Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (640GB) review

Seagate's long-running Barracuda range comes with decent specifications, including a 32MB cache and 7,200rpm spindle speed across most of the range.

This 640GB drive is the lowest capacity Seagate product on test this month. But with two dense 320GB platters, it was no slouch in our performance tests, with a read speed of 96.9MB/sec - only bettered by three other drives this month - and a write speed of 84.4MB/sec that's also faster than most.

Other results are good, too, including a burst speed of 238.5MB/sec and average sequential read speed of 101.8MB/sec. The only low spot is that access times aren't outstanding - 16ms and 8ms for reading and writing respectively.

At 10.2p/GB it isn't cheap, but this Seagate is the best of the 500GB and 640GB drives and, consequently, worth a look if you're after good performance in a smaller drive.

Author: Mike Jennings