Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS Review
Somewhere between the speed of Solid State Drive technology and the reliability of value-priced Hard Disk storage is the Seagate Barracuda XT. The industry's first SATA 6Gb/s HDD features 2TB of data storage capacity, and is also the first product to receive compliance with the third generation SATA controller interface. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive against a cross section of competing storage products using the ASUS P7P55D Premium (Marvell 88SE9123) and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 (Marvell 88SE9128) motherboards, comparing the model ST32000641AS hard disk on the both SATA-6G controllers as well as Intel's P55/ICH10 SATA-3G chipset.
On 21 September 2009 Seagate Technology was the first and only manufacturer to offer a SATA 6Gb/s (aka SATA-III) hard drive product with the industry's largest 64MB cache buffer as the 2TB Barracuda XT ST32000641AS was unveiled. Both combined improvements to burst rate and sustained bandwidth will mark a substantial improvement to the design of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage products, and the new technology is expected to give Solid State Drive (SSD) components some serious competition. The Seagate Barracuda XT series is designed for performance enthusiasts such as gamers, as well as small server systems. Additional enthusiast tools, such as the free Seagate SeaTools software, allow users to custom-define firmware parameters to enable performance features such as 'Short Stroke' and noise reduction.
The new 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS sells for roughly $0.16 per gigabyte of storage, and offers a 4-platter 368 Gb/square inch aerial density which is sure to please storage-hungry applications. Early adopters of the SATA 6.0GBps interface will enjoy a new high-bandwidth high-capacity solution, while enthusiasts and gamers will appreciate the 64MB cache buffer; the largest DRAM buffer on any commercial hard drive. Benchmark Reviews has tested bandwidth performance of the Seagate Barracuda on both the ASUS P7P55D Premium and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 motherboards, comparing SATA-6G performance on the Marvell SE9123/SE9128 controller chips against SATA-3G performance from Intel's standard P55/ICH10 chipset.
The current Seagate family includes a low-power Barracuda LP, and a mainstream Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive. This new edition to the desktop hard drive family carves out the Barracuda XT for the upper-tier of performance. Benchmark Reviews has had great success with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series in the past, which already rivaled performance from the WD VelociRaptor in some tests, but Seagate plans to drop the 'dot' designation on the 7200 series and simplify their desktop storage family to Barracuda LS, Barracuda, and Barracuda XT.
What to expect from SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III):
About Seagate Technology LLC.
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disk drives and storage solutions, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at https://www.seagate.com/.
Barracuda XT Features
Barracuda XT drives-The performance leader in the Barracuda family, offering maximum capacity, maximum cache and maximum SATA performance for the ultimate in desktop computing performance Performance, Capacity and Peace of Mind.
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Maximize your system performance with the industry's biggest cache available-64 MB.
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Future-proof your storage with the new SATA 6Gb/s interface, which is fully compatible with legacy SATA controllers while also providing an upgrade path to a host of new SATA 6Gb/s motherboards and hard drive controllers.
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Backed by the Seagate 5-Year Limited Warranty and boasting a massive 2 TB of storage capacity, you can rest easy knowing your Barracuda XT hard drive will provide you with more than ample space and years of worry-free operation.
Key Advantages
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A massive 2-TB drive capacity provides plenty of room for downloading today's space-hungry PC games or up to 45 hours of 1080i, HDDVCPRO-encoded, high-definition video.
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The 7200-RPM performance platform complements high capacity, delivering a powerful combination of extreme storage and top-end desktop performance.
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A 64-MB cache optimizes burst performance and reduces data throughput bottlenecks.
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The SATA 6Gb/s interface enables the use of the industry's newest and fastest hard drive controllers while providing backward compatibility to legacy SATA 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s systems.
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Configurable with Seagate SeaTools software-Users can optimize the drive configuration and tune for capacity or performance for the ultimate in customer choice and control.
