In this test we compared the Seagate 7200.11 and the latest 7200.12 series of HDD. Both drive offer the same capacity of 500GB. The comparison would be at least interesting for all those who are currently having a 7200.11 and looking for a possible upgrade to a newer model.

All tests were performed under the same testbed, benchmark software and operating system (Windows VISTA x64 SP1).

Let's start with the popular HDD Tach benchmarks.

The software showed that there is a significant difference between the performance of the 7200.11 and the new 7200.12 series in both reading/writing tests, as you can see in the graph below. On the other hand, the 7200.12 series have a slightly higher random access time, mainly due to its single platter design:

The HD Tune Pro software also confirmed the previous findings, with the 7200.12 series to be faster:

The Sisoft Sandra 2009 SP2 results were not much different:

We have also performed more tests with also ATTO Disk Benchmark. If you have time, you may download the results here.