Seagate Barracuda vs Barracuda ES/ES.2

[Scizor119]

Is there a large speed difference, only I have freed up £50, and wish to add another 1TB+ to my sytem, but HDDs have sped up from what I can tell. From what I've seen, the ES/ES.2 is/are faster but they only have 32mbs of cache? Basically which is faster, and is it worth the extra £15.
(already have an SSD)

 

[manofchalk]

The ES suffix indicates they are Enterprise level drives.
The main difference between them and consumer is that they prioritize RAID operation, reliability in server conditions* and power efficiency over performance. When your a company buying 1000 drives, you want the ones that wont fail and cost 2c less electricity per month, not the ones that go a bit faster.

Get the standard Barracuda, for your usage the Enterprise drive wont make a difference.

*Server Conditions
Massive RAID 5/6 arrays, everything is optimized to fit as much computer as you can in a small space, racks of servers are running in a room with industrial air-conditioning to keep it cool. Operating temperatures in the middle of all these computers and HDD's exceed 70°C, the whole rack is lightly vibrating from all the fans and HDD's on it.
Not exactly a typical enthusiast scenario.