Best-Fit Applications
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High-performance PC gaming systems
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High-definition video editing and production systems
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Home servers and workstations
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Desktop RAID
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FireWire 800- or eSATA-enabled external storage devices
ST32000641AS Specifications
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Model Number: ST32000641AS
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Interface Options: SATA 6Gb/s NCQ
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Transfer Rate: Max Ext (MB/s) 600
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Sustained Data Rate: OD (MB/s) 138
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Cache (MB): 64
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Average Latency (ms): 4.16
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Spindle Speed (RPM): 7200
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Heads/Disks: 8/4
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Bytes per Sector: 512
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Load/Unload Cycles: 300K
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Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read: Max 1 per 10E14
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Annualized Failure Rate: 0.34%
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Mean Time Between Failures (hours): 750,000
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Limited Warranty (years): 5
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Startup Current +12 Peak (A, ±10%): 2.8
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Seek, Average (W): 7.3
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Operating, Average (W): 9.23
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Idle, Average (W): 6.39
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Operating Temperature (°C): -5 to 60
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Nonoperating Temperature (°C): -40 to 70
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2 ms Operating Shock (Gs): 63
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2 ms Nonoperating Shock (Gs): 300
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Idle Acoustics (bels - sound power): 2.8
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Seek Acoustics (bels - sound power): 3.2
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Physical Height (in/mm) 1.028/26.1
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Physical Width (in/mm) 4.00/101.6
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Physical Depth (in/mm) 5.787/146.99
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Physical Weight (lb/kg) 1.543/700
Drive Testing Methodology
Comparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even when you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be much faster in response time (SSD's), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth (HDD's). Additionally, there are certain factors which can affect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid.
Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDD's has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed".
However the benefits inherent to SSD's have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed.
EDITORS NOTE: As of November 2009, Benchmark Reviews will begin testing storage devices using the SATA 6G (SATA-III 6Gbps) interface with Microsoft Windows 7. This article will be updated to reflect any major performance differences, if necessary.
SSD Testing Disclaimer
Early on in our SSD coverage, Benchmark Reviews published an article which detailed Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.
Our test results were obtained after each SSD had been prepared using DISKPART or Sanitary Erase tools. As a word of caution, applications such as these offer immediate but temporary restoration of original 'pristine' performance levels. In our tests, we discovered that the maximum performance results (charted) would decay as subsequent tests were performed. SSDs attached to TRIM enabled Operating Systems will benefit from continuously refreshed performance, whereas older O/S's will require a garbage collection (GC) tool to avoid 'dirty NAND' performance degradation.
It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and PCMark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.
Intel ICH10 Test System
Marvell 88SE9128 System
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Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 (Intel P55/ICH10R/Marvell SE9128 Chipset)
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System Memory: 4GB Duel-Channel DDR3 1600MHz CL6-6-6-18
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Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Marvell 88SE9123 Test System
Drive Hardware Tested
The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:
Test Tools
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ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34: Spot-tests static file size chunks for basic I/O bandwidth
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HD Tune Pro v3.5 by EFD Software: Measured random access IOPS and speed
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Iometer 2006.07.27 by Intel Corporation: Tests IOPS performance and I/O response time
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CrystalDiskMark v2.2 by Crystal Dew World: Sequential speed benchmark spot-tests various file size chunks
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HD Tach RW v3.0.4.0 by Simpli Software: Measures approximate buffered read and write bandwidth speeds
Seagate Barracuda XT: SATA 3G vs 6G
When Benchmark Reviews first discussed the upcoming SATA 6Gb/s hard drive in our Seagate Barracuda XT Preview, I can honestly say that my expectations were very optimistic. After all, it seemed that a 64MB cache buffer could really improve performance of this 7200 RPM disk, and designing it to be compliant with the third generation SATA specification was only going to raise the headroom for potential bandwidth speed. Being optimistic is very different from being convinced, and speculation doesn't offer the insight that benchmark performance tests can. In this section, Benchmark Reviews tests the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s hard drive on three different platforms.
