Solid state drives continue to take over the market, but despite this, traditional HDDs are doing great. It is still too early to hand over the “classics” to the museum, because it is still convenient to store large amounts of information on HDDs.
Firstly, the question of price arises - it is enough to compare the cost of SSD and HDD with a volume of terabytes and above. For the price of one 2TB SSD, you can buy as many as four hard drives of the same size. A weighty argument, agree!
Secondly, classic hard drives have been adapting to market demands over the years: they have become faster, simpler and more convenient. We will talk about one of the examples today. This is a classic version of a modern HDD drive - Seagate ST2000DM008.
The hard drive we are reviewing belongs to the Barracuda line, which needs no introduction. Its volume is 2 terabytes. This is one of the most popular formats today: one terabyte of internal memory is no longer enough for many, since AAA game titles and video content have “gained weight” significantly over the past couple of years. An average two-hour 4K movie takes up to 20 gigabytes, and some Far Cry 5 takes up to 50 GB.
On the other hand, drives with a really large capacity (for example, Seagate ST14000VX0008 12 - 14 TB) are still expensive for home use and are intended primarily for video surveillance. So 2000 gigabytes is the golden mean for most modern home PCs.
The Seagate ST2000DM008 model is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. It has the highest data transfer speed in the Barracuda HDD family. In addition, the disk boasts an impressive amount of buffer memory - 256 MB. In a word, we have one of the fastest “kopeck pieces” on the market, despite the fact that this does not affect its value in any way. Let's take a look at the main specifications.
Technical specifications
Model: Seagate ST2000DM008
Interface: SATA III 6Gb/s
Storage capacity: 2 TB
Cache size: 256 MB
Spindle speed: 7200 / min
Power Consumption: 4,3 W
Dimensions: 101×6×20,2 mm
Form Factor: 3,5 in
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The design of the Seagate ST2000DM008 is traditional: it is the well-known classic Barracuda, which you can recognize from afar by its corporate color scheme. The mounts are standard, you don’t need to mess around with sleds and atypical methods of fixing - installing the disk will take a minimum of time.
The drive is equipped with two heads and one plate, so it is not too heavy: only 415 grams. At the same time, the Seagate ST2000DM008 case is thinner than many competitors: its thickness is 20,2 millimeters. This has a beneficial effect on the operation of the entire PC: for example, on ventilation inside the system unit.
The declared write and read speed of the Seagate ST2000DM008 is 220 MB/s. The maximum data transfer rate of the external interface is 600 MB/s. Supported proprietary technology MTC (multi-tier cache), which optimizes data flows and improves overall system performance. Add to this an impressive buffer memory and a rotation speed of 7200 rpm - and we get a good option for active home use, and at a reasonable price.
Some of the declared characteristics can be tested in practice by running a test utility. The test was carried out on the standard settings of the HD Tune Pro 5.70 application, we did not make any additional adjustments.
First, look at the tab with general information about the drive:
Please note that the actual disk space after formatting is 1863 GB.
Now let's look at the results in benchmarks. The maximum, minimum, as well as the average speed of reading and writing data are indicated:
The Random Access tab tests the performance of random reads and writes. The tables below the graph show file sizes, operations per second, and average write speeds:
The last step is additional measurements. We use the entire set of tests presented in this tab:
And now let's look at the simplest and most visual test for hard drives and other types of drives - CrystalDiskMark.
Note the very small difference between read speed and write speed.
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As you can see, the Seagate ST2000DM008 shows excellent results in tests and fully corresponds to the declared characteristics. This means that it is perfect for home use, for example, in a combination of “SSD for system + HDD for data storage”. Due to the high (by the standards of hard drives) read and write speed, the device can be successfully used in working with multimedia software such as Adobe Premiere and Vegas Pro, as well as for games. An additional advantage is the low noise level: even several HDDs work almost silently under constant load.
It remains to be added that the general range of Seagate Barracuda is represented by devices with a capacity from a modest 500 GB to an impressive 8 TB, which means that you can choose a drive for any range of tasks. Among the "brothers" ST2000DM008 in the line, we highlight ST2000DM006 (2 TB, 7200 rpm, 64 MB cache) and quiet ST2000DM005 (2 TB, 5400 rpm, 256 MB cache). The complete range is presented .
Other Seagate models are intended for the corporate segment - with increased storage capacity. Such devices are best suited for storing and processing data on servers. A good example is the model ST16000NM001G, an overview of which can be viewed .
Source: habr.com