Single Drive and RAID 0 SATA NCQ Performance with Seagate's Barracuda 7200.7

Today, Seagate offers a wide selection of Barracuda SATA NCQ hard drives. The SATA Barracuda 7200.7 has been around for more than a year, and it offers capacities from 80 to 160 gigabytes and an eight megabyte cache. The company's newest model and succesor to the 7200.7 is the Barracuda 7200.8, and it features capacities ranging from 200 to 400 gigabytes and either an eight megabyte or sixteen megabyte cache. In order to get the word out about NCQ and Seagate's implementation of it, Seagate sent Bjorn3D two 160 GB Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ drives. In an effort to see if NCQ could make a noticeable difference in performance, I ran some tests on different drive configurations using my Intel 915P Express testbed. As you will see on the next page, the results show that NCQ is more than just hype.