HD Tach 3.0.4 - 8MB Tests - READ Burst Speed: (Mb/s) Points Ranking Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 HDD 270.7 Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD 209.9 Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD 214.7 Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD 329.2 Crucial M4 256GB SSD 387.6 SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD 293.3 OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD 356.3 OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD 266.6 Plextor PX-128M1S SSD 143.4 Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD 366.4 Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD 336.4 Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD 405.1 Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD 231.7 Average Read: (MB/s) Points Ranking Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 HDD 123.9 Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD 115.2 Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD 90.5 Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD 368.6 Crucial M4 256GB SSD 390.2 SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD 369.2 OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD 390.2 OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD 243.7 Plextor PX-128M1S SSD 103.4 Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD 137.3 Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD 115.5 Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD 95.9 Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD 89.4 Random Access Time: (ms) Points Ranking Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 HDD 12.3 Western Digital RE4 1TB WD1003FBYX HDD 11.8 Western Digital 1TB WD1001FALS HDD 12.1 Kingston SSDNow 300V 2406GB SSD 0.1 Crucial M4 256GB SSD 0.1 SanDisk Etreme 240GB SSD 0.1 OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD 0.1 OCZ Vertex 2 128GB SSD 0.1 Plextor PX-128M1S SSD 0.3 Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT HDD 16.7 Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD 17 Seagate 750GB Momentus XT SSHD 0.4 Seagate 500GB Momentus XT SSHD 17

HDTach measures how fast the system can transfer information from the hard disk to RAM. Thanks to the 64MB of onboard cache, the 1TB Seagate Constellation ES ST1000NM0011 hard drive achieves a burst speed of 270.7 MB/s - a significant bump up from the WD RE4 drive. Average read speed is clocked at 123.9 MB/s.

Enterprise Reliability Sells

A couple points have become clear to PCSTATS after spending some time to test and review this 1TB enterprise class hard drive; 1) Seagate's 6Gb/s SATA III Constellation ES drive is a touch faster than Western Digital's 3Gb/s SATA II RE4 drive (as expected due to the faster Serial ATA interface). 2) End users are willing to pay for any storage option that is 'enterprise class', or in other words... is a safer place to park critical data. 3) Nice and cushy 5 year warranties are a good thing. If you've been in the computer game for a long time you'll remember the days when all hard drives were covered by at least 3 year warranties, with SCSI drives protected by 5 year warranties. Only recently have drive manufacturers whittled down their warranties to 1 year... and really, who wants to store data on a drive with such a statistically short lifespan? When it comes to data, reliability is key.

What's notable about Seagate's 3.5" desktop 1TB Constellation ST1000NM0011 hard drive is that it platters spin at 7200RPM, it features 64MB of onboard cache, is 6Gb/s SATA III compliant, supports NCQ and is rated to 1.2million hour MTBF. Essentially, nothing. The Seagate Constellation ES has the exact same specs as the Western Digital RE4 class of enterprise drives - other than the difference in serial ATA interface, it's hard to tell them apart. I will say, the Constellation ES is a quieter drive, though.

As we saw in the benchmarks, the 1.0TB Constellation ST1000NM0011 drive performs slightly faster than the competing WE RE4 in all benchmarks except PCMark Vantage. On the price per GB front, this Seagate drive runs about $0.11/GB, or $109USD. Storage solutions are the fundamental building blocks of every computer system, yet while SSDs are much faster, there is still a place in modern computer systems for good, reliable, inexpensive, massive HDDs. Any way you slice it, the Seagate Constellation ST1000NM0011 enterprise class 1TB drive is worth consideration for your next PC build.

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