Four 3 TB Hard Drives, Tested And Reviewed

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Hard drives able to hold 3 TB of data need to be considered carefully because they might not always work as expected. This round-up of four high-capacity disks compares products from Hitachi, Seagate, and Western Digital, then covers their caveats.

Comparison Table And Test Setup

Comparison Table

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Manufacturer Hitachi Hitachi Seagate Western Digital
Family Deskstar 5K3000 Deskstar 7K3000 Barracuda XT Caviar Green
Model HDS5C3030ALA630 HDS723030ALA640 ST33000651AS WD30EZRS
Form Factor 3.5" 3.5" 3.5" 3.5"
Capacity 3000 GB 3000 GB 3000 GB 3000 GB
RPM CoolSpin 7200 RPM 7200 RPM 5400 RPM
Other Available Capacities 2000 GB, 1500 GB 2000 GB, 1500 GB 2000 GB 2500 GB, 2000 GB, 1500 GB, 1000 GB, 750 GB
Platters 5 5 5 4
Cache 32 MB 64 MB 64 MB 64 MB
NCQ Yes Yes Yes Yes
Interface SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 6 Gb/s
Operating Temperature 5-60 °C 5-60 °C 5-60 °C 0-60 °C
Idle Power, According To Manufacturer 4.8 W 6.8 W 6.4 W 5.5 W
Idle Power, According To Tom's Hardware 5.1 W 7.3 W 7.3 W 6.2 W
Operating Shock (2 ms, Read) 70 G 70 G 63 G 65 G
Warranty 3 years 3 years 5 years 3 years

Test Setup

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System Hardware
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge, D2), 32 nm 4C/4T, 3.3 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2 Cache, 6 MB L3 Cache w/ HD Graphics 3000, 95 W TDP, 3.7 GHz max. Turbo Boost
Motherboard (LGA 1155) Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, Revision: 2.0, Chipset: Intel Z68 Express, BIOS: F3
RAM 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333, Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D
System SSD Intel X25-M G1, 80 GB, Firmware 0701, SATA 3 Gb/s
Controller Intel PCH Z68 SATA 6 Gb/s
Power Supply Seasonic X-760 760W, SS-760KM Active PFC F3
Benchmarks
Performance Measurements h2benchw 3.16 PCMark 7 1.0.4
I/O Performance IOMeter 2006.07.27 Fileserver benchmark Webserver benchmark Database benchmark Workstation benchmark Streaming reads Streaming writes 4K Random reads 4K Random writes
System Software And Drivers
Operating System Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset Drivers 9.2.0.1030
Intel Rapid Storage Drivers 10.​5.​0.​1026
38 Comments Comment from the forums
  • agnickolov
    Three terabyte hard drives remain premium products, not only because they're best handled by enthusiasts who know what they're doing, but also because they're the largest disks available and you always seem to pay more for the largest, fastest, coolest...well, you know the drill.
    Well, that's no longer the case:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/GoFlex-Desk-4TB-3.5-inch-industrial-design-USB-3.0,13371.html
    Reply
  • The_King
    Seagate 5 year warranty FTW
    Reply
  • vdr369
    Seagate barracuda is pulling my heart with it's performance, but punching my pocket with it's price,
    Reply
  • salb99
    the hitachi 5k3000 at max throughput uses less power than at idle, is it correct? also, video power consumptions here are the same as idle for all drives.
    Reply
  • dww
    I don't see the point of 3 TB drives. Too big to use in most current systems, but too small to be a useful gain over 2 TB for those that CAN handle larger sizes. At present they're also too expensive, and once 4 TB drives come out in volume they'll be superseded. So I guess they're just a short term stopgap.
    Reply
  • excidium
    Graph labels for the 7K3000 are incorrect ( 5400RPM ) on page:
    Benchmark Results: Throughput And Interface Bandwidth

    Haven't finished reading the rest of the article.
    Reply
  • WD30EZRS recommended for NAS?
    how about TLER ? and the issue with frequent head parking ? Though the later is correctable with wdidle3.exe..
    Considering each green drive might have different rotation speed are you sure about your NAS recommendation?
    Reply
  • monkeysweat
    i know 2TB is cheaper per GB,, however i only got 4 HDD slots in my case,, and 3 are in use already,, 1.5, 2.0 & 2.5 TB model drives + 1 SSD tucked under my card reader,, either i gotta spend more on a new case + drive or just spend a little more on a nice drive...
    Reply
  • chesteracorgi
    With 2 Samsung 2.0 TB F4 Ecogreen (SATA 3.0 & 32 MB cache) and 2 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda Green (SATA 6.0 & 64 MB cache) drives installed in my home server, it is my experience that HDDs are no better off on SATA 6.0 than on SATA 3.0. If you are looking for performance then look for a faster rpm rate: the 640 GB WD Caviar Black (SATA 6.0 & 64 MB cache) kills all of the above in speed. However, none of these HDDs can touch an older generation SSD like the Crucial C300 (128 GB).

    The most important characteristic of the HDDs is reliability. So far, since 3/11, all of the HDDs have proven reliable, while the SSD had to be RMA'd after a couple of weeks.

    But the story is not complete on any of this hardware as it is still premature to talk about long term results. I believe that reliability is the biggest issue with 3 TB drives and would like to see more on failure rates and reliability.

    BTW the average feedback at Newegg on large HDDs is about 60% positive (4 or 5 eggs) on large drives. I made a decision to buy only drives with a rating of at least 80% aggregate positive.
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    I went with three 2TB Hitachi drives instead.
    Reply