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.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ENTERPRISE CAPACITY 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of our HDD samples arrived in bulk form and that was also the case for the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III (ST6000NM0024) model.

 

 

Although Seagate managed to squeeze an extra platter the top of the V4 model is almost identical to that of the V3 model (needless to say that both the form factor and size remain the same).

 

 

Once again at the top of the drive we see a large sticker on which Seagate has placed its product number, serial number, electrical requirements, warning/certification logos, connectivity, country of manufacture, installed firmware version and the coded factory roll out date (2014-03-25 in this case).

 

 

The most noticeable difference between the V3 and V4 models is the design of the rear since this is pretty much the first time we see the PCB to be on the same exact height as the rest of the enclosure (understandable however since Seagate had to find room for both the extra platter and hardware).

 

 

At the rear we see the usual SATA power and data connectors alongside 4 pins probably used for FW updates.

 

 

For this review we used one Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III drive for single mode tests and 2/3 for RAID0 tests in order to get a complete picture for more demanding and enterprise users.

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

     Thoroughly testing hard disk drives may require time and patience but that's just about it. Of course that doesn't mean that one must take it lightly, at least not when people base their decision on your results. True many choose to only use 2 or 3 benchmarking suits in order to measure the performance of a drive or drives since quite honestly most benchmarking suites do tend to agree with each other (so it's not really wrong) but we always like to take things a step further not because we have to but because we want to be almost 100% certain of the results we get and post in our charts.

 

     So in this kind of reviews we will use a total of 7 different benchmarking suites in an effort to bring you the most accurate results across the board. Now the only reason why i say effort is because real-world usage is not always on par with what results one gets by running several benchmarks on a drive and that's mainly because there are many variables at work from ambient temperatures to hardware configurations and even firmware versions. The benchmarking applications we use are the AIDA64 suite (former Everest Pro), HD Tune Professional, HD Tach RW, ATTO, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, Crystal Disk Mark 64bit and the PCMARK 7 (secondary storage suite). These benchmarking tools are the best in what they do and as you will also see later on their results more or less agree. Each test is performed a total of 6 times and then the average is recorded into the charts. Temperatures are recorded using Hard Disk Sentinel and after 45 minutes of continuous testing in a 23 degrees Celsius temperature controlled room. Finally we also use an ExTech HD600 dBA meter on each of the drives (5cm away) in order to accurately record their noise levels (during access), although if you don't turn off all system fans when doing so it's quite possible that you will never even hear the drive. The operating system as usual is a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 with every update installed up until the 21st of May 2014.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - PCMARK 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES / NOISE LEVELS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - RAID0 PART 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - RAID0 PART 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   As far as I’m concerned capacity always comes before performance because simply put the second is not really needed when you just want plenty of backup space (for example what good would it do if my media collection was stored on a 1TB SSD instead of a 1TB HDD?). Having both extremely high storage capacity and superior performance however is always welcome especially for large enterprises and so if someone asked me to describe the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III hard disk drive with just a couple of words I’d simply call it an HDD on steroids since it's clearly the fastest mechanical HDD model in our charts currently (especially in RAID tests). That being said the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III drive (and the V3 before it) is quite power hungry and in some cases up to twice as much when compared to other drives in the market but since its target audience is obviously enterprise users, professionals and enthusiasts this matters very little. The only other thing that really matters is reliability and although 1.4 million hours is not the highest one we've ever encountered it still is a very good number and roughly 50% more compared to regular HDDs.

 

   Enterprise class products offer superior performance and reliability compared to their regular consumer oriented counterparts but that always comes at a price so when you have the highest capacity and highest performing HDD in the market you don't need me to tell you that it costs quite a bit. To be more precise as we speak the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III HDD retails for USD539.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 535Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Of course aside Seagate and HGST (Helium review soon) we also expect WD to enter the game with their 6TB HDD model really soon but since they seem to focus on the consumer market mostly chances are that it will not affect the price of the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB SATA III much. Long story short Seagate has once again shown the world that they can dominate the performance charts and that's more than enough for us to give them our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Enterprise Class Quality
- 1.4 Million Hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
- Top Of The Charts Performance
- 6TB's Capacity
- PowerChoice Technology
- Temperatures/Noise Levels
- 5 Years Warranty

 

CONS

- Price (For Some)