Seagate’s Barracuda line has long been a contender in the 7,200rpm drive space and—7200.11 firmware snafu notwithstanding—has generally vied with WD’s Caviar Black line for the 7,200rpm crown. The Barracuda XT 3TB is a five-platter 7,200rpm drive with 6Gb/s SATA and 64MB of cache, just like the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000. So what’s the difference?
Ooh, Barracuda! Seagate's biggest fish isn't necessarily the meanest in the sea, but it's close.
Like the Hitachi drive, but unlike WD’s Caviar Green, the Barracuda XT ships sans hardware adapter, instead offering a link to rebranded partitioning software. In this case, Seagate offers the Seagate DiscWizard, powered by Acronis. Again, it doesn’t offer much functionality beyond that provided by Windows, but it is easier for novice users. Those with 64-bit operating systems, UEFI-enabled motherboards, and GPT partitions won’t even need that.
In our low-level disk benchmarks, the Seagate Barracuda XT offered sequential read and write speeds exceeding 120MB/s, while random-access times lagged a few milliseconds behind both the Hitachi Deskstar and WD Caviar Green 3TB drives. In Premiere Pro and PCMark Vantage, though, the Barracuda’s scores were slightly slower than those of the Hitachi Deskstar—12 seconds slower in Premiere Pro and around 600 PCMarks (whatever those are) behind the Deskstar.
The Barracuda XT is a wicked-fast drive with a helpful software wizard for legacy users. But with an MSRP of $270 and real-world scores slightly lower than those of the cheaper Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000, it’s not necessarily the best bang for your buck.
$270, www.seagate.com
Speedy sequential speeds; handy disk wizard for novice users; capacious.
Slightly slower than Deskstar in real-world test; slightly more expensive.
| Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (3TB) | Seagate Barracuda XT (3TB) | WD Caviar Green (3TB) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HDTUNE 4.01 | |||
| Avg Read (MB/s) | 119.5 | 124* | 101.5 |
| Random-Access Read (ms) | 15.7* | 17.2 | 15.7* |
| Avg Write (MB/s) | 118.5 | 122* | 96.9 |
| Random-Access Write (ms) | 15.7 | 17.3 | 15.6* |
| Burst Write (MB/s) | 315.6* | 284.8 | 183.1 |
| Premiere Pro Encode (sec) | 435* | 447 | 530 |
| PCMark Vantage | 7,663* | 6,975 | 4,910 |
Asterisk (*) denotes best score. All drives tested on our hard drive test bench: a stock-clocked Intel Core i3-2100 CPU on an Asus P8P67 Pro (Rev 3.1) motherboard with 4GB DDR3, running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. All tests performed using native Intel 6Gb/s SATA chipset with IRST version 10.1 drivers.
machinefish
August 10, 2011 at 11:10am
If you sign up for Tiger D's e-mail promo I received the price of $169.99 today. Or sign up for newegg promo's and go for HITACHI Deskstar 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s HDD -Bare Drive $159.99 Free Shipping plus Free McAfee Antivirus w/ Purchase. If you actually have the patience for mail-in rebates take off an extra $10
d3v
July 13, 2011 at 2:52am
Well the good news is that prices of 1TB and 2TB drives will now go down. We can revisit 3tb drives when the next version comes out and they've worked out all the bugs.
Keith E. Whisman
July 12, 2011 at 7:22pm
At $270 bucks it's cheaper to buy three fast 1TB drives and put them in a three drive raid zero array and reap the rewards of even better performance.
warlock616
July 12, 2011 at 7:20pm
You're joking right? I have 4 hard drives in my computer that add up to 5TB and they're almost full.
Keith E. Whisman
July 12, 2011 at 7:26pm
Some people don't fill their hard drives with "home videos and fair use digital rips of DVD movies that we purchased" and fair use MP3's made from albums purchased at the store and then mysteriously taken by aliens off the planet along with all evidence of the legitimate purchase. And all the linux distros we love to hold onto. Yep, some people just don't have lives at all and they call themselves power users, PaLease.
kneron
July 13, 2011 at 1:40am
Well Thank God you don't work at MPC, Keith.
Or it would have been called Minimum PC, Full of caca.
Being the caveman that your sig implies, burning peeps and assuming that they are thiefs are so low.
And do you imply that MPC hardware staff dont have any lives because they are or calling themselves power users?
There is a reason why we subsrcibe to MPC and as a PC builder and gamer, i want to see whats best and also see how their build their stuff from the latest gear that the market has to offer.
I build my deskptops very close to what MPC has as their dream machines and its because their systems designs are just so damn good. My wife still uses one of my old systems built around an AMD FX60 which she uses for video editing in her work. Ideas for that machine came from MPC and every 'power' system that i've built been good for 3x the machines that my friends are using and gaming on.
So for sure, my systems costs more, but it outlasts most machines and still kick ass.
We read MPC to see the baddest meaneast gear that the market has to offer so take yer caveman comments somwhere elese...PALease...nab
DM 2011 is a beaut...love that it isnt dead expensive if your remove some stuff and keep to the main core system of what they designed
Still love DM 2010, with the Intel X cpu's and again the main core just kicking ass. I wonder if you upgraded the grafix to Nv580 x3 and OCZ V3 drives, what it would have compared to DM2011...guessing that it would have won :p
//Kneron
Sportbiker (race license), hang glider, tech scuba diver and avid traveller
Also aka PC enthusiast and 'power' user :p
0ly1r3m@1ns
July 12, 2011 at 4:33pm
sorry until i fill up my 1tb drive i dont think i need a 3tb i dont think any one realy needs one
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