Two 2TB Hard Drives For Storage Applications, Reviewed

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Samsung and Seagate are each offering new high-capacity drives that strive to cram tons of data into a 3.5" form factor. Today's battle is the eco-friendly Spinpoint against the nearline Constellation, low power against business-class. Which one is best?

Comparison Table And Test Setup

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ManufacturerSamsungSeagate
ModelEcoGreen F3Constellation ES
Model NumberHD203WIST32000644NS
Form Factor3.5"3.5"
Capacity2,000GB2,000GB
Spindle Speed5,400 RPM7,200 RPM
Other Capacities1,500GB500, 1,000GB
Platters44
Cache32MB64MB
NCQYesYes
InterfaceSATA 3Gb/sSATA 3Gb/s
Operating Temperature0-60°C5-60°C
Specified Idle Power5.4W7W
Measured Idle Power4.1W6.4W
Operating Shock (2 ms, read)70 G70 G
Warranty3 Years5 Years

This review deals only with these two drives, but there are two more products that require consideration: Hitachi’s Ultrastar A7K2000, a 7,200 RPM business class drive, and two options by Western Digital, the Caviar Green that compares to Samsung’s F3EG and the RE4 (RAID Edition), which is more similar to the Constellation ES.

Test Setup

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System Hardware
HardwareDetails
CPUIntel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB L3 Cache)
Motherboard (Sockel 1366)Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.1, Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R, BIOS: 1.0B
RAM3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDDSeagate NL35 400GB ST3400832NS, 7,200 RPM, SATA/150, 8MB Cache
Power SupplyOCZ EliteXstream 800W OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurementsh2benchw 3.12PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2006.07.27Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes
System Software & Drivers
DriverDetails
Operating SystemWindows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel ChipsetChipset Installation Utility 9.1.0.1007
AMD GraphicsRadeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage8.7.0.1007