General Usage
Hot Swapping
An interesting attribute associated with SATA devices is that they should be \'Hot Swappable\', that means that you should be able to move devices around while your operating system is running. On the face of it this would be very useful. Care must be taken when moving hard disks around because while the internal discs are spinning damage can be caused easily. With the SATA drive installed as a non system disk we were able to disconnect the drive with windows XP running. Unlike USB device when removed, windows did not realise that the drive was no longer connected and it remained visible!
Noise
Seagate have produced a very well built drive in the ST380023AS. The casing is very solid and the mechanism well balanced. As a result it is most definitely the quietest hard disk drive I have ever used. If you are looking for an ultra quiet drive then this one should be on your shopping list.
Reliability
The test drive was run continually for a week cycling the Sandra benchmark. Although the drive can get quite hot, rising to 45c under very heavy load, it performed without fault. SMART monitoring did not detect any problems during our testing. It should be remembered that a weeks hard testing does not give any real indication of the drives long term reliability, but we can take a great deal of comfort from the fact that the IDE Barracuda drives have proven to be one of the most reliable in the market thus far.
Price
Although SATA drives have not hit the retail market place in the UK yet The 80GB Seagate drive is expected to retail for circa £115 including VAT. This puts a small premium on the SATA format.
