7200.12 ST3500410AS vs. ST3500418AS

epimetheus

Gawd
Joined
Jun 20, 2004
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I'm seeing both of these model numbers coming into the retail channels and was wondering if anybody knows the differenece between them. As far as I can tell both are 7200.12 drives with a single 500GB platter, 16MB cache, SATA2. The 7200.12 datasheet on Seagate's website list the 418AS part numbers. I'm think about grabbing a pair this weekend locally from Directron and comparing them to my WD6400AAKS's.

Any thoughts?
 
From Seagate Support:

Adam G: I am wondering what the differences are between the ST3500410AS and ST3500418AS drives.
Jared J.: let me take a look one sec
Jared J.: sorry for the delay my tool is not showing the specs on the drives for some reason
Adam G: They are brand new drives. The 410AS seems to had been in the reatils channels a little longer.
Adam G: *retail
Jared J.: there is not differnce they are the same drive
Adam G: Any idea why the different part numbers?
Jared J.: depends when where it comes from and what its used for looks like one is a Standard distribution and the other is OEM
Adam G: I know y'all are having firmware issues on the 7200.11 series. Does this affect the 7200.12 series?
Jared J.: not that I know of
Adam G: That's what I needed to know. Thanks
Jared J.: no problem
 
HDTune_Read_Benchmark_ST3500410AS.png


HDTune_Write_Benchmark_ST3500410AS.png


meh...
 
The access time is not very impressive, however It might be the fastest 7200rpm SATA drive available in the market.
 
I've got a pair of these that I intend to RAID0 for my Windows 7 testbed. In general I like the drives, I was just hoping for a larger performance gap between the 1.5TB drives and these.
 
I have been looking at these drives too.

If you search the seagate website for the model # ST3500410AS it will bring up one document to look at. (Searching for ST3500418AS brings more docs with newer revision date).

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.12/100529369a.pdf

Page 7 "The following products conform to industry standards defined as Low Halogen:
ST31000523AS, ST3750518AS, ST3500410AS and ST3250311AS" . Perhaps the 418AS does not conform.

Page 13 "Drive acoustics" in table the 418AS is louder than the 410AS.

Page 17, section 2.9, table 6 shows the same audio difference between the two drives.

:eek:

I must conclude that the 418 must be significantly faster than the 410 because it is newer, louder and puts out more halogens into the atmosphere!

:D

(Perhaps considering the WD6401AALS as I am not too sure about what happened with the 7200.11's; I have two of them and wondering when I will have to skid my nuncs.)
 
Just bought 2 x ST3500418AS I'm going to run RAID0. I'll post some benckmarks when I get them. Should be on the 5th.
 
According to the Seagate support discussion I had (shown abaove) there are no physical differences between the drives.
 
According to the Seagate support discussion I had (shown abaove) there are no physical differences between the drives.
According to that Seagate support guy, the 418AS drive doesn't even exist, so I would take his words with a grain of salt.
 
Installing windows now.

How many yrs warranty do your drives come? You can find it from Seagate website using the SN of your drive. My 410AS comes with 5year warranty. I am afraid that Seagate changed warranty to 3yrs for 418AS.
 
Im really disappointed in the access times.

If they are denser platters then say the WD6400AAKS, then how does it have lower access times?
 
How many yrs warranty do your drives come? You can find it from Seagate website using the SN of your drive. My 410AS comes with 5year warranty. I am afraid that Seagate changed warranty to 3yrs for 418AS.

I'll check when I get home tonight. I'll be exchanging them if it is 3 years.
 
Wow, guys. I am writing a review on this drive, and I am completely stumped on this one. I tried talking to my Seagate rep and he basically said the 410AS model "didn't exist" because he couldn't find it in his system. I then called Seagate Support and was on the phone with them for over 20 minutes and the support guy there told me he couldn't find the 418AS model in his system.

So, after a while of talking to that support guy I think he was finally like "ok... this guy's not going to hang up" and put me on hold for a while, then gave me some contact info for "marketing and communications" people. I called the first number, and it was some woman who was completely confused because she wasn't MarComm and didn't know who was giving out her number. I called second number and got some recording that was like "The person is not here... disconnecting your call" or something.

