Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
As always, with our storage reviews, before we move on to the benchmark results, let us briefly discuss the physical attributes of this hard disk drive first. The BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB is your quintessential 3.5" hard drive from Seagate; the top of the drive is bare metal with a dull silver finish and a large label placed across the middle. The label is designed to reflect Seagate's latest product branding, and the addition of color graphics make everything all the better. It is also nice to see the designation of unique names, including IronWolf for NAS HDDs, FireCuda for SSHDs, BarraCuda for desktop HDDs, and SkyHawk for surveillance applications. The BarraCuda Pro we are reviewing today weighs in at 705g each, or about 1.554lbs. This is exactly the same as the BarraCuda Pro ST10000DM0004 10TB according to the latest specifications sheet, both of which are equipped with relatively thin platters. On the label, you will spot information like its 12TB drive capacity, model name, serial number, model number, part number, firmware revision, manufacturing date, bunch of regulatory logos, and that it is a product of Thailand. The Seagate BarraCuda Pro series come with a five-year limited warranty.
Turning the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB around, and you will see a green printed circuit board that interfaces between its SATA 6Gb/s interface and the physical mechanical components. Mechanically, the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB is a 7,200RPM drive with eight high density platters inside. The drive is helium filled for reduced resistance, which means more platters can be stacked in the same amount of space along with reduced power consumption. With these high-density platters using traditional perpendicular magnetic recording technology as opposed to performance-penalizing technologies like shingled magnetic recording, this should translate to great performance in our benchmarks. You will see 10.9TB in Windows. The rated power consumption is 0.84W standby, 4.83W idle, and 7.8W active operating power, which is really good. We are talking about two-thirds the idle and seven-eighth the average power consumption compared to the Seagate 6TB model in the same lineup.
As far as electronic components are concerned, the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB features an Avago DS01 drive controller. To control the motor, a SMOOTH/Seagate branded chip labeled 78003 V5 gets the job done. A massive Nanya NT5CC128M161P-D1 DDR3-1600 256MB IC acts as part of the multi-segmented cache for the drive, as shown in our photo above. Its mean time before failure (MTBF) is rated at 1,000,000 hours, with a 300TB per year workload rate limit.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK
RAM: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile PC3-17000 4x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: Fractal Design Define R5
Storage: OCZ Vector 180 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB (Hard Drive)
- HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST10000DM0004 10TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate IronWolf ST10000VN0004 10TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate IronWolf ST12000VN0007 12TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate NAS HDD ST8000VN0002 8TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD100EFAX 10TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD80EFZX 8TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red Pro WD4001FFSX 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red Pro WD6001FFWX 6TB (Hard Drive)
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Conclusion
