Conclusion
Although none of the new drives managed to stand out above the competition, they all come with significant advantages over their predecessors or mature drives.
The best news can be found on the performance side. All drives deliver at least 50 MB/s under all circumstances, and all drives also exceed 100 MB/s peak performance, which is particularly nice, because most of them were designed to be low on power consumption in the first place. None of the new drives were able to significantly reduce the power consumption level we’ve seen with the Caviar Green and Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen, but this is simply because there already were significant improvements over previous drives, which required 10 W and more.
Hitachi Deskstar E7K1000: The Endurance Drive
Hitachi’s 1.2 million-hour MTBF drive comes with a five-year warranty and superior performance in many benchmarks, thanks to its 7,200 RPM spindle speed. It is limited to 1 TB capacity, but it is the only drive with a five-year factory warranty. However, the drive is not very power efficient compared to its competitors.
Samsung Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen (EG): Power Savers
When compared at the same capacities or platter count, the F2 EcoGreen drives require the least power on average, with few exceptions. Performance is at an average level, but it’s still plenty fast.
Seagate: Balanced Results at 5,900 RPM
The new Seagate Barracuda LP offers the highest throughput of all our low-power drives, but it couldn’t beat the overall performance of the Western Digital RE4 drive nor the power consumption levels of the Samsung Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen. Still, Seagate offers the best combination of performance and power consumption, as it outperforms Samsung and roughly matches WD in terms of power.
Western Digital RE4: The Power-Saving Application Drive
This is the first power-saving hard drive on which we would actually recommend installing an operating system and applications. Thanks to quick access times and unexpectedly high I/O performance, the RE4 RAID Edition drive delivered very respectable application performance, timely throughput, and low power consumption numbers. The RE4 is only available at 2 TB, which requires four platters. For this reason, it just couldn’t win the power consumption segment. Also, you should expect the drive to be more expensive than the others.
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Definitely evolutionary changes, not revolutionary, but that's what was expected with these drives. A good step in the right direction, nonetheless. I just purchased two of the Samsung Ecogreen 1.5TB drives. They are fantastic drives at a fantastic price. This is great for people that want to backup their entire HD (and SD) movie collection. Thanks for the information, Tom's.
i would still go with the seagate barracuda 7200.12 =D
Woah, Déjà vu! I clicked "next" and got a "Guru Meditation: XID: 275861695" error!
are you guys running on Amiga OS? Or are you just Amiga Fanboys?
Good article up until the Guru decided I wasn't worthy ;-)
Should have thrown in a caviar black and a caviar green for comparison
Doh!... hide the above remark.... I should look at the charts first.
Amazing the performance they're getting out of these slower spindle speed hard drives
wait.... 1tb on a single platter? AMAZING
Are we still on this green thing? Seagate 7200.12 FTW, also Hitachi.. didn't see that one coming. Warranty is important to me because I demand 24/7 on for at least 3 years.
It's about time to step up the RAID array from WD RE2's, tough competition.
Seagate LP performance is impressive but I'm going to have to stick with WD due to Seagate's recent track record.
I'd rather you stick to testing comparable sized drives honestly. I don't care if the 1TB drive is faster, if I have to have a 2TB. Which is what I'm looking for next.
Its too bad you couldn't include the new enterprise class 2TB drive from Hitachi, the Ultrastar A7K2000, that rotates at 7,200 rpm. I assume it would have kicked most of these other drives butts.
I'm also left wondering where the long-ago announced Seagate Constellation ES 2TB 7,200 rpm drive is. With the laptop form factor hitting 1TB recently, I'm starting to wonder if these guys have taken their eye off the 3.5 inch space. Which might be a mistake right now given they're going to get their asses eaten by SSDs in the laptop arena any minute now, and the big 3.5 inch drives might be one of the few areas they're actually safe for a while.
I bought 4 Seagate 2TB drives and the retail package states: 5 year warranty.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/p [...] _5900_rpm/
See under Overview - Key Features and Benefits.
There is something wrong with the dBA readings for EcoGreen F2 1000GB. Can't be higher on idle.
[citation]we wonder why anyone would still buy the Deskstar if others deliver the same performance at reduced power consumption[/citation]
Not saying I would personally buy the Hitachi, but I also wouldn't buy a drive just because it's a low power model. I'm usually looking for quiet operation, read performance, and low temps. I'm all for making useful contributions to use less resources in life but 3 watts an hour is nothing, I'd never even notice the $0.25 change in my monthly bill. I could save more by not OC'ing my quad which is doing me no good sitting here surfing.
In a laptop low power drives are great, but my desktop doesn't run on batteries.
The graphs of IOPs per queue depth for different load types are surely missing... Not the same for irrelevant PCMark desktop benchies, which are filling a long useless page.
I just bought 1 myself from mwave.com.au @ $299.99 and it works perfectly =)
I just bought 1 myself from mwave.com.au @ $299.99 and it works perfectly =)
Bought one what?
I bought the Seagate 2TB one
"High-Capacity Business hard drives" - but only one with business warranty!
So all other are consumer class!
I ended up getting the 1.5 TB 7200 rpm Seagate. It has been amazing. I posted my experience here:http://ellipz.com/?cat=5
I also have the Samsung F1 and the WD Green 1 TB drives. All three have been great.
3 watts per hour might not be much per drive, but if you're running a large SAN with 100s of drives, it quickly adds up to a respectable saving.