Solid-state drives continue to dominate the market, but traditional HDDs are still thriving. It's too early to retire the classics, as storing large volumes of information remains most convenient on HDDs.
First, there's the price issue — just compare the cost of SSDs and HDDs with capacities of one terabyte or more. For the price of one 2TB SSD, you could buy four similar HDDs. A substantial argument, wouldn't you agree?
Secondly, traditional hard drives have adapted to market demands over the years: they have become faster, simpler, and more convenient. Today, we'll discuss one example. This is a classic version of a modern HDD drive — Seagate ST2000DM008.
The hard drive we are reviewing belongs to the Barracuda line, known for its reliability. It has a capacity of 2 terabytes. This is one of the most popular formats today: one terabyte of built-in memory is no longer enough for many, as AAA games and video content have significantly increased in size over the last couple of years. An average two-hour 4K movie can take up to 20 gigabytes, while a game like Far Cry 5 can reach up to 50 GB.
On the other hand, drives with truly large capacities (such as the Seagate ST14000VX0008 at 12–14 TB) are still too expensive for home use and are primarily intended for video surveillance. So, 2000 gigabytes is a sweet spot for most modern home PCs.
The Seagate ST2000DM008 model is more complex than it might seem at first glance. Within the Barracuda family of HDDs, it boasts the highest data transfer speed. Moreover, the drive features an impressive cache size of 256 MB. In short, we are looking at one of the fastest 2TB drives on the market, and its price does not reflect this. Let's take a look at the main technical specifications.
Technical Specifications
Model: Seagate ST2000DM008
Interface: SATA III, 6 Gb/s
Drive Capacity: 2 TB
Cache Memory Size: 256 MB
Spindle Rotation Speed: 7200 RPM
Power Consumption: 4.3 W
Dimensions: 101.6 × 20.2 × 146.99 mm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
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The design of the Seagate ST2000DM008 is traditional: it features the well-known classic Barracuda style, easily recognizable from a distance thanks to its signature color scheme. The mountings are standard, eliminating the need for non-typical fixing methods or brackets, allowing the installation of the drive to take minimal time.
The drive is equipped with two heads and one platter, making it lightweight at just 415 grams. Additionally, the Seagate ST2000DM008 has a thinner case compared to many competitors, measuring 20.2 millimeters in thickness. This positively affects the overall performance of the PC, particularly the ventilation within the system unit.
The specified read and write speed of the Seagate ST2000DM008 is 220 MB/s. The maximum data transfer rate of the external interface is 600 MB/s. It supports the proprietary MTC (multi-tier cache) technology, which optimizes data streams and enhances overall system performance. Adding to this is a substantial cache memory and a spinning speed of 7200 RPM — making it a solid choice for active home use, especially at a reasonable price.
Some of the stated specifications can be verified in practice by running a test utility. The check was conducted using the standard settings of the HD Tune Pro 5.70 application, with no additional adjustments made.
First, let's look at the overview tab of the drive:
Note that the actual storage capacity of the disk after formatting is 1863 GB.
Now, let’s examine the benchmark results. The maximum, minimum, and average read and write speeds are provided:
The Random Access tab tests the performance of random read and write operations. The tables below the graph indicate file sizes, the number of operations per second, and average write speeds:
The final stage involves additional measurements. We will use the complete set of tests presented on this tab:
Now, let’s take a look at the simplest and most visual test for hard drives and other storage types — CrystalDiskMark.
Notice the very slight difference between the read speed and write speed.
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As you can see, the Seagate ST2000DM008 shows excellent results in tests and fully meets the declared specifications. This means it is perfect for home use, for example in a combination of 'SSD for the system + HDD for data storage.' Thanks to its high (for hard drives) read and write speeds, the device can be successfully used for multimedia software like Adobe Premiere and Vegas Pro, as well as for gaming. An additional advantage is its low noise level: even multiple HDDs under constant load operate almost silently.
It is worth noting that the overall Seagate Barracuda lineup features devices with capacities ranging from a modest 500 GB to an impressive 8 TB, allowing you to choose a drive for any range of tasks. Among the 'siblings' of the ST2000DM008 in the lineup, we highlight ST2000DM006 (2 TB, 7200 rpm, 64 MB cache) and the quiet ST2000DM005 (2 TB, 5400 rpm, 256 MB cache). The complete lineup is presented .
For the corporate segment, other Seagate models are designed, which have increased storage capacity. Such devices are best suited for data storage and processing on servers. A good example is the model ST16000NM001G, which you can review .
Source: habr.com
