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 Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB is your quintessential 3.5" hard drive from Seagate; all you have at the top is bare metal with a dull silver finish, and a large label placed across the middle. If you have owned a Seagate drive in the past before, this one is no different. It weighs in at 780g each, or about 1.72lbs. On the label, you will also spot information like its 8000GB drive capacity, model name, serial number, model number, part number, firmware revision, manufacturing date, SATA interface logo, and that it is a product of Thailand. The Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 comes with a five year limited warranty.
Turning the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB 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 Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB is a 7,200RPM drive with six 1.33TB platters inside. These are very high density platters, and should translate to great performance in our benchmarks. You will see 7.27TB in Windows. The rated power consumption is 9W idling and less than 10W random read, which is pretty high; the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD is more of a performance drive than anything else. That said, energy consumption can be optimized by Seagate's PowerBalance and PowerChoice during periods of command inactivity.
As far as electronic components are concerned, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB features an LSI TTB71001V0 dual core drive controller. To control the motor, a SMOOTH/Seagate branded chip labeled 780BN V5 gets the job done. A massive Winbond W6326G6KD-12 256MB IC acts as the cache for the drive.
Of course, being an enterprise grade drive and all, it is important to talk about the enterprise features of this drive. On the performance side, the company claims a 100% performance increase in random writes over the previous generation drive, thanks to enhanced write caching algorithms. On the reliability end of things, the ST8000NM0055 is designed for 24/7 workloads of a whopping 550TB per year, along with a MTBF of two million hours. In a dense multi-drive environment, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity has a high vibration tolerance design with ramp load technology, top cover attached motor, and humidity sensor to ensure it works well in all situations. Other features include on the fly error correcting algorithms, super parity, and 512K logical sectors/4K physical sectors.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S (Single fan)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E (Noctua NF-S12A PWM, Noctua NF-P12 PWM)
Storage: OCZ Vector 150 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 8.1 Professional
Compared Hardware:
- Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.5 ST8000NM0055 8TB (Hard Drive)
- Crucial MX200 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4TB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Seagate Laptop SSHD ST500LM000 500GB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Blue SSHD WD40E31X 4TB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB (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 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Conclusion
