Friday, February 15, 2013

4TB Seagate STBD4000400 Desktop Hard Drive Review

 Introduction

Recently and quietly Seagate has refreshed and re-branded their 3.5 inch Barracuda hard drive series.The ever popular Barracuda's are now know simply as the Desktop hard drives.Storage capacities range from 250gb to 4 terabytes.All the drives up to 3tb capacity are Barracuda drives with all the same features and specs as we have known just with a new name.However the top capacity 4tb offering is something entirely new and not entirely the same as it's smaller brethren.This particular model is the retail boxed STBD4000400 version for sale only at BestBuy.com right now.I couldn't help myself and snatched a couple while they were on sale.





This drive packs in it's massive 4tb capacity on only 4 disk platters thanks to increased density of it's data tracks.There are 340,000 tracks per inch to be exact.This drive also features Advanced Format 4k physical sectors with 512 byte emulation,64mb of ddr2 cache, and Seagate's OptiCache and AcuTrac technologies are also present.All the same as the popular 3tb barracuda.However unlike the Barracuda drives this particular model is a 5,900 rpm drive.Yes a 5,900 rpm spindle speed disk drive.I was surprised myself as Seagate makes no note of the spindle speed on their packaging or on their website data that this drive is a 5,900 rpm drive.Checking Crystal Disk Info utility displayed the spindle rate accurately.Which I confirmed with Seagate support.I also asked Seagate support whether ERC or error recovery control was present and enabled on this drive and they said yes.That should give piece of mind to those wanting to use this drive in a NAS or any RAID configuration which Seagate suggests as a viable usage for these new Desktop drives.

Performance Testing

So with a 5,900 rpm how does this drive perform?Well lets look at some benchmarks and find out.

HD Tune Pro 4.61

 
With reads ranging from 78 mb/s to 171 mb/s this drive even with only 5,900 rpm isn't about that funny business.16.8ms is not quick but I wouldn't expect better with the lower spindle speed.A burst rate of 247 mb/s isn't as explosive as the 3tb barracuda and only will be felt with small files.CPU usage is low at 3.8%.I like my drives not to hog up resources.



With writes from 73 mb/s to 172 mb/s the big Seagate continues to go about it's business quickly.All sequential numbers are better than my trusted 7,200 rpm Western Digital 2tb Black.Access time is something that the big Seagate can't beat my trusty Black drive in.At 17 ms is getting a bit slow and shows the fault of having a lower rpm.Burst rate came out slower but won't be a problem in real world usage.Cpu usage went up a bit during write operations but considering the size and performance of the drive it really isn't a CPU hog.

Crystal Diskmark 3.0.2


Again the big Seagate shows solid performance with Sequential data and larger random 512k blocks.With sequential reads at 148 mb/s and sequential writes at 146 mb/s it is faster in a straight line than my Black drive.4K and 4KQD32 performance is respectable for a hard drive but those fields are pathetic compared to solid state drives.


This drive handles all but the smallest transfer sizes like a champ.Read and writes peak at 155 mb/s and 154 mb/s respectively.

Conclusion

I'm very impressed with Seagate.I surprise myself with those words considering I'm a Western Digital man and thought lowly of Seagate until I tested a 3tb Barracuda last year.This drive with a lower rpm performs equally to the 7,200 rpm 4tb Black drives that I recently had.Both of which failed surprisingly.The 4 terabyte Seagate Desktop offers solid performance,with power savings and cooler operation thanks to the slower rpm.Also the drive is as quiet as a mouse.Very much like Western Digital's Red drives.Also if this drive does indeed have ERC truly enabled then it will no doubt be a serious competitor to that drive in the NAS market as it should be.I initially purchased this drive for testing and evaluation but considering my bad experience with the 4tb Western Digital Black and it's significant cost I may very well keep these big Seagate hard drives.They are more than adequate for my needs.I highly recommend the drive for anyone looking for mass storage of non-critical data.This drive should excel as a secondary drive for data only purposes where a solid state drive is the main operating system drive or as foundation of a multimedia NAS system.

 Pros
4 terabyte capacity
Solid performance
Low cost
Quiet operation
Low operating temperatures
  
 Cons
Wish it was a monstrous 10,000rpm drive!







