Seagate and Western Digital 1TB Drives: Improved and Green
by Dave Robinet on November 26, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Conclusion
Western Digital and Seagate clearly had very different goals in mind when they created their respective drives, and the benchmark data shows that they each had some success in achieving those goals. Their strengths certainly come with weaknesses attached, however, and it is clear that both drives have shortcomings that would steer many potential buyers elsewhere.
To begin with, neither of these drives is a world-beater in terms of their raw performance. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 doesn't show any meaningful improvement over Seagate's previous iteration of drives, and at no time challenged units which have been established as the top performers (Western Digital Raptor and Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000). In fact, the only drive which the 7200.11 did manage to beat consistently was the Western Digital Caviar GP, a drive which abandoned the thought of leading the performance race altogether in favor of being energy efficient. In this category, the Caviar GP performs admirably, requiring less power, producing relatively little heat, and running quietly while still offering competitive performance on the desktop.
At a street price of about $329, it is difficult to recommend the Seagate drive when the faster Hitachi 7K1000 only costs a few dollars more ($350 street) and surpasses the Seagate in most tests. The 7200.11 is also comparatively noisy and runs only slightly cooler than the Hitachi drive. Seagate's 7200.11 offering performs adequately, though the continued issues in the write-intensive benchmarks are troubling. Simply put, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 is outclassed in the 1TB segment. Seagate does offer a five-year warranty (versus three-years for Hitachi), but truthfully the data is usually far more valuable than the drive; if you need to exercise the warranty, you will likely be unhappy regardless of when a drive failure occurs. A good backup plan is definitely recommended if you value your data.
Passing judgment on the Western Digital Caviar GP is a little bit more difficult. Clearly, its performance is less than stellar; the redeeming feature of the Seagate drive is only that it turns in better results than the Western Digital drive. The Caviar GP, however, is not about pure performance. This drive is about running as efficiently as possible, and it does an excellent job in this regard. In situations where a lot of storage is needed, power consumption is at a premium, and noise is a major enemy (read: HTPC setups), the Western Digital Caviar GP may indeed be a very good choice.
Whether it is a better choice than the Hitachi 7K1000 is a matter of debate, however. With AAM on, the Hitachi drive produced only slightly more noise than the Western Digital, though its power consumption was considerably more. In the vast majority of cases, either drive performs adequately for a single instance of any home-brew PVR application, so if the choice is limited to this type of use, the Western Digital drive may be a better choice, particularly given that at $280 it is substantially less expensive than the Hitachi or the Seagate. The price differential is enough in our opinion to offset the performance penalty that comes with choosing the Western Digital over the Hitachi, but plan this decision carefully if you are not utilizing the drive in an HTPC or SFF system.
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darshahlu - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
One thing I would have liked to see in the article is a RAID test. Specifically, I wonder whether or not the WD drive with its variable rotational speed will have problems in RAID configurations.In my experience with the WD drives, the answer to this question is yes. I have two of the WD Terabyte drives in a RAID MIRROR setup. The issue I noticed is that while copying data onto the mirror from multiple sources, some data becomes corrupt. I contacted WD support about the problem and am waiting to hear back from them. Perhaps it is true that these WD drives simply do not work well in a RAID setup.
Has anyone else experienced problems with the WD drives in RAID?
Darshan
darshahlu - Thursday, December 6, 2007 - link
I contacted WD about RAID support. Here is the response:Response (Jeremy H.) 12/06/2007 05:59 PM
Dear Darshan,
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.
The WD10EACS is a desktop drive. WD desktop drives do not work properly when used in a RAID array. I recommend you exchange your WD10EACS drives for the RAID model, WD1000FYPS.
Answer Title: What is the difference between Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition hard drives?
Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduse...">http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg...?p_faqid...
Answer Title: Specifications for the Western Digital RAID edition Serial ATA hard drives.
Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduse...">http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg...?p_faqid...
