Introduction

Seagate is a world leader in storage solutions and hard disk drives. Founded in 1979, Seagate has a wide range of products from hard disk drives to solid state drives, network storage and external hard drives.

Today we are taking a look at two different Seagate drives from their current range. Namely the Seagate Constellation CS 3TB (ST3000NC002) and the Seagate Constellation ES.3 4TB (ST4000NM0033). With more and more people using digital media as opposed to hard copies of information such as CDs, DVDs etc., people’s storage needs are ever expanding and manufacturers such as Seagate recognise this by developing new faster, higher capacity drives to meet demand. We will be checking out these two large capacity offerings from Seagate to see how they perform. So let’s get on with the review.

Specifications and Features

Seagate Constellation CS 3TB (ST3000NC002)

Form Factor 3.5” Interface Options SATA 6Gb/s Spindle Speed (RPM) 7200 Cache (MB) 64 Transfer Rate, Max Ext (MB/s) 600 Sustained Data Rate OD 180MB/s Average Latency (ms) 4.16 Power Management Idle, Typical Operating (W) 0.34 Environmental Temperature – Operating 5° to 60°C Temperature – Non-operating -40° to 70°C Shock – Operating: Gs (ms) 70 / 40 (2ms) Shock – Non-operating: Gs (ms) 300 (2ms) Acoustic (bels) – Idle 2.5 Acoustic (bels) – Operating 2.5 Physical Height (in/mm) (maximum) 1.028/26.10 Width (in/mm) (maximum) 4.010/101.85 Length (in/mm) (maximum) 5.787/147.00 Weight (lb/g) 1.38/626

Seagate Constellation ES.3 4TB (ST4000NM0033)

Form Factor 3.5” Interface Options SAS 6gb/s, SATA 6Gb/s Spindle Speed (RPM) 7200 Cache (MB) 128 Transfer Rate, Max Ext (MB/s) 600 Sustained Data Rate OD 175MB/s Average Latency (ms) 4.16 Power Management Idle, Typical Operating (W) 7.80, 6.73 Environmental Temperature – Operating 5° to 60°C Temperature – Non-operating -40° to 70°C Shock – Operating: Gs (ms) 70 / 40 (2ms) Shock – Non-operating: Gs (ms) 300 (2ms) Acoustic (bels) – Idle 2.8 Acoustic (bels) – Operating 3 Physical Height (in/mm) (maximum) 1.028/26.10 Width (in/mm) (maximum) 4.010/101.85 Length (in/mm) (maximum) 5.787/147.00 Weight (lb/g) 1.543/700

Closer Look

We received the drives in a clear plastic casing, so not much to comment on the packaging front.

On top of the drives we have stickers which give all the information about each drive including serial number, model number etc.

Both drives use the 3.5” form factor and have mounting holes on the top and bottom allowing them to be fitted in all kinds of devices.

Both model of drives have a SATA power and SATA 6Gb/s data connection.

The Seagate Constellation ES.3 4TB drives Seagate claim offer reliable 24/7 storage, best-in-class energy efficiency with low power and cooling requirements and are perfect for storage systems where large capacity is needed in a dense environment.

Performance

Thanks to Seagate we have been supplied two of each model (2 x 3TB) and (2 x 4TB) so we can do some RAID 0 and RAID 1 testing to see how they perform in a RAID configuration.

For those of you who don’t know about RAID configurations, I have provided a brief explanation of the two configurations used for testing.

RAID 0 – In RAID 0 mode, both drives combine but stripe the files to give maximum speed and capacity. This raid level offers no data redundancy.

RAID 1 – A RAID 1 configuration will result in you getting only half the space when using two identical drives. This is because data is automatically mirrored from the primary drive to the second drive giving you an identical copy of your data. This RAID configuration offers superb data redundancy but at a slight loss of performance when writing to the drives.

Test system:

Intel i5 2500K

Asus P8Z77-V

8GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 1.35v @ 1600MHz 9-9-9-24

Seasonic Fanless X460W

128GB Samsung 830

Fractal Design Define R4 (1 x 140mm Rear, 2 x 140mm Front all at 7v)

When doing our RAID testing we configured the RAID arrays with a 128KB stripe size.

Seagate Constellation CS 3TB

Seagate Constellation ES.3 4TB

Conclusion

I would like to say a big thank you to Seagate for supplying these hard drives for review. I am going to try and wrap up both drives into a single conclusion. Both the 3TB and 4TB drives performed very well as mechanical drives go. Please remember that mechanical hard drives can’t really be directly compared to SSDs due to the different manufacturing processes.

Both the 3TB and 4TB drives performed very well. As a single drive we saw great read and write performance from both drives. When RAIDed in a RAID 0 configuration these drives performed excellently, boasting read and write speeds which were very good and comparable to some SSDs on the market; obviously the RAID configuration is expected to deliver good results. When the drives were put into a RAID 1 configuration, the performance of the drives did take a noticeable hit which was to be expected.

The drives work well however after lots of use they do get on the warm side. Pricing wise* the 4TB drive may be deemed rather expensive although it is designed for a 24/7 work environment where reliability and efficiency is key and is therefore priced accordingly. The 3TB drive is at the higher echelon price bracket* of other 3TB drives however does deliver with its performance. If you are in the market for a high capacity drive and are looking for something from a brand with years of experience in the field then these offerings from Seagate are the ones to look out for.

* At time of writing prices vary according to retailer/supplier so be sure to shop around