Hitachi's 4 TB Hard Drives Take On The 3 TB Competition

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Hitachi recently started shipping a pair of 4 TB hard drives. We can see that they're pretty expensive, but how do they compare to existing 3 TB models in other ways? It’s time for a comprehensive overview of today's high-capacity hard drive offerings.

3 TB: Western Digital Caviar Green (WD30EZRX)

The only 3 TB hard drive from Western Digital is a Caviar Green model, which aims at energy efficient systems. The drive is different from all the others in that it pairs a 5400 RPM spindle speed with 64 MB of cache and 3 TB of capacity. The company’s strategy includes the VelociRaptor drive, which recently hit 1 TB. That's WD’s performance family, which clearly outperforms any other mechanical hard drive aside from some of the enterprise-oriented models out there. So, a line of 7200 RPM 3.5” disks simply wouldn't make as much sense for Western Digital.

The Caviar Green drives come with a two-year warranty, while the Caviar Black and VelociRaptor families are backed by five-year coverage. This is similar to Seagate’s approach to the Barracuda and Barracuda XT. The Caviar Green is the slowest hard drive in this round-up in terms of throughput (122 MB/s max), but also in many of the I/O tests. Does that matter? If you're only leaning on the drive for archiving data, not really. But it would if you planned on running applications from it dependent on high throughput.

The Caviar Green WD30EZRX starts at around $170 (160 Euros in Europe). If you don't need 24/7 availability, you might want to consider Seagate's Barracuda as an alternative. It runs cooler and delivers more performance. It isn't designed to run all day and night, just like this Western Digital disk.

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Patrick Schmid
39 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jsowoc
    Good review.

    Did you encounter any issues with testing drives this large (they need a GPT vs MBR, and booting from them also requires a specific setup)?
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    I'm curious, can you install Windows 7 x64 to these 4 TB drives and will the full drive be recognized? With the latest motherboards, of course.

    At that capacity, why bother with 5400 RPM?
    Reply
  • Darkerson
    Nice review. I could use a few of those, but until they have more competition and the prices come down, I can wait.
    Reply
  • blackbirden
    Ony thing i miss from the review is noice level, atleast a subjective one for all who uses them in a htpc or mediastation, do you have any comments on the noice?
    Reply
  • kinggremlin
    Not sure if there is some sort of pricing glitch going on at Newegg right now, but the Hitachi 7K3000 is currently about $400 plus $7 shipping. That's doesn't sound like the value sweet spot this article mentions multiple times for the 3TB capacities. As also mentioned here, for drives this size, speed is not the be-all-end-all. The $300 Hitachi 5400RPM 4TB drive looks like a much better buy than $407 for a 7K3000.
    Reply
  • Achoo22
    I'm pretty disappointed that there aren't multiple points of note regarding expected drive lifetimes, warranties, and return policies in this roundup.

    I have had an incredible failure rate with hard drives beginning around the time that the move to perpendicular recording became the norm. I am not alone in this regard. I'm pretty sure that the drive manufacturer's are aware of serious reliability issues, but their RMA policies are ridiculous. I would be willing to pay current market prices for a new drive if vendors stepped up their game with quality control and some appropriate policies addressing data security in the event that a drive is returned - the risk of granting someone else access to my banking, tax information, and whatever else was on the failed drive is generally not worth returning the drive. Vendors know this, and take advantage of it. Until the situation changes, or drives return to their previous rock-bottom sale prices, I will do everything in my power to avoid purchasing more hard drives.
    Reply
  • I have one 3TB Hitachi and several (>20) 2 TBs mixed from Seagate and WD. I'm impressed with 3TB Hitachi drive, and also I'm very disappointed by Seagate which cut their warranties to 1 year. No more Seagate in my home NAS until they improve the offering. Sorry Seagate, I was a Seagate-only user until you screw up with 7200.11, take advantage of the flooding, rised the prices and cut the warranties.
    Reply
  • Achoo22
    blackbirdenOny thing i miss from the review is noice level, atleast a subjective one for all who uses them in a htpc or mediastation, do you have any comments on the noice?There hasn't been a truly loud hard drive on the market for many years. It shouldn't be an issue.
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    Achoo22There hasn't been a truly loud hard drive on the market for many years. It shouldn't be an issue.My Hitachi 2TB drives beg to differ.
    When they start chugging along, it sounds like a snow plow clearing a parking lot in my room :(
    Reply
  • jacknoll
    If someone could clear up this thing for me:

    I see two parameters for each drive: The media transfer speed and the I/O performance. The first one sounds like the speed to read/write to the disk. AFAIK, it's the speed at which the drive actually reads/writes bits to/from the surface of the platter. In that case, what does the I/O performance mean? It sounds really similar to read/write, but reading these reviews, I get the feeling there's more to I/O.

    Thanks.
    Reply