Physical Features
Now that we have seen the drive on paper, let's take a look at the drive itself. Hard drives are nothing to get excited about on the outside, and may be one of the few items that haven't been touched by LEDs or wild color schemes.
The 500GB Seagate 7200.9 Barracuda shipped in a box with a well designed system of foam blocks to keep it safe. Out of the box, it looks much like any other Seagate drive, or any brand, for that matter.
The label shows the typical identifying data, but also includes a brief tutorial for connecting the drive, for the rookies out there.
An overview of the bottom of the drive is provided in the image below.
The next image provides a closer look at the PCB and connectors. One feature of Hitachi's 500GB SATA 3 Gb/s drive that I really liked was the availability of both a SATA and legacy 4-pin power connector. You only needed to use one, but having that extra flexibility is nice, and Seagate should investigate that.
Installation:
Installation really was as easy as the sticker on the drive indicated. SATA drives not only give you a speed increase while in operation, but the installation takes just minutes. For testing, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB hard drive was installed in a system with the following specifications:
• AMD Athlon-64 3200+ processor
• ASUS A8N-E nForce4 Ultra motherboard (BIOS 1010.003)
• 1024MB (2x512MB) PC3200 Crucial Ballistix
• 128MB Gigabyte Radeon X600XT PCIe card
• 500W Enermax Liberty power supply
• Windows XP Professional, 64-Bit Edition
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