To help compare and contrast performance differences, we've used three different test systems. All three have Intel's ICH10 Southbridge in common, a chip with a long driver development history that allows 3.0 GBps bandwidth throughput. The ASUS P7P55D Premium uses the Marvell 88SE9123 controller and the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 motherboards utilizes a Marvell 88SE9128 SATA 6Gb/s controller. With the processor and memory matched as closely as possible between platforms, our test results should be as accurate as possible. On the ASUS and Gigabyte P55 motherboards our test performance on the ICH10 chipset was identical, so that specific test (labeled Intel P55/ICH10) is manufacturer non-specific.
Observing 4KB IOPS performance over four different SATA controllers, the Seagate Barracuda XT offered very little difference between them all. The ST32000641AS SATA 6Gb/s hard drive did perform well enough compared to other HDD storage devices, but it didn't seem to matter whether it was connected to SATA 3GBps or SATA 6Gb/s.
Switching to bandwidth speed tests didn't reveal anything new, and the difference between SATA controllers was almost irrelevant. As far as the Seagate Barracuda XT is concerned, this is good news. However, to add a little interest (and introduce our Marvell SATA-6G SSD Performance vs Intel ICH10 side piece that spawned from our tests), Benchmark Reviews offers the performance results of the OCZ Agility OCZSSD2-1AGT120G Solid State Drive while connected to each SATA controller.
The OCZ Agility is a MLC Solid State Drive based on the Indilinx 'Barefoot' controller, and is one of the most affordable high-performance SSDs currently on the market. Testing 4KB IOPS performance across four difference chipsets showed just how far Intel has come with their driver optimizations, and how far Marvell still needs to go. In the chart above, the OCZ Agility SSD performs at approximately 7,200 IOPS read, and 16,000 write on either the P55 or X58 platform and using Intel's ICH10 SATA controller. Switching to either the Marvell 88SE9123 or 88SE9123 SATA 6G controllers changed the IOPS performance dramatically, and IOPS dropped to approximately 5500 read and 8600 write. This equals a 28% improvement in IOPS read performance with Intel's ICH10 over Marvell's 9128/9123 chips, and 95% increase in write operations per second.
Results in bandwidth speed tests for the Agility SSD were very similar to the IOPS benchmarks. The X58 and P55 platforms produced roughly 222 MBps reads and 165 MBps writes, all while connected to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge. In comparison, the Marvell SATA 6G controllers produced approximately 154 MBps read speed, and 106 MBps write. This results in a 42% advantage for the ICH10 SATA 3G controller over Marvell's 9123/9128 SATA 6G controller in read speed, and a 55% advantage in write-to performance. Why, you might ask? It's all in the driver.
You see, Intel's ICH9 and ICH10 chips utilize a driver architecture that creates a virtual RAM-disk buffer for cached transactions. The amount of RAM-disk created depends on the chip and available system memory (which we detail in our spin-off article), but the combined driver refinement and memory cache capability lead to very high performance. This is where Marvell needs to grow, and do more than a simple reverse engineering Intel's work in creating their own driver.
Drive Hardware Tested
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested.
While the bandwidth results are not realistic for determining the maximum drive speeds, ATTO Disk Benchmark is still a good tool for illustrating bandwidth using various file size chunks. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth performance indicators.
Our basic I/O bandwidth tests begin with the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive connected to the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip, as the ATTO Disk Benchmark tools performs file transfers ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. The ST32000641AS model reveals a 148 MBps read plateau starting from roughly 32-8192 KB file chunks, while the 146 MBps write performance plateaus from 32-8192 KB. The dip in read performance appeared in every test, but moved from one chunk size to another.
Drive Hardware Tested
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Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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In our next section, Benchmark Reviews compares random access IOPS performance among high-end storage devices using HD Tune Pro...
