INTRODUCTION

   Last night while i was discussing the future of hard disk drives with my cousin it just occurred to us that just roughly 5 years ago storage capacities at around the 3.2GB mark were considered as quite large and not everyone could afford even just that. Fast forward to today and things have changed in an massive degree due to the advancement of technology and the continuous price drops since most people own at least a single 2TB (2000GB) drive while others even use several 4TB (4000GB) drives to cover their needs. Of course ultra-high capacities like the second example are primarily useful for people who obviously have huge storage needs (namely professionals) and so casual users are not really included. However for people who do have huge storage needs even 4TB HDDs are not nearly enough to cover those needs and so the recent appearance of 6TB HDDs is without doubt great news. Today we will be taking a look at 3 of the latest Enterprise Capacity 3.5 v4 6TB SATA III hard disk drives by Seagate in both single and RAID0 tests.

   Founded in 1979, Seagate is the leading provider of hard drives and storage solutions. From the videos, music and documents we share with friends and family on social networks, to servers that form the backbone of enterprise data centers and cloud-based computing, to desktop and notebook computers that fuel our personal productivity, Seagate products help more people store, share and protect their valuable digital content. Seagate offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives. In addition, the company offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type. Seagate employs more than 50,000 people around the world.

   Specs-wise the latest Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 line is not that much different compared to its predecessor the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V3 line (or Constellation ES.3) and so both rotate at 7200RPM, feature seek time of 4.16ms, have 128MB of cache memory, support PowerChoice technology, have a MTBF of 1.4 million hours, an AFR of 0.63 percent and share identical power requirements (11.27W at load). So the main difference between these two models is of course their capacity since Seagate managed to squeeze a 6th platter (6x1TB) which paired with two extra heads and a top actuator seem to have allowed them to offer a maximum sustained transfer rate of 216MB/s a number which is much higher compared to the 175MB/s of its predecessor. As expected the new Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III hard disk drive has us all excited right from the get go just by checking out its specs-sheet so the only thing left for us to see is whether or not it will keep doing so.