to 500 GB minimum on the 7200.11 to get 32 mb cache I see people recommending them.

Toms Hardware was no help since there table are a bit out of date.

So, is there a reason to go with the new 32 mb cache ES series over the older 7200.10 series with 16 mb cache in the lower sizes? Are the ES series still considered slower? they must make two different series for some reason, anyone know exactly what that is?

Kat

[faulkner132]

I believe ES is for "Enterprise Storage". These are ideal for running in a RAID environment and are a bit more rugged (and more expensive) than their consumer grade counterparts.

[glc]

The ES series is optimized for RAID use in servers running 24/7, and have more involved error correction circuits than consumer drives, hence the slowdown.

[shadowpr]

Would they be a good choice for the home user that has their machine running 24/7 then?

[faulkner132]

Personally, I would... I always choose reliability over speed.

[Katreat]

Thx for the replys. I know when I built my last computer I listed an ES and everyone told me to change to the 7200.10, that the ES was slower. My knowledge of HD was pretty low so I just switched and filed away the info.

So, when I saw people recommending a more expensive slower drive with a 32 mb cache to make it faster it just seemd like it was counter perductive. But if they are also more reliable I have to agree with faulk, I always go for reliability over speed, thats why I went with Seagate in the first place, I was getting tired of replacing HDs.

Kat



Kat