HD Tune Pro Benchmarks
In the past, Benchmark Reviews has avoided HD Tune benchmarks because the software was so similar to others already being used in our articles. However, EFD Software has released several versions of this program, which now adds functionality and features not available in previous revisions. The latest edition of HD Tune Pro allows random access read and write testing, a feature not available to other similar software benchmark tools. HD Tune is a low-level test that will not operate on a drive which contains a partition, so Benchmark Reviews uses DISKPART to prepare hardware and remove any partitions before conducting these tests.
Random Access tests are divided into 512b, 4KB, 64KB, 1MB and random size test files sizes. The Random Access test measures the performance of random read or write operations. The amount of data which will be read varies from 512 bytes to 1 MB. Performance is reported in operations per second (IOPS), average access time, and average speed. Because it is our intent to compare one product against another, Benchmark Reviews has focused on random transfer size IOPS performance.
Benchmark Reviews has tested the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive ST32000641AS against a collection of top-performing desktop storage drives for our random IOPS benchmarks. The 4 KB random IOPS performance in HD Tune measured 72 for read IO, and 145 for write. In comparison, the Western Digital VelociRaptor offered 145/137 4KB read and write IOPS.
The Seagate Barracuda XT offered a read-IOPS range of 45-72, and the tight range of IO is an indicator of operational bottlenecks. For example, the WD VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS SATA Hard Disk Drive indicates a read-IOPS range of 10-150 whereas the average SSD might offer 200-1,000. As a direct result, in most cases SSDs will offer a much higher IO over their hard disk counterparts. The random read/write operations per second is charted below:
For comparison of random IOPS performance, Benchmark Reviews tested a large cross-section of storage devices to show the differences in performance. The Corsair X256 and OCZ Vertex Turbo (both MLC), along with the OCZ Agility EX (SLC), all lead the pack of Indilinx-based SSDs. The Intel X25-E Extreme SSD performed well, followed by the OCZ Vertex and Agility. The two hard drive products in our test don't offer nearly the same level of IO performance, but manage to exceed results of some of our SSD models.
For reference, all of our test results were obtained after each SSD had been prepared using the DISKPART program, and in the case of products using the Indilinx Barefoot controller they were further prepared with the Sanitary Erase application. In our tests, we discovered that the maximum performance results (charted) would decay as subsequent tests were performed. As a word of caution, applications such as Sanitary Erase (SE) and Wiper offer immediate but temporary restoration of original 'pristine' performance levels. The hard drive products did not require this extra step.
Drive Hardware Tested
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Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Benchmark Reviews measures I/O Response Time and IOPS performance using the Iometer tool in our next section...
Iometer IOPS Performance
Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer's I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as "Galileo". Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL).
Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.
Benchmark Reviews has resisted publishing Iometer results because there are hundreds of different configuration variables available, making it impossible to reproduce our tests without having our Iometer configuration file. To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. Our charts show the Read and Write IOPS performance as well as I/O response time (measured in ms). Iometer was configured to test for 120 seconds, and after five tests the average is displayed in our benchmark results. The first tests included random read and write IOPS performance, where a higher I/O is preferred.
In the Random IOPS performance tests the single layer cell (SLC) OCZ Agility EX (3982/3988) and Intel X25-E Extreme (3543/3548) outperformed all other products by a wide margin. The OCZ Vertex Turbo SSD rendered 1774 read/1770 write I/O's, while the Corsair recorded 1769/1773, both of which are just slightly ahead of a single Vertex 1.3 SSD that produced 1702 for read and write IOPS. The mainstream OCZ Agility SSD trails behind with 1625/1618 I/O's, while every other product thereafter performs far beneath the above-listed products, and are not suggested for high input/output applications.
