CONCLUSION

   One of the myths surrounding SED drives always has been their reduced performance levels compared to their normal brothers so after checking our charts there's not much for me to add since the only difference we could spot between the normal Enterprise Capacity 3.5 and the SED models was the slight reduced temperatures levels of the second (inconsequential really). Moving to the performance segment read and write levels were identical in some tests, better in others and worse in others so although we really did expect from the SED model to perform slightly worse overall in the end I’d call it a draw between the 3 members of the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 family.

   As we've pointed out numerous times in the past unlike consumer oriented products enterprise class products are aimed towards an entirely different segment of the market and thus they never come cheap so i doubt anyone would expect otherwise from a 4TB self-encrypting HDD. So as we speak the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 SED 4TB/Constellation ES.3 SED 4TB (ST4000NM0073 model) retails for no less than USD427.56 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 367.42Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de). Of course since the normal 4TB version costs roughly 150USD/100EUR less it's the obvious choice for people who don't need the extra security features offered by the SED model but for enterprise users who work with large amounts of mission critical data every day whether that's at work or home the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 SED 4TB SATA III is exactly what they need and thus it's no surprise that it grabs our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Enterprise Class Quality
- 1.4 Million Hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
- Top Performance
- Self-Encrypting (AES-256)
- FIPS 140-2 Certified
- 4TB's Capacity
- Power Choice Technology
- Temperatures/Noise Levels
- 5 Years Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)