CONCLUSION

   It goes without saying that boosting such specs the Enterprise NAS HDD by Seagate is certainly not the most power efficient (green) NAS drive in the market but as you can clearly tell by our charts not only is it a lot faster compared to the 3TB RED drive by WD which we reviewed a while back (the 6TB variant should however be slightly faster) but it also follows closely (in some tests it's even faster) the fastest SATA III HDD in the market currently, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 again by Seagate. Now i don't know why Seagate (or any HDD manufacturer for that matter) would release a NAS oriented HDD which could rival and even surpass their best enterprise desktop drive in some tests (perhaps a V5 model is in the works?) but with such performance levels we really can't complain. Temperatures and noise levels are also at somewhat low levels and although we've seen better numbers in the past these are very good for a 6TB model.

   Price is perhaps the only area where Enterprise grade HDDs don't do very well and with a current price tag set at USD364.38 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and at 426Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) the Enterprise NAS HDD 6TB (ST6000VN0001) by Seagate is roughly 30% more expensive compared to its immediate rival the RED 6TB by WD and 10% compared to the Deskstar NAS 6TB HDD by HGST. Now i can't comment on the Deskstar NAS 6TB HDD since HGST has yet to send any model of that range over to us but compared to the RED HDDs by WD the Enterprise NAS HDD 6TB by Seagate seems to be miles ahead not only in terms of performance but also in terms of reliability and since we believe that these two are enough for demanding users and professionals alike to not care much about that 30% difference in price we're awarding it our Platinum Award.

PROS

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

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Power Consumption (Compared To The WD RED)