Seagate and Western Digital 1TB Drives: Improved and Green

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.