Sincerely,
Jeremy H.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com">http://support.wdc.com
Zak - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
I was hoping they'd introduce ACS (Actual Capacity Specification) with the 1TB drives so when I look in My Computer it would actually say 1 TB under Total Size instead of 930 GB. Uncool :rolleyes:Z.
JarredWalton - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
SI has settled on TB for 1 trillion for a long time. If you want 2^40 bytes, you'll need TiB (tebibyte). While computers have been using Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera for a long time, the fact is that those were originally designated as 1000, 1000000, 1 billion, 1 trillion, etc. before computers began using the abbreviations. Computer scientists were lazy (as usual - I can say that because I studied CS) and simply used Kilo for 1024 because it was "close enough".As far as I'm concerned, "ACS" has been in use for a long time; now we just need to get operating systems and users to understand the correct meaning of SI prefixes. :)
Chadder007 - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
What...no check on wattage usage on the drives? If its a "green" drive id like to know how much power its actually saving.nowayout99 - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Ditto. I was expecting to see some sort of power draw comparison, afterall the one drive is marketed as being "green."Instead, we're asked to take their word for it.
drebo - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Why is it that almost every single article Anandtech puts out has a conclusion that contradicts their own test results?Seriously. If the two drives are so different and so suited for different purposes, why are you even comparing them? If it's just to say that the WD drive excells at being green and the Seagate drive sucks at performance, why even bother with an article?
You cannot judge the drives solely on the merits of the competition while ignoring what the drive is good at.
This right here: "the redeeming feature of the Seagate drive is only that it turns in better results than the Western Digital drive". That's a no-brainer, and anyone could have guessed that by looking at the manufacturer specs. More to the point: wasn't that the goal of the article--to find out which of the two performed better? So, why, in your conclusion, do you completely ignore the fact that the Seagate drive is clearly the better performer?
You judge the Seagate drive for not being quiet, for running hot, for having bad performance, yet you completely ignore the fact that in your little "head-to-head" comparison, it is the victor in terms of performance. By that same token, you praise the Western Digital drive for being quient, for running cool, and you completely ignore the fact that it performed worse than any other drive tested.
The bias on this site is palpable. So much for honest reviews.
yuchai - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Do you actually make a HD purchase decision solely based on performance?I actually liked the conclusion. Sure, the WD is slower in almost everything. But if you look at the real life benchmarks it's only about 5% in all apps except WinRAR. Is this difference high enough to offset the savings in price and power consumption? I think this is the type of question that the consumer should be asking, and the conclusion does a good job at doing just that.
Anyway, if you do not like the conclusion, you can easily look at the facts and benchmarks only and make your own call. Ultimately, AT can only give information and recommendations. The decision maker is still you.
JEDIYoda - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
Exactly what gamer in their right mind is going to be using that 1T for gaming anyways??Things that make you go hmmm....
JarredWalton - Monday, November 26, 2007 - link
This isn't just a comparison of Seagate to Western Digital, obviously. That's why there are several other hard drives listed in the benchmarks. The conclusion for the Seagate fits with the benchmarks: it is slower than (or at best equal to) the Hitachi 1TB drive in every single test. The only thing it has going for it is a five-year warranty, which doesn't count for much in my book. Sure, you can get a replacement drive for an extra two years, but until manufacturers start providing data recovery as part of the warranty I just don't think it's a big deal. I have dozens of hard drives from all the major manufacturers; granted, I'm not stressing every single drive 24/7, but drive failures are uncommon - whether in the first three years or at 4-5 years.WD has lower power (meh - 4W is *nothing* when it comes to power!), but it also has a much lower price. Seagate has a price that is $5 cheaper than Hitachi (at Newegg - though I admit I'm not sure what the difference is between the four Hitachi 1TB drives that show up). The "enterprise" version is also $25 more than most expensive Hitachi - $55 more than the cheapest 1TB Hitachi. Given the better performance (Seagate has low write performance) and essentially equal price, we'd recommend the Hitachi over the Seagate.