Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB Hard Disk

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Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB Hard Disk

Sudeep Naik, Sep 27, 2007 2101 hrs IST

A Perpendicular Magnetic Recording hard disk for the capacity hungry masses

Good performance, Silent operation, Decent price.

No NCQ.

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By now, we've all adjusted well to the fact that Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) are getting faster and bigger with every passing day. Fortunately, now, this shift in HDD technology isn't isolated to only for those with deep pockets; PMR has already percolated down to the not-so-high capacity drives as well. The best news is that PMR has come to even 320GB HDDs from all manufacturers. Why is this the best news you ask? Because the 320GB drive has been one of the best value-per-GB options out there for a while. And today, I've got a PMR-based 320GB HDD from Seagate to review. Let's see what zing PMR brings to this HDD.

The Drive

A formatted Seagate ST3320620AS can store up to 298GB of data. The drive sports a 16 MB buffer. It has a SATA interface with theoretical transfer speeds of up to 3 GBps. It spins at 7200 RPM and has an average latency of 4.16 milliseconds. Random seek times are rated at < 8.5 ms (Read) and <10.0 ms (Write), respectively. All these figures are suggestive of the fact that the HDD performs commendably well.

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of the HDD is 700,000 hours. (MTBF is a figure that hints at the reliability of an HDD. So, higher the figure, the more reliable the HDD.)

Specifications