Specifications

in the lab
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JUL 2011 maximumpc.com
MAXIMUMPC
3TB Hard Drive Hustle
The competition among ultralarge-capacity
drives spins up
AFTER A LONG STAY at the 2TB high-
water mark, manufacturers finally
started trickling out 3TB drives in
late 2010. For a quick recap of the 2TB
bootable partition–size limit and the
factors necessary to surpass it (64-bit
OS, GPT partitions, UEFI), see our
review of the 3TB Caviar Green (http://
bit.ly/dYo2Fs). Since that drive came
out, the Sandy Bridge platform has
eliminated a big barrier to entry for
3TB bootable drives by offering UEFI.
And now 7,200rpm 3TB drives have ar-
rived. Here we pit Hitachi’s 3TB Desk-
star against Seagate’s Barracuda XT
3TB to see which is most worthy of your
dollars and data. –
NATHAN EDWARDS
HITACHI DESKSTAR 7K3000 3TB
Alas, poor Hitachi; we knew him well,
Horatio. Hitachi’s Global Storage divi-
sion might have been gobbled up by
Western Digital, but it’s still putting
out product, at least for now. Hitachi’s
latest addition to the Deskstar line is a
five-platter, 3TB, 7,200rpm drive with
64MB of cache and a 6Gb/s SATA inter-
face. Yeah, we can deal with that.
Hitachi’s Deskstar ships with a
piece of paper directing users to
download the Hitachi GPT Disk Man-
ager from Paragon Software. The boot
solution for legacy users seems to be
to just divide the disk into separate
partitions. We expect Maximum PC
readers can manage the same with
Windows’ built-in tools—although
we’re not sure how many Maximum PC
readers want to boot from a 3TB parti-
tion in their desktop rigs.
On our Sandy Bridge test bed, which
has UEFI, we had no problem creating
a 3TB bootable partition and installing
64-bit Windows 7; we didn’t even need
to load F6 drivers. We ran our stan-
dard mechanical-drive benchmarks
on the Deskstar and found average
sustained read speeds of around
119.5MB/s and write speeds around
118.5MB/s. In both our Premiere Pro
encoding test, which writes a 20GB
uncompressed AVI to the disk, and
the PCMark Vantage HDD subtest, the
Deskstar performed faster than the
Barracuda XT, despite having largely
the same specs and despite the Bar-
racuda’s faster average read and
write speeds. The Deskstar’s random-
access speeds were fully 2ms faster
than the Barracuda’s.
With an MSRP of $250 and faster
real-world scores than the Seagate
Barracuda XT, the Hitachi Deskstar
7K3000 is a real winner.
Hitachi Deskstar
7K3000 3TB
$250, www.hitachigst.com
SEAGATE BARRACUDA XT 3TB
Seagate’s Barracuda line has long been
a contender in the 7,200rpm drive space
and—7200.11 firmware snafu notwith-
standing—has generally vied with WD’s
Caviar Black line for the 7,200rpm
crown. The Barracuda XT 3TB is a
five-platter 7,200rpm drive with 6Gb/s
SATA and 64MB of cache, just like the
Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000. So what’s the
difference?
Like the Hitachi drive, but unlike
WD’s Caviar Green, the Barracuda XT
ships sans hardware adapter, instead
offering a link to rebranded partition-
ing software. In this case, Seagate
offers the Seagate DiscWizard,
powered by Acronis. Again, it doesn’t
offer much functionality beyond that
provided by Windows, but it is easier
for novice users. Those with 64-bit
operating systems, UEFI-enabled
motherboards, and GPT partitions
won’t even need that.
In our low-level disk benchmarks,
the Seagate Barracuda XT offered se-
quential read and write speeds exceed-
ing 120MB/s, while random-access
times lagged a few milliseconds behind
both the Hitachi Deskstar and WD
Caviar Green 3TB drives. In Premiere
Pro and PCMark Vantage, though, the
Barracuda’s scores were slightly slower
than those of the Hitachi Deskstar—12
seconds slower in Premiere Pro and
around 600 PCMarks (whatever those
are) behind the Deskstar.
The Barracuda XT is a wicked-fast
drive with a helpful software wizard
for legacy users. But with an MSRP of
$270 and real-world scores slightly
lower than those of the cheaper Hita-
chi Deskstar 7K3000, it’s not neces-
sarily the best bang for your buck.
Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB
$270, www.seagate.com
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