The Basics:
There is nothing overly interesting about the physical appearance of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, but we might as well take a look anyway. As you can see in the images below, it looks like a hard drive alright, and unless you scrutinize the label you wouldn't know it from any other Seagate model.
 
The label details some of the basic drive information, confirming the model number, capacity, interface, and a bit on the installation. Another key detail on the label is in regards to a jumper that switches this SATA drive between 1.5 Gbps performance and 3 Gbps performance. By removing the pre-installed jumper, you unlock the full speed potential of the drive when used on SATA controllers that support 3 Gbps transfers.
The two images below take a look at the under side of the drive. Again, nothing overly exciting. On the connection end of things is where you have the previously mentioned jumper for 1.5 / 3 Gbps support. To the left of the power and data connection blades is what looks like a 4-pin socket of sorts. Two of these pins came jumped to enable 1.5 Gbps support, and it was necessary to remove this jumper to get 3 Gbps speeds.
 
Installation and Operation:
The drive was installed and immediately identified by the BIOS by model number, reporting a capacity of 750GB. Once into Windows, it did its own thing to identify the drive and made it available for use with ease. The final formatted capacity of the 7200.10 was 698 GB. 52 GB was 'lost', which just seems high considering I still use systems that don't even have 52 GB of space total!
In open air the drive was audibly undetectable while at idle, and you could faintly hear it while active. Overall noise was minimal and once sealed up inside the system, the noise disappeared.
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