Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD 6 TB Review
by Ganesh T S on December 10, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- Seagate
- HDDs
- Enterprise
Concluding Remarks
The Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD is the latest addition to our 6 TB drives evaluation set. We have taken a look at how it compares against the other three 6 TB drives that have been evaluated before, but it is hard to recommend any particular one as the clear cut choice unless the particular application is known. The interesting aspect here is that none of the four drives have overlapping use-cases.
For home consumers who are interested in stashing their media collection / smartphone-captured photos and videos and expect only four or five clients to simultaneously access the NAS, the lower power consumption as well as the price of the WD Red 6 TB is hard to ignore. The HGST Ultrastar He6 is based on upcoming technological advancements, and hence, carries a premium. However, the TCO aspect turns out to be in its favour, particularly when multiple drives running 24x7 are needed. It offers the best balance of power consumption, price and performance. Users looking for absolute performance and those who need multiple iSCSI LUNs for virtual machines and other such applications in an enterprise environment are best served by the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4. However, if the equivalent performance is desired in a 4 - 16-bay NAS enclosure, the initial cost advantages provided by the Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD is hard to ignore. Both drives use a larger cache and the positive effect on performance can be seen in a number of workloads.
The 4 TB variant of the Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD seems to be priced around $236 and the 6 TB variant around $420. These prices don't have DRS included. The 4 TB variant costs the same as the equivalent WD Red Pro, but comes with extra cache capacity. This makes it perform better in a number of workloads, making it easier to recommend. The 6 TB variant really doesn't have any competitor in its price-to-performance ratio range. While the WD Red retails for less than $300, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 retails north of $500. At the $420 price point, the Enterprise NAS HDD strikes a nice balance.
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hlmcompany - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
I can see that happening. I just never thought of IntelliPower as being such a thing. HDD's cannot vary their spindle speed during data access. A fixed spindle speed during operation is monitored by the drive, and if it changes, it is considered a major error. You'd actually hear the WD drive Click twice, and then read Track 0 in an attempt to re-calibrate it's position.extide - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
This would be really easy to verify with a oscilloscope, just watch the waveforms going into the stepper motor... (But yeah, intellipower drives run at fixed speeds, although different models can run at different speeds than other models)MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Thanks.. that sounds better than their 1st explanations. Although I'd still prefer if they said straight "it's 5.4k rpm, give or take a few".hlmcompany - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Marketing.... *sigh*hlmcompany - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Seagate lists this drive as 7200 rpm, which matches its direct competitor, the WD Red Pro.Oyster - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Ganesh, I'll admit I didn't read between the lines, but why exclude the WD Red Pros from the analysis? Seems a bit out of place to compare an enterprise class HD to a non-enterprise class HD (WD Reds @ 5400 RPM, with 3 year warranty, lower MTBF)?MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Because there is no 6 TB Red Pro. Using 800 GB platters it already needs 5 of them to reach 4 TB and can not even reach 5 TB yet.MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Ganesh, in your conclusion you simply attribute the performance advantage of the Seagates to their larger cache. While the cache does help, it normally doesn't help a lot once you have enough of it. Otherwise we would see much larger caches already, as DRAM in the sub-GB range is really cheap, whereas we're talking about 500$ enterprise HDDs here.I suspect the larger platter density of the Seagates has more to do with their performance than the cache. Firmware also plays a major in real world HDD peformance.
ganeshts - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
We observed similar performance advantages for the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 vs. the WD Red Pro at the 4 TB capacity point.Both of them use the same number of platters, have the same rotational speed. The only difference was the cache size.
That said, things are indeed different in this case - the WD Red has lower rotational speed, but does have higher platter density (1.2TB/platter) at the 6TB point. So, I should probably have not stressed the cache size differences too much (just had a hangover from the 4TB review)
MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
The 4 TB Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 also uses 1 TB platters, whereas the Red Pro uses 800 GB platters. Compare the sequential write speeds in MB/s (max - average - min):Red Pro 4 TB: 179 - 142 - 86
Ent. Cap. v4 4 TB: 210 - 166 - 97
Ent. Cap. v4 6 TB: 224 - 171 - 104
The Seagates perform almost identical, with a minor advantage for the 6 TB model. However, the Red Pro is significantly slower.