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I thought the 320GB Western Digital drive should be the fastest, since it has the highest areal density.ajkula66 wrote:If you want the fastest IDE laptop HDD...ever.
Samsung HM160HC
Nope. I can't find the benchmarks right now but it's HM160HC.pianowizard wrote:I thought the 320GB Western Digital drive should be the fastest, since it has the highest areal density.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... drive.htmlajkula66 wrote:I can't find the benchmarks right now but it's HM160HC.
That's likely worth its weight in gold - or at least silver - nowadays...RealBlackStuff wrote:Just in case, I have a NOS (new old stock) HM160HC laying around, waiting for the right rainy/snowy day...
Here's *the* list of all HDD benchmarks: http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.phpthat1nerd wrote:Almost 60 MB/s I/O speed? That's actually pretty impressive for an IDE drive.
I caught that before you posted -- see the EDIT that I appended to my post. The PassMark site does have a score for the ST910021A (http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.p ... +ST910021A), although that page says "39.1 GB" for drive size, so the benchmark of 257 isn't very trustworthy.rkawakami wrote:There's something wrong with the Seagate drive on your list. ST910021AS is for a SATA drive, not IDE.
The top row says "original, genuine product". The bottom row says "3 years" of something, probably referring to the warranty. (My Chinese is very rusty.)rkawakami wrote:Anyone know what it says?
Yes I saw that after I posted. I've also updated my post to include a warranty lookup on those eBay drives.pianowizard wrote:I caught that before you posted -- see the EDIT that I appended to my post.
I find it very suspicious that Seagate would put something like that on their drives. My gut feeling tells me that these are counterfeit drives but I'm not going to spend over $100 to find outpianowizard wrote:The top row says "original, genuine product". The bottom row says "3 years" of something, probably referring to the warranty. (My Chinese is very rusty.)
.As that did not answer my question, I sent them this a few minutes ago:Seagate wrote:Dear Mr. Kawakami:
Thank you for contacting Seagate Support.
I understand your situation. I'd be glad to assist you with your question.
The reason the 2 serial numbers are coming up as Unknown in the warranty checker is because they are OEM drives that were installed in a pre-built computer systems. Since they are OEM drives, the drives' warranty period will be whatever the length is the computer manufacturer set for the whole computer system, and the computer manufacturer assumes the warranty responsibility for the drive.
I get a little peeved when a question is asked about a specific thing but it's answered with a response that really has nothing to do with the original query. I get this from my wife a lotI wrote:Thank you for explaining why those serial numbers did not return any warranty information but that does not answer my basic question:
Did Seagate ever make a 120GB 7200RPM IDE laptop drive? Please note all three descriptors (size, speed, interface). Specifically, the model number ST9120021A as depicted in those two eBay auctions. This is a YES or NO query and I respectfully request that it be answered in that manner so that there's no misunderstanding.
1) I can find NO reference to that model number anywhere in your Support pages, nothing in your otherwise complete documentation of marketing announcements and product data sheets. Entering ST9120021A in the Support search box yields: "There were no results for this search criteria."
2) Using Google to search for "ST9120021A site:seagate.com" yields NO hits. Google has never indexed that particular model number at any pages at the seagate.com URL.
3) Using Google to search for "ST9120021A" shows about 3 pages of relevant hits. Most of them are at online sellers of used computer equipment. Nothing that I would consider a major retailer. Some of the Google hits when clicked on show obviously wrong items, like the one at Memory4Less.com that describes the drive as "Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB 7200RPM ATA-1002MB Cache 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive". That they are selling one for $357.07 (on sale!) is rather outrageous.
4) Normally when I use your Warranty Validation page it returns a Seagate Part Number along with the warranty status. This does not happen with these drives; that field is BLANK.
5) Normally when I use your Warranty Validation page on OEM drives it will say "The product you identified was sold as a system component." Or "This drive is out of warranty with Seagate." For these two drives your site says: "Warranty could not be determined. Please check the serial number and product numbers entered and try again. If problem persists, contact your nearest Customer Support center." It makes NO mention that these are OEM drives, rather it seems to say that the model and/or serial numbers are unknown to your database.