33 comments:

  1. Hey! Thanks for the review. I am looking at a similar Seagate [http://amzn.to/VYDWa8] and have been a WD fan myself, but the cost/tb is a little high for WD these days. I am thinking about putting my OS on an SSD and using HDDs for movies, music, photos, etc and accessing that through an XBMC (if that will even work). Have you done anything like this? How are you using this drive? Thanks for the review. It was very helpful in my search.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't recommend you or anyone to buy that Seagate drive listed in your amazon link.That drive is not for retail sale as a bare drive it is only included in certain external Seagate drives.Sellers pull them out of their external enclosures and sell them bare for a greater price.A drive pulled from it's enclosure voids the warranty of the drive.XBMC is a solid multimedia application.Not hard to setup and really makes a media collection shine.I personally use Plex which is an alternative to XBMC.I'll be using the drive mostly for ripping my Bluray collection for storing on my NAS.I'll probably run some virtual machines off it as well as well as some GIMP photo editing projects.

      Delete
    2. OIC. Thanks for the help.
      I'm still searching for the ideal, largest capacity, most reliable HD for this project. I'll probably buy today. Looks like bestbuy has some on sale. Thanks again.

      Delete
  2. Thank you for your review! I just purchased two of these 4TB drives in their retail box to mod my new HP H8-1513c. I also about to purchase a Samsung Pro 840 256GB drive. My idea is to use the SSD for the OS (Windows 8 - 64 Bit) and my programs. For my data, I would like to have the two 4TB drives in an image array(not NAS) using a software product like Acronis True Image 2013 or any other you may suggest. After transferring the operative system and program information to the SSD, I plan to uninstall and store the original Barracuda drive that came with my PC (ST2000DL003) as an emergency back-up to access the information contained in the two 4TB drives in case the SSD fails completely (I work on my PC during business hours - not 24hrs/day - but I can't afford the downtime waiting for a replacement from Samsung). Since I want both my 4TB drives to have the same data (the secondary - or backup drive - syncing to the main one, in real time or delayed for nighttime), do you have any thoughts or recommendations as to what software or hardware to use (it has to recognize both drives in one 4TB partition each). My PC does come with a UEFI Bios so drives will be partitioned as GPT. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should run the two 4tb drives in a RAID 1 mirror.This can be done in Windows disk management or in your BIOS if the motherboard SATA controller supports it.In RAID 1 Data is read and written simultaneously to both disks.Same data will be on both drives and operating system and applications will treat them like one 4tb drive.If one drive fails then data on active drive is still present and accessible.

      This link may be helpful in backing up a disk image from your hard drive to your smaller ssd.

      http://kb.acronis.com/content/2770

      Delete
    2. Thank you for your response!

      The link you provided was very useful indeed. :-)

      Now, regarding the RAID solution:

      In the last decade I've had unhappy experiences with all 3 RAID systems I owned from QNAP and Thecus with 5 drives in RAID 5 and 6 configurations and one spare drive in “stand-by” mode. In all those cases I had to replace some drives several times in the first 3 years. In a couple of those times my data was almost lost. This is weird, because I never had a standalone drive that failed me, at least before it becomes obsolete (or too small) and decide to replace it (usually after 4 or 5 years of use).

      My new PC includes a SYBA SI-PEX40058 PCI-e 2.0 card as an add-on, because I wanted my PC to have an eSata port and an extra SATA III internal port. Theoretically this card is also capable of performing RAID 0, 1 and 10 operations.

      Now, to be sure, I would like to confirm this: In the event of a catastrophic failure of the RAID 1 setup that you suggested (I've never tried RAID 1 before), will I be able to access the data of any of the drives as a regular standalone drive if I just plug them in a separate SATA port, directly from my motherboard or using an external SATA case? Would they not be formatted in a special way that will not permit direct access as standalone drives?

      Thank you!

      Delete
  3. Yes you can access the data on a drive if the RAID 1 fails.Your operating system will treat the lone drive like a normal drive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It goes without saying that these insights will place all hard disk owner to one place up and it also helps in hard disk repair!! Double treat!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. How do you know it's a 5900 RPM disk? It isn't mentioned on seagate's website nor is it mentioned in their specifications list.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I contacted Seagate personally for confirmation.

      Delete
  6. If you want to be taken seriously, you should learn to differentiate between mb, MB, tb, TB, etc...you come off like an ignorant computer user.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Did I ever say I wanted to be taken serious?I'm not getting paid to give free information and opinion.I don't owe you anything.Who gets Megabits confused with Megabytes nowadays when talking about transfer rates and disk capacities?People know what the hell I'm talking about.

