Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM

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First, Seagate renamed its Barracuda hard drive family to Desktop HDD.15. Then, it introduced the first model in the new line-up—the Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000. Does Seagate's first massive 4 TB desktop disk deliver the performance we want or disappoint?

Results: Temperature, Power Consumption, And Efficiency

After the Desktop HDD.15’s strong, but certainly not impressive performance in our read and write tests, the 4 TB disk finally gets to face a few tests where it can excel.

For starters, its operating temperature is only 32 degrees Celsius, which means it's not even warm to the touch. Western Digital's Red WD30EFRX is even cooler at 31 degrees Celsius. The 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda has an operating temperature of 37 degrees Celsius, which is still well within an acceptable range.

Power Consumption

The Desktop HDD.15 and Western Digital Red WD30EFRX do battle for the honor of turning in the lowest power consumption results for a 3.5" hard drive. Even though the WD drive barely bests Seagate in the end, a 3.6 W measurement at idle and 5.9 W reading at peak write speed are both excellent numbers.

Efficiency

Dividing power consumption by read and write performance gives us an efficiency result for each disk. This is a good way to figure out which usage scenario the drives are best-suited to.

Seagate's Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 plays in the big leagues once again, and it’s only beaten by the Western Digital Red WD30EFRX when we calculate the efficiency in streaming writes and database operations.

Manuel Masiero
46 Comments Comment from the forums
  • vinhn
    Would rather take 3TB @ 7200 over 4TB @ 5800, I'm sure people would agree with that.
    Reply
  • guru_urug
    Good Read.
    Noticed a small insignificant error in the "Drive Surface Temperature" chart. It lists the 4TB HDD.15 as a 7200rpm drive rather than a 5900rpm one.
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    Now that everyone has a full lineup of 4TB drives out, how about finally releasing something larger?
    Bring on the 2160p content!
    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    the thing is this hard drive geared towards speed it's mostly geared towards data storage, which is why it's only 5800rpm, so you wouldn't get this obv if you want fast read and write times, that's what SSD's are for.
    Reply
  • Mike Friesen
    The one graph, about temperatures, said "higher is better" beneath it...
    Reply
  • masterjaw
    Great media storage drive for those with SSDs as boot drive which is what is currently on the trend right now.
    Reply
  • csf60
    To all the people who say performance is not important, I would like to remind them we don't have a 4 terabyte SSD yet, and until then, if I need 4TB I have to use a hard drive. And it better be a fast one or I will be sitting for ever in a loading screen in-game, opening big programs and loading 8GB of sample sounds to RAM when I work with music.

    For me this is a big mistake for Seagate. I always bought their drives because they were the fastest, but it seems they are now joining the WD green lineup. I'll probably have to go with hitachi now to have some decent speed.
    Reply
  • wavetrex
    I personally only care about price / gigabyte. Give me the ability to store more HD pron and I'm happy. Don't care if it dies...
    Reply
  • daglesj
    Would anyone use a 4TB drive as a system drive anyway? Short stoked to 200GB maybe but otherwise......? Reliability has never been a strong point with drives over 1TB IMO.

    I just see these big drives as a huge liability really, but folks will hoard their data.
    Reply
  • Larry Bob
    Unique name Seagate.
    Reply