The 64GB Kingston SSDNow V+ (which is a rebranded Samsung PB22-J SSD) produced a meager 150 I/O's with Iometer. While offering better IO than any other desktop hard drive (and most first- and second-generation SSDs), the Western Digital VelociRaptor still fell short on IOPS performance compared with several current-generation SSDs and produced only 134/138 IO's. The worlds first SATA 6G hard drive, the Seagate Barracuda XT, offered 76/73 IO. Finally, the Mtron MOBI 3500 rendered 58 IOPS, which was worse than the older 3000 model and several hard disk drive products. Next comes the average I/O response time tests...
The Iometer random IOPS average response time test results were nearly an inverse order of the IOPS performance results. It's no surprise that SLC drives perform I/O processes far better than their MLC versions, but that gap is slowly closing as controller technology improves the differences and enhances cache buffer space. The Read/Write IOPS performance for the 64GB OCZ Agility-EX SLC SSD was 0.19/0.06 ms, with the Intel X25-E Extreme SSD measuring 0.22/0.06 ms, while the Corsair X256 and OCZ Vertex Turbo SSD both scored 0.50/0.06ms and the OCZ Vertex offered 0.52/0.06ms. The mainstream Agility SSD produced 0.55/0.06ms, and the Kingston SSDNow V+ (Intel X25-M) produced 3.50/3.14 ms.
Western Digital's VelociRaptor did very well compared against SSD products, producing 6.59/0.82ms. Trailing behind was the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive ST32000641AS, which offered 11.8 ms read and 1.40 ms write IOPS performance. The Mtron MOBI 3000 offered a fast 0.42ms read response time, but suffered a slower 8.97ms write response. Both the WD5001AALS and Seagate 7200.11 hard drives (not charted) performed around 11ms read and 1.2ms write, while the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 offered 15.3/1.36ms response times. Mtron's newer MOBI 3500 offered great read response times at 0.19ms, but suffered poor write responses at 17.19ms.
Drive Hardware Tested
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Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance and compare its speed against several other top storage products using EVEREST Disk Benchmark. Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are excellent for rating SSDs, however HDDs are put at a disadvantage with these tests whenever capacity is high.
CrystalDiskMark Tests
CrystalDiskMark is a very basic read and write benchmark tool by Crystal Dew World that offers performance speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our tests, sequential read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB file size, with 50, 100, and 500MB being the other available options. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and all drives are formatted with NTFS.
Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to confirm manufacturer suggested bandwidth speeds. In addition to our other tests, the sequential read and write benchmarks allow us to determine if the maximum stated speed of any storage product is within reasonable specification. In the chart below illustrated below, our sequential read and write performance speeds are organized from highest to lowest based on total bandwidth.
Enjoying a noticeable lead atop of our sequential performance chart, both the Intel X25-E Extreme (261/206 MBps) and OCZ Agility EX (258/172 MBps) offer the highest read and write bandwidth performance. Followed closely behind was the Corsair X256 which scored 255/156. Not far away from the top leaders was the OCZ Vertex Turbo, which offered 248/145, and was slightly faster than the Kingston SSDNow V+ and standard Vertex SSD performance of 230/138. The OCZ Agility followed closely behind the other Indilinx Barefoot SSDs and shared the same sequential write speed penalty. According to CrystalDiskMark, the Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive performs faster than the WD VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM hard drive, which bother perform faster than the Mtron MOBI 3500.
Drive Hardware Tested
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Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Benchmark Reviews tests and compares buffered transaction speed using HD Tach in the following section...
HD Tach RW Results
Although HD Tach (and also HD Tune or Crystal Disk Benchmark) are all excellent tools for measuring Hard Disk Drive products, they fail to offer the same precision with Solid State Drive products. These programs offer only an approximate estimate of bandwidth speed through their quick-result sample-testing mechanisms, as I have proven in the Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing article published not long ago. Nevertheless, HD Tach is still useful for offering an alternative perspective at performance, even if it isn't precisely correct when used with SSD architecture.