      Delete
    2. Good come back. Some people are just plain rude. Thanks for taking the time to review the drive. I'm sure like myself many others will find your information useful.

      Thanks again,

      Bill

      Delete
  7. www.excaliberpc.com › ... › Desktop Hard Drives › Seagate
    Rating: 3.7 - 3 votes
    Seagate Desktop HDD.15 STBD4000400 4TB 3.5" SATA 6.0Gb / s Hard Drive - Kit. Buy Seagate STBD4000400 or see more Seagate Desktop Hard Drives.
    Amazon.com: Seagate STBD4000400 4 TB 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive ...
    www.amazon.com/Seagate-STBD4000400-Desktop.../B00BL82N0U
    Amazon.com: Seagate STBD4000400 4 TB 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive - Internal (STBD4000400) -: Everything Else.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Am thinking about buying 12 of these for my Synology DS2411+ NAS. I have heard that it is better practice to mix and match drive makes/batches to decrease the chances of more than 1 disk failing at one time. What are your thoughts on this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mixing and matching different drives doesn't help prevent multiple drive failures.Multiple drive failure at the same time is rather unlikely to happen but entirely possible.It's possible for you to get struck by lightning on your way to the mail box but unlikely to happen.Simultaneous drive failures may be the result of something other than the drives themselves.A faulty power supply or SATA/SAS controller is usually to blame.Don't worry to much.Buy the drives,test the hell out of them and enjoy.


      I'm not sure how your are going to configure your NAS with the drives but I highly recommend setting up all 12 drives in a RAID 6 configuration if your NAS allows.

      Delete
  9. Newegg has a special on this Seagate 4TB today: $169. They also have the WD Black 4 TB for $299 but after reading your review, the higher cost seems even more obtuse. One Pro for WD, it has a 5 yr warranty and Seagate's is only 2 yr on this drive.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Depending on how your drive is damaged, an attempt to salvage your data can cost anywhere from a hundred dollars to several thousand...



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    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks fr the very nice information about hard drives. I do agree with the last comment.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I switched from WD to Seagate a few years ago because of failures. I've had two Seagates go bad in the past 6 months but they were still under warranty. Seagate went from a 5yr warranty to a 1 or 2 year warranty and that concerns me.

    I'm not sure of what to do now. Pay for the WD black warranty or take my chances on the Seagates???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The lengthy warranty of the WD Black is beneficial for people who will keep the drive for the duration of it's long warranty term and don't want to deal with the expense of buying another drive within that long warranty term.If you're consideration for buying the black is such then you should definitely purchase a Western Digital Black drive.

      A lengthy warranty is no guarantee against drive failure and subsequent data loss.Everyone that is concerned about data loss should always have copies of data on separate drives or storage systems.

      Delete
  13. Thanks admin

    Reviews are very helpful for new buyers. Keep it up give only genuine reviews


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  15. My hard drive is damaged and it is not working now. Is there any best tested software that i can restore all my personal data.?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Is your drive recognized in your systems BIOS or operating system?If not then a software solution won't help.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This is a definitely nice post about the HP Sata Disk Drives i read it with keen interest

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  18. I currently have 1 SSD for apps, a 500 GB WD Blue for storage, and a 1TB Seagate 64MB Cache @ 7200 RPM for storage. I just ordered a 2 TB WD Black for Steam games. Should I cancel the order and just get this Seagate 4TB since it is just as fast as the WD Black? If I go that route then I would like to consolidate my storage and gaming onto one drive.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't consolidate all my storage on one drive unless you have a backup solution.If you have all your data on that single drive and it fails and have no back up copy of you data elsewhere then you lose EVERYTHING.The 2TB Black is a great drive.I also use it for my PC game storage.The 4TB Seagate you are interested in would make for a great back up drive for all your data on the other drives.

      Delete
  19. Although many retailers sell Seagate hard drive at their store there’s hardly ever a rebate on such products. Some online retailers may offer a discount so it is better to buy it from them

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  22. Hello, thanks for your excellent post about the Seagate SSD drive. Hard drive memory capacities have recently increased significantly, yet access performance has remained basically static. The technology has a basic problem in this regard. The hard disc is mechanical, therefore efforts to speed it up have had diminishing returns. A technology that competes with the conventional hard disc is the solid-state drive. I recently purchased a Western Digital Corporation Wd3200jb Caviar Se Hard Drive from ESAI TECH for a fair price.

    ReplyDelete