Anyway, support guy said he was going to email me the contact info as well, and so I told the bewildered woman that I would send her the guy's name so she could track down his dept and tell them to stop telling people to call her. Guess what? I never got an email from him, so I couldn't give her his info.

So, what the heck is going on? My theory was that their layoffs might be causing just total chaos or something. I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

EDIT: one other strange thing. I did google search on this stuff and found some hits on Seagate's forums for threads asking this same question (what's the difference between the 2 drives) and it seems like the threads were getting deleted.

Thanks,

-Dean
 
How many yrs warranty do your drives come? You can find it from Seagate website using the SN of your drive. My 410AS comes with 5year warranty. I am afraid that Seagate changed warranty to 3yrs for 418AS.

Seagate actually recently changed their warranty to 3 years for ALL of their drives as far as I know, so it depends on manufacturing date not model #. :)
 
HDTune_Benchmark_Intel___Raid_0_Vol.png


(2) ST3500410AS in RAID0 on ICH9R/P5E-VM HDMI, 100GB Short-Stroked Partition

Pretty damn fast if you ask me. This is running Windows 7 Beta.
 
HDTune_Benchmark_Intel___Raid_0_Volume.png.jpg


2 x ST3500418AS

Here are mine short stroked to 250GB. Waaaaaay faster than my Gen1 74GB Raptors. Seek time are about 3ms slower though.

Vista64, ICH9R.....
 
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I have had my eye on the 7200.12 (both models) for a future purchase but don't know if I trust Seagate anymore.
 
I just received my two 7200.12 ST3500418AS drives from Newegg. [Packaging gripe below] Both are from China with S/Ns 5VM0xxxx. Firmware is CC34 and the Date Code is 09297. The warranty is showing as 3 years:
In Warranty
Expiration 18-Jan-2012

Going to wait a day or so to test them as I have other things to do at the moment.

[Newegg packaging]
Initially I had high hopes as they came in a huge box and there was no sound or sensation of shifting with a light shake. Upon opening, both drives were flush against the top, upper right corner of the box. As in, there was no protection other than the thick bubble wrap around them on three of six sides. With a box about nine inches tall and twenty inches wide they could have easily been accommodated exactly in the center protected in all directions.
 
That's the only complaint I've had about newegg. Depending on the shipping warehouse, the packing may downright suck.

2ntense, can you reupload that image? I'd like to see your benchmarks.

I am looking into these drives for a RAID1 backup system. I just got my raid 2 drive enclosure :)
 
[Newegg packaging]
Initially I had high hopes as they came in a huge box and there was no sound or sensation of shifting with a light shake. Upon opening, both drives were flush against the top, upper right corner of the box. As in, there was no protection other than the thick bubble wrap around them on three of six sides. With a box about nine inches tall and twenty inches wide they could have easily been accommodated exactly in the center protected in all directions.

I haven't been personally burned by Newegg's packaging standards as I've mostly received my drives from the in-state City of Industry warehouse, who pack their drives with a double-wrap of bubble wrap and peanuts. For some, that might be sufficient, but I've recently began to buy my hard drives from Amazon.com, mainly because of the lack of sales tax, but also because of their methods of packing hard drives:

CIMG0894.jpg


The box on the right was for a single hard drive, nice cushioning on all sides as you can tell, and a very robust and respectable box side; it'd be pretty tough to damage the actual hard drive through the usual UPS/FedEx basketball that they like to play with your packages.

The box on the left was packed differently as you can tell - the drive is suspended mid-air by the two plastic pieces. However, the kicker is that I have ordered five drives in one order, and Amazon shipped out five of these small boxes for each drive within a larger box!

Needless to say, I'm sticking with Amazon with my hard drive purchases from now on. :)
 
id stay away from anything Seagate at the moment. Their support system is absolutely the worst ive ever dealt with. Pray the firmware you get with what ever drive you have is ok. You cant ask for firmware help on their site without being threatened with a ban now. Pretty sad.
 
For what it's worth my ST3500418AS drives were identified as ST3500410AS by both my motherboard's RAID configuration menu and by Everest Ultimate.
 
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