HD Tach is a software program for Microsoft Windows that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device. For the record. every single product tested was brand new and never used. HD Tach allows write-bandwidth tests only if no partition is present. Additionally, each and every product was tested five times with the highest and lowest results removed before having the average result displayed here. The graphical user interface (GUI) of the Windows-based benchmark tool HD Tach is very convenient. and allows the test product to be compared against others collected on your system or those registered into the Simpli Software database. HD Tach will not test write performance if a partition is present, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting.
In the tests below, Benchmark Reviews utilizes the HD TachRW tool to compare the fastest collection of desktop hard drives and competing SSD's we can get our hands on. Using the Intel ICH10R SATA controller on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, HD Tach was used to benchmark the test SSD five times with the best results displayed below. It's important to note that HD Tach's Burst Speed result should be ignored for Solid State Drives due to the cache methods inherent to each memory controller architecture. There are times where this number will be extremely high, which is a result of the optimized cache used for SSD's.
The important numbers used for comparison are the sustained read and write bandwidth speeds, which indicate an approximate performance level of the product. Our featured test item, the Seagate Barracuda XT model ST32000641AS, performed at an average 115 MBps best sustained average read speed and a best average sustained write bandwidth of only 101 MBps.
The chart below illustrates the collected averages for benchmark results using HD Tach RW on the Intel ICH10 SATA controller, with the read and write bandwidth results added together to determine rank placement. The first group is a collection of high-performance storage products. The Corsair X256, Intel X25-E Extreme, and OCZ Agility EX SSDs all tie for first place, ahead of the MLC Vertex Turbo and Agility SSD. Kingston's SSDNow V+ SSD trails behind in overall performance, and offers less write-to performance than a few of the hard drive products tested.
The Seagate Barracuda XT offers 115 MBps read and 101 MBps write, which is just barely ahead of the WD VelociRaptor's 108/99. Added for comparison, the Seagate 5400.6 notebook hard drive scores 32 MBps read and 56 MBps write.
Drive Hardware Tested
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Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
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Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB WD1500HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)
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Please continue on to the Final Thoughts sections, where the state of the HDD Data Storage market sector is put under analysis...
Desktop Storage Final Thoughts
It's still too early to tell if or when HDDs will be replaced with SSDs, although basic wisdom indicates that both will be favored among their intended markets for a few years to come. Personally speaking, I have been a fan of SSD technology from the beginning; but even I can acquiesce to Seagate and WD product road maps for the short term future. SSDs can't possibly touch the value and capacity delivered by HDDs, and that's not something that will soon change.
There's no argument that HDDs still capture the capacity-hungry market segment; especially since SSDs cannot compete there. But the premium high-performance desktop storage enthusiast market is losing patience with Hard Disk Drive technology, and as a result those consumers are turning towards Solid State Drive technology in large numbers. This is exactly why the new SATA-III 6Gb/s interface and 64MB cache buffer was so important to desktop storage technology, and delivered at exactly the right time. Sure, this new bump in performance will add considerable boost to the HDD market, but at the same time it's no surprise that premier names in the industry have also invested in their own SSD solutions.
Benchmark Reviews expects to have a Seagate Barracuda XT product sample in October (2009), and we'll soon see just exactly how much more the new 6.0 GB/s interface adds to sustained file transfers on our ASUS P7P55D Premium test motherboard. There's no question that the increase from 32- to 64MB of internal cache buffer will improve the drives overall quickness, but which deserves the credit: 64MB cache or SATA-III 6Gbps? Seagate's David Burks explained that both are to be thanked. Cache gives the biggest boost, but once that cache is saturated with file(s), the larger bandwidth pipeline helps to transfer files to and from the disk. Furthermore, enthusiasts can 'short-stroke' the drive to make use of only the outer platter by using Seagate's SeaTools software.
