Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM

[Guest]

First, Seagate renamed its Barracuda hard drive family to Desktop HDD.15. Then, it introduced the first model in the new line-up—the Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000. Does Seagate's first massive 4 TB desktop disk deliver the performance we want or disappoint?

Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM : Read more

 

[vinhn]

Would rather take 3TB @ 7200 over 4TB @ 5800, I'm sure people would agree with that.

 

[guru_urug]

Good Read.
Noticed a small insignificant error in the "Drive Surface Temperature" chart. It lists the 4TB HDD.15 as a 7200rpm drive rather than a 5900rpm one.

 

[outlw6669]

Now that everyone has a full lineup of 4TB drives out, how about finally releasing something larger?
Bring on the 2160p content!

 

[SteelCity1981]

the thing is this hard drive geared towards speed it's mostly geared towards data storage, which is why it's only 5800rpm, so you wouldn't get this obv if you want fast read and write times, that's what SSD's are for.

 

[Mike Friesen]

The one graph, about temperatures, said "higher is better" beneath it...

 

[masterjaw]

Great media storage drive for those with SSDs as boot drive which is what is currently on the trend right now.

 

[csf60]

To all the people who say performance is not important, I would like to remind them we don't have a 4 terabyte SSD yet, and until then, if I need 4TB I have to use a hard drive. And it better be a fast one or I will be sitting for ever in a loading screen in-game, opening big programs and loading 8GB of sample sounds to RAM when I work with music.

For me this is a big mistake for Seagate. I always bought their drives because they were the fastest, but it seems they are now joining the WD green lineup. I'll probably have to go with hitachi now to have some decent speed.

 

[wavetrex]

I personally only care about price / gigabyte. Give me the ability to store more HD pron and I'm happy. Don't care if it dies...

 

[daglesj]

Would anyone use a 4TB drive as a system drive anyway? Short stoked to 200GB maybe but otherwise......? Reliability has never been a strong point with drives over 1TB IMO.

I just see these big drives as a huge liability really, but folks will hoard their data.

 

[Larry Bob]

Unique name Seagate.

 

[MasterMace]

I don't even look at HDDs under 7200rpm. not worth it.

 

[CaedenV]

Now that everyone has a full lineup of 4TB drives out, how about finally releasing something larger?
Bring on the 2160p content!

1) 6TB drives are well on their way, but delayed. They were supposed to launch earlier this year... but then again most 4TB drives were supposed to launch a year ago as well but some floods seem to have delayed timetables a bit. I would give it another year before we see 6TB drives hit the market.

2) 4K content is not significantly larger than 1080p content. The nice thing about super high resolution video is that there are a ton of redundant pixels, which means that it compresses very nicely even at a lossless editable compression. Sure, if you are in a studio where you need purely uncompressed 4K video then the larger the drives the better... but if you are in that environment then you ought not be using these types of drives in the first place.

 

[bin1127]

this article showed me how high heat and power draw of the WD black. I think this drive is perfect for htpc or a fanless computer.

 

[ceh4702]

I could see a drive like this if you also use an SSD.

 

[Fabel]

I will never get a 5xxx HDD again. No more green crap for me.

And for how many hours/year are those rated? 2400? 2600?

My last 4TB drives were Hitachi desktar 7200rpm and 24/7.

 

[dmitche3]

And the warranty? Does Seagate have any faith in their products or is this another 1 or 2 year product that has a 10-20% chance of dying by the time the warranty expires?

 

[InvalidError]

Would rather take 3TB @ 7200 over 4TB @ 5800, I'm sure people would agree with that.

I agree with those who disagreed.

For near-line storage, I am far more interested in reliability and low power. 5xxxRPM drives run 5-10C cooler than 7200RPM drives, use 3-8W less power and all other related factors combined should help with reliability.

One thing that really annoys me about Seagate and warranties: warranty duration is omitted from datasheets and product info. The only official method to get warranty info is to use a serial number for a warranty check. It seems pretty retarded to me that a company that claims to provide world-leading quality shies away from including a standard warranty in their specs.

 

[vmem]

To all the people who say performance is not important, I would like to remind them we don't have a 4 terabyte SSD yet, and until then, if I need 4TB I have to use a hard drive. And it better be a fast one or I will be sitting for ever in a loading screen in-game, opening big programs and loading 8GB of sample sounds to RAM when I work with music.

For me this is a big mistake for Seagate. I always bought their drives because they were the fastest, but it seems they are now joining the WD green lineup. I'll probably have to go with hitachi now to have some decent speed.

simple solution for ya, especially if you would buy a 4TB SSD if it was available : it's called a "professional RAID CARD"

 

[Tanquen]

Just remember that they lie about drive size. It’s 3.6-ish TBs not 4TBs. Is there even an OS that numerates a TB as 1000GBs? They actually have the balls to say that a MB is 1024KBs until a certain number of them and then they become MiBs and MBs are then 1000KBs after that and that operating systems are really using TiBs not TBs.

 

[stevenrix]

This weekend i was able to grab a 4TB HGST Hitachi HDD for $139 + tax at Fry's. The transfer speed was acceptable, 120,000 kb/s on peak, 85,000 kb/s continuous. I don't really care about the brand but i do care about the sales after service, and most of the companies will send in the US refurbished HDD, including Seagate, they call it "recertified" hard-drives, and it's just bad service in my opinion, so i will stick with HGST right now, hoping that they wont get the same fate since theyve been bought out by WD.
I boycotted HDD sales after the flood because prices were outrageously expensive, that said, HDD sales took at 100% price increase when you compared the top of the line before and after the flood (2 TB was the top of the line before the floods).

 

[logainofhades]

I would like 4 for my raid 5, please.

 

[velocityg4]

This drive is still too expensive. It's cost per TB is greater than that of a similar 3TB drive. Perhaps if it was an enterprise grade drive so that it played nice with a RAID controller it would be a good deal.

As for the speed I could care less. It is more than fast enough to handle HD video streaming within a home network. The capacity would be nice for my expanding Blu Ray library. The low RPM would be nice for energy usage.

It's a 4TB drive, performance is not important. What is important is the reliability. Will it suddenly die or will it warn before failing, so the user can back up the data.

Only a foolish user would wait for warning signs of impending failure to backup data. If your data is mildly important maintain a backup. If it is very important maintain at least two backups one of which should be off site (either rotate them or over the internet).

 

[Onus]

I see this being advertised for NAS devices, and use in RAID, but does it have TLER?

 

[littleleo]

vinhn view is how most customers feel; they don't like the 5900 RPM, and once told opt for the 3TB model at 7200 RPM ST3000DM001, the price delta is about $47.