The only conclusion I'm left with is that these are FAKE drives.
.oddly enough, plug ST912021A (note only one zero) into seagate's search field and it will return "momentus laptop ST912021A 120GB" as the result, albeit with no working documentation links. searching online for "ST912021A" gets a lot of hits for both numbers.rkawakami wrote:ST9120021A
These are all going to be single platter drives, so while I don't have any benchmarks handy to look at right now, my bet would be on Hitachi 100/7200Hierax_ca wrote:but, may I also ask for 600x, what is the fastest IDE/PATA 100gb or 120gb HDD?
The 600X supports much higher capacity than 120GB, so why limit yourself to 120GB?Hierax_ca wrote:may I also ask for 600x, what is the fastest IDE/PATA 100gb or 120gb HDD?
fair point. have you run across another OEM-contract drive that seagate documented seperately from retail drives? i'm curious if this is an anomaly or if they've done this in the past.rkawakami wrote:Oh I'm not disputing that these may be OEM drives. It's clearly printed that way on those two eBay auctions. What I'm not so sure is that Seagate would have never released any documentation about these drives. I've never failed to find some document at Seagate.com for any inquiry I've made on a model number I ran across except for this one; both PATA and SATA Momentus drives. This has included both official/retail Seagate drives and ones marked as OEM.
keep in mind that the 600X is ATA-33 and will never benchmark sequential transfers higher than ~33MB/sec no matter what drive you install.Hierax_ca wrote:but, may I also ask for 600x, what is the fastest IDE/PATA 100gb or 120gb HDD?
Asked that way, I'm not sure if that's been the case during any of my searches for product datasheets on Momentus drives. I don't know if/how Seagate would document the difference between retail and OEM drives (at least up to now; more on this below). Since I already know that OEM drives carry an ex-factory warranty, I would not try to use Seagate's Warranty Validation system to check on the coverage. Even for the retail drives, it's been some time since I used the validation system to see if there's any remaining warranty on the drives I've been buying. My normal procedure is to run SeaTools on them, and if passing, partition and format the drive under Windows. If they fail, I simply document what I've done and report back to the eBay seller what I found. For the couple of drives I've had problems with in the last few years, all of the sellers have refunded my purchase. I did not run any warranty check on those failing drives, figuring that was the seller's job if they wanted the drive back (I think I've only returned one drive out of 4 or 5 failures). The only reason I used the validation system for these eBay 120GB 7200RPM IDE drives is to see if Seagate "knew" about them. Since the queries returned NOTHING for a Seagate Part Number (previous searches had always yielded a matching number to what was printed on the drive's label) AND I got that "Please check the serial number and product numbers entered and try again." message (which I've never seen before), that got my suspicions up.erik wrote:have you run across another OEM-contract drive that seagate documented seperately from retail drives? i'm curious if this is an anomaly or if they've done this in the past.
Seagate Support wrote:To answer your questions:
1) Did Seagate ever make a 120GB 7200RPM IDE laptop drive?
Yes. They were manufactured by Seagate.
Well this is interesting! Apparent confirmation from the factory that these are genuine drives.
2) I can find NO reference to that model number anywhere in your Support pages, nothing in your otherwise complete documentation of marketing announcements and product data sheets. Entering ST9120021A in the Support search box yields: "There were no results for this search criteria."
OEM drives are sold to the OEM manufacturer in large quantity, for the manufacturer's to use in their systems. Since they are OEM drives, they are given different model numbers (emphasis is mine) for their distribution to these OEM dealers, since the drives are slightly modified to accommodate any proprietary additions the OEM manufacturer wants to add (ex: firmware).
This seems say that some model numbers are exclusively for certain customers. That might explain why there's no record of this model number in Seagate's Support site. Still, this is the first time I've run into this issue of not finding any factory documents concerning a specific model number.
3) Using Google to search for "ST9120021A site:seagate.com" yields NO hits. Google has never indexed that particular model number at any pages at the seagate.com URL.
See above answer.