Currently the Seagate SeaTools software only allows users to define a Logical Block Address (LBA) range, which can then be saved onto the drive's firmware. As of now this process requires an enthusiast to understand the total capacity of their drive in order to assign a short-stroke setting, but Seagate already has enthusiast how-to guides in the works. Taking a moment to step back and view the big picture, this could be Seagate's last stab at competing against the 10,000RPM WD VelociRaptor before launching their own SSD product line.
Seagate Barracuda XT Conclusion
Not every product we test here at Benchmark Reviews receives a warm conclusion, complete with happy ending and high recommendations. Fortunately, the Seagate Barracuda XT has just enough perk still going for it to earn high marks from us. Price, performance, and capacity are the biggest reasons to choose a Barracuda XT over any of the current-generation 2TB products.
Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate. The first section is performance, which considers how effective the Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G hard drive performs in operations against direct competitor products. For reference, Seagate specifies that the model ST32000641AS hard drive should offer a maximum 168 MBps read and write performance. In many of our benchmark tests, the 2TB jumbo hard drive performed at or above this rating. The ST32000641AS model offered its highest performance of 148/146 MBps in ATTO Benchmark, trailed by 144/142 MBps in Crystal DiskMark, then 115/101 MBps in HD-Tach. IOPS performance in Iometer and HD-Tune was not the disks most convincing feature, and it trailed far behind the other HDD competitors.
While the 2-Terabyte Barracuda XT is the highest-capacity 7200 RPM SATA hard drive Seagate offers, it takes a steep departure from the median price of other HDDs of the same capacity. Considering the costs, a $299 model ST32000641AS Barracuda XT sells for nearly twice the price of a Hitachi HD32000 IDK/7K. To be fair, this is the only example that fits the description. Considering that the Barracuda XT is SATA 6G compliant and offers 64MB of cache buffer, the features and performance help this hard drive stand out from similarly priced HDDs like the 2TB WD Caviar Black WD2001FASS and Western Digital RE4-GP WD2002FYPS.
Touting a five-year warranty helps to position the Seagate Barracuda XT ahead of most other storage products, even though the low operational temperature and power saving rotational shut-down features may make the long-term warranty moot. Because Hard Disk Drive technology is so mature, especially from a company like Seagate, there are no issues with the Barracuda XT in terms of compatibility or firmware functionality. Seagate delivers industry-leading quality and construction in all of their products, and the high-performance/high-capacity Barracuda XT series is the end-result of years of proven industry experience.
Based on the current condition of the desktop storage sector, it's still very much a hard drive heavy world. While SSD technology will undoubtedly replace HDDs one day, there's no speculation as to when, if ever, a Solid State Drive can match capacity and price with a hard drive counterpart. The 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT Hard Drive ST32000641AS resists the tide of change for at least a while longer, and the ultra-high two-Terabyte capacity paired to future-proof SATA 6Gb/s compliance will certainly help punctuate this. The affordable cost to capacity ratio puts the Barracuda XT ahead of SSDs by a long-shot, while the impressive bandwidth performance speeds still most other 'enthusiast' desktop Hard Disk Drive storage solution available. For storage-hungry gamers and performance enthusiasts wanting performance and high-capacity storage, the Seagate Barracuda XT is an exceptional drive with plenty of value.
Pros:
+ Very good 148 MBps read bandwidth with ATTO Benchmark
+ 3nd-generation SATA 6Gb/s compliant controller
+ High 2-Terabyte storage capacity
+ Outstanding total-package value
+ 64MB Cache buffer improves burst transactions
+ Low-power standby conserves energy
+ 5-Year Seagate product warranty
+ Additional performance available via short-stroking
Cons:
- Unimpressive bandwidth for the World's first SATA 6G product
Ratings:
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Performance: 8.75
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Appearance: 8.50
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Construction: 9.00
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Functionality: 9.00
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Value: 8.50
Final Score: 8.75 out of 10.
Quality Recognition: Benchmark Reviews Silver Tachometer Award.
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Comments
Think with any SAS 6G HBA the drive will show much better results.
Good article though.