Two 2TB Hard Drives For Storage Applications, Reviewed
Features
By
Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos
Published
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?
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Comparison Table And Test Setup
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| Manufacturer | Samsung | Seagate |
|---|---|---|
| Model | EcoGreen F3 | Constellation ES |
| Model Number | HD203WI | ST32000644NS |
| Form Factor | 3.5" | 3.5" |
| Capacity | 2,000GB | 2,000GB |
| Spindle Speed | 5,400 RPM | 7,200 RPM |
| Other Capacities | 1,500GB | 500, 1,000GB |
| Platters | 4 | 4 |
| Cache | 32MB | 64MB |
| NCQ | Yes | Yes |
| Interface | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s |
| Operating Temperature | 0-60°C | 5-60°C |
| Specified Idle Power | 5.4W | 7W |
| Measured Idle Power | 4.1W | 6.4W |
| Operating Shock (2 ms, read) | 70 G | 70 G |
| Warranty | 3 Years | 5 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 | |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Details |
| CPU | Intel 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 |
| RAM | 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX |
| HDD | Seagate NL35 400GB ST3400832NS, 7,200 RPM, SATA/150, 8MB Cache |
| Power Supply | OCZ EliteXstream 800W OCZ800EXS-EU |
| Benchmarks | |
| Performance Measurements | h2benchw 3.12PCMark Vantage 1.0 |
| I/O Performance | IOMeter 2006.07.27Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes |
| System Software & Drivers | |
| Driver | Details |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 |
| Intel Chipset | Chipset Installation Utility 9.1.0.1007 |
| AMD Graphics | Radeon 8.12 |
| Intel Matrix Storage | 8.7.0.1007 |
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