Results: Data Throughput And Interface Bandwidth
As we expected, Seagate's Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 isn’t as fast as the Barracuda 7200.14. The difference isn’t really that large, though, and an average 132.2 MB/s sequential read speed and 131.5 MB/s sequential write speed is enough to put the new drive in second place for both benchmarks. This also means the 4 TB Desktop HDD beats several 7200 RPM competitors, like Western Digital's Black WD4001FAEX and the Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000.
The Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 can't quite hit the 180 MB/s transfer rate that Seagate promises in our h2benchw benchmark. Its 167 MB/s are still very respectable, though.
Of course, because we're using the same SATA 6Gb/s interface as the one used on the Barracuda drives, we end up with similar performance across the wire (even though this is primarily a measure of the drive's cache).