Page 10 - Conclusion
Coming from a Seagate Laptop SSHD ST500LM000 500GB hard drive, I already knew what to expect from the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4TB. What was unexpected, however, was its raw performance compared to other desktop hard drives. The Seagate Desktop SSHD was very competitive even in uncached mode. Once again, in PCMark 7, where we had the opportunity to see how the Desktop SSHD approach the problem with caching enabled, there was clearly a considerable amount of performance gain, once it "learns" what data to cache. This will definitely translate to real world speed improvements. As I have said in my Laptop SSHD review, while the Desktop SSHD -- even with cached data -- will not be as fast as a true SSD, the ST4000DX001 will no doubt be faster than a pure mechanical hard drive with no flash components in boot speed and application loading. That said, I think having an 8GB cache is a bit stingy, especially considering we are talking about a 4TB desktop drive here. The Seagate Desktop SSHD will be capable of keeping only a small amount of data in its flash memory; ask for a little more, and you are off the turbo. As a 3.5" hard drive, I do not believe it is unreasonable ask for a bigger cache, since there is not a whole lot of space or power consumption constraints, and flash memory is pretty cheap in 2015. That said, retailing for about $160 at press time, the Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4TB comes at a surprisingly good price. It commands a price premium of only $25 over a regular Seagate Desktop HDD with the same capacity, and is $40 cheaper than the new Western Digital Blue WD40E31X 4TB SSHD.
Seagate provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH equal.balance Award
Since April 30, 2007, Number Ratings have been dropped for all CPUs, motherboards, RAM, SSD/HDDs, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings are reflected without the inherent limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.
The Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4TB is a great performing large capacity hybrid drive that does not require a large wallet to buy.
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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 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Conclusion