4) Using Google to search for "ST9120021A" shows about 3 pages of relevant hits. Most of them are at online sellers of used computer equipment. Nothing that I would consider a major retailer. Some of the Google hits when clicked on show obviously wrong items, like the one at Memory4Less.com that describes the drive as "Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB 7200RPM ATA-1002MB Cache 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive". That they are selling one for $357.07 (on sale!) is rather outrageous.
That seems outrageous to me as well, but unfortunately, I can not really answer for the way other websites set their pricing structures. That is something you would need to contact them directly about.
I guess "Thomas", the Seagate Support tech, missed my point about not finding anything substantial concerning that part number.
5) Normally when I use your Warranty Validation page it returns a Seagate Part Number along with the warranty status. This does not happen with these drives; that field is BLANK.
I wish I could offer an answer and explain, but I just don't have one.
Stumped the tech!
6) Normally when I use your Warranty Validation page on OEM drives it will say "The product you identified was sold as a system component." Or "This drive is out of warranty with Seagate." For these two drives your site says: "Warranty could not be determined. Please check the serial number and product numbers entered and try again. If problem persists, contact your nearest Customer Support center." It makes NO mention that these are OEM drives, rather it seems to say that the model and/or serial numbers are unknown to your database.
Because they are OEM drives, the OEM manufacturer assumes the warranty conditions of the drive. The OEM dealer puts the same warranty on the drive as the whole computer itself, because it is a system component of that computer.
If that's the case, then why didn't the validation page spit out the normal "...sold as a system component" explanation? It appears that Seagate has purposely excluded this model number (ST9120021A) from their documentation and databases. Interesting.
Aren't these SandForce-based? If so - with all due respect to erik - I'd vote against them...every time.erik wrote:it doesn't spin but my vote for a 120GB drive would be this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDMLP120/
sequential transfers would be stuck at ~33MB/sec but 4k and 4k threaded numbers will be much higher than a mechanical HDD.
FWIW, I am setting up the particular 600x in question as a DOS7.1/Win98se legacy machine to run legacy software from that era, hence the 120gb limit (I have others as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but this one is for the maximum Win9x functionality, just like it has the 576MB RAM to get the full 512 useable). I have been quite happy with the 100gb 7200rpm HGST but when I saw the Seagate drive being discussed here I thought that there might be an even better one to try if only it was affordable.pianowizard wrote:The 600X supports much higher capacity than 120GB, so why limit yourself to 120GB?Hierax_ca wrote:may I also ask for 600x, what is the fastest IDE/PATA 100gb or 120gb HDD?
that's fine. i've not used this particular drive but have used other sandforce-based SSDs without issue. granted, all have been enterprise-class SSDs and not consumer drives.ajkula66 wrote:Aren't these SandForce-based? If so - with all due respect to erik - I'd vote against them...every time.
the sandforce chipset has internal garbage collection and doesn't rely on the TRIM command to clean up after itself. TRIM certainly helps, however.Hierax_ca wrote:Also, I've heard that SSD HDD's, while awesome for Windows 7, don't work well for Windows XP, so I assume that they'll work even worse for Windows 98 and DOS.
it does apply to the 600X. i mentioned it a few posts above yours.Johan wrote:... but before getting any SSD's for your old 600X, I'd suggest you review the thread Trying SATA in 2001-2002 machines? Limited to Ultra ATA/33. I don't know if the Ultra ATA/33-limit discussed there also applies to 600X's, but better beware...
erik wrote:keep in mind that the 600X is ATA-33 and will never benchmark sequential transfers higher than ~33MB/sec no matter what drive you install.
I have a 160GB drive in one of my 600X machines (running latest BIOS), with each partition smaller than 137GB. OS can also be an issue with the 137GB limit in some cases, I think. I'm running XP. I also used to have a 300GB non-system disk installed in a SelectaDock III bay that ran fine with that 600X.jdrou wrote:Regarding the 137GB capacity limit, I don't think that should really be an issue. I've seen people report having 160GB drives in the 600X (maybe only with latest BIOS). You probably do need to keep the partition size below 137GB with an older OS though.