Faceoff at One Terabyte: Seagate’s Barracuda ES.2 and WD’s Caviar GreenPower

Leveraging a unique five-platter design, Hitachi Global Storage managed to bring the formidable Deskstar 7K1000 to the market well before competing designs. For several months now, Hitachi’s beast has combined the best capacity and performance one could get on the SATA interface. Now, however, competitors Seagate and Western Digital have commenced shipment of their first terabyte units… and each manufacturer’s take is a bit different from that of Hitachi’s.

With the ES.2, Seagate joins Hitachi as one of the first manufacturers to offer a 32-megabyte buffer on its drive as an option across the entire family’s capacity. The Deskstar 7K1000’s enviable performance gains suggest that the time may be ripe for the industry as a whole to move to this new level. ES.2 units featuring a more standard 16-megabyte cache are also available.

The Barracuda ES.2 is also the first enterprise-class SATA design from Seagate that will also be available equipped with a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Slowly but surely SAS is displacing the traditional 68-/80-pin LVD interface with its vastly simplified architecture and its convenient interoperability with the mass-market SATA connection.

Seagate equips the ES.2 with a vibration compensation system typically associated with enterprise drives to mitigate performance problems that arise when many drives are packed into the same chassis and rack. The manufacturer also boasts an MTBF and error recovery rate that rival the best of the SCSI/SAS world (1.2 million hours and 1x10E-15 respectively). Seagate backs the unit with a 5-year warranty.

Also with the ES.2, Seagate commences with a newer focus on environmental concerns. Reducing power draw nets a double-edged savings through both reduced power consumption itself and reduction in dissipated heat and associated cooling costs. Seagate claims the improvements, collectively offered under its “PowerTrim” label, net a 20% reduction in draw when contrasted with the drive’s predecessor… and 55% in watts-per-gigabyte when the ES.2’s larger capacity is taken into account.

The manufacturer is careful in not directly citing spindle speed, instead nominally positioning the Caviar GP as a “7200 RPM-class” drive. Under its “IntelliPower” moniker, WD claims a “A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and cache size designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.” Some folks have misinterpreted some admittedly vague specs on WD’s website. Under “Rotational Speed,” the manufacturer cites “IntelliPower (5400 to 7200 RPM).” This does not mean the drive dynamically changes its spindle speed during operation… indeed, such a feature would entail considerable mechanical engineering and would in many ways defeat the point — rapidly accelerating and decelerating the spindle’s speed would increase rather than decrease net power draw. Rather, the IntelliPower term indicates that the GP family as a whole does not have a set spindle speed (nor a set buffer size, for that matter). Different capacity points may feature differing spin speeds and buffer sizes. For those that must know, WD admits “sub-6000 RPM operation” for the 1-TB Caviar GP (more on this on the following page).

WD argues that, like processor speeds and the associated clock speed specs that dominated CPU marketing for years, disc drive focus should move away from individual low-level specs/claims and instead focus on end results. For our part, we agree. A couple years back, we moved the StorageReview Leaderboard away from listing drives by “spindle speed class” to the current “intended use” paradigm.

The Caviar also incorporates the just-in-time (IntelliSeek) paradigm originally introduced in WD’s notebook drives and “IntelliPark,” a system where the drive’s read/write heads are powered down and moved away from the platter assembly when not in use to reduce aerodynamic drag.

The Tests

Seagate’s 1-TB Barracuda ES.2 (with 32-megabyte buffer option) and WD’s 1-TB Caviar GP WD10EACS will be compared against the following drives for the following reasons:

WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate – Begin– The sequential transfer rate attained by the outermost zones in the hard disk. The figure typically represents the highest sustained transfer rate a drive delivers.

WB99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate – End– The sequential transfer rate attained by the innermost zones in the hard disk. The figure typically represents the lowest sustained transfer rate a drive delivers.

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The Barracuda ES.2 weighs in with a 12.7 millisecond (ms) seek time, about a half-millisecond above the drive’s predecessor. Accounting for the drive’s 7200 RPM spindle speed (4.2 ms latency) leaves the unit with a measured access time of 8.5 ms… bravo Seagate, right on the money. The ES.2 joins the ES 750 now as the second consecutive Seagate offering that meets the firm’s claimed specs… a welcome turnaround from a company that used to publish overly optimistic claims that often were missed by its ATA/SATA drives.

We have to take a different approach when assessing the Caviar GP’s seek time since WD does not explicitly give users the drive’s spindle speed. The GP turns in a measured access time of 15.0 ms, a score that lags the 7200-RPM WD7500AAKS by a significant margin. The WD7500AAKS’s measured seek time when accounting for 4.2 ms of 7200 RPM latency is 9.5 ms (missing the firm’s claim by over half a millisecond). Assuming the GP also shares such a seek time, that leaves us with 15 ms [measured access time] minus 9.5 ms [assumed seek time] which equals 5.5 ms, almost exactly the rotational latency associated with a 5400 RPM spindle speed.

Seagate’s latest is the first SATA drive to bust through the 100 MB/sec plateau through achieving 104 MB/sec of transfer in its outermost zones. Rates decay down to a more pedestrian 53.3 MB/sec.

The Caviar GP’s outer-zone score clocks in at 79.8 MB/sec and as a result lags the older, less dense WD7500AAKS by 21%. Assuming similar sector-per-track zone configurations, a 7200 RPM drive would boast a 33% advantage over a 5400 RPM unit. The difference between the GP and the WD7500AAKS is less than that, likely of course due to a density advantage on the GP’s part. Nevertheless, this second low-level diagnostic again suggests a 5400 RPM spindle speed.

WD’s Caviar GP turns in a StorageReview Office DriveMark of 794 I/Os per second (IOps), lagging its predecessor by about 10%.

The Seagate Barracuda ES.2’s showing of 588 IOps builds very incrementally on the score achieved by the ES 750, an almost negligible 2% increase.

In our higher-level, content-creation-oriented High-End DriveMark, both newcomers stumble a bit when compared to previous models. The WD10EACS lags the older WD7500AAKS by almost 13%. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, the Barracuda ES.2 regresses when contrasted with the ES 750, trailing its predecessor by 15%.

The Barracuda ES.2 builds upon the ES 750 with a modest but measurable 6% gain in our replay of FarCry’s disc access. The Caviar GP, on the other hand, trails the WD7500AAKS by 11%.

The Sims 2 places the GP about 15% behind the WD7500AAKS. Seagate’s latest also slips slightly, lagging its forerunner by about 2%.

It is World of Warcraft that places the biggest gap between WD’s two drives. The GP lags the WD7500AAKS by 18% here. Meanwhile, the Barracuda ES.2 regains some form and manages a 13% lead over the ES 750.

The Barracuda ES.2 delivers substantial improvement over the ES 750 when it comes to our multi-user test. While both drives commence with nearly identical results under a linear load, the ES.2 scales significantly better under concurrency to top the chart when it comes to 7200 RPM units. The ES.2’s improvements approach a commendable 40% over the relatively modest ES 750.

The Caviar GP unsurprisingly lags its performance-oriented predecessor by margins of approximately 10%. The gap closes as queue depths hit extremely heavy levels, however.

Startup (Peak) Power Dissipation– The maximum power dissipated by a drive upon initial spin-up. This figure is relevant when a system features a large number of drives. Though most controllers feature logic that can stagger the spin-up of individual drives, peak power dissipation may nonetheless be of concern in very large arrays or in cases where a staggered start is not feasible. Generally speaking, drives hit peak power draw at different times on the 5V and 12V rails. The 12V peak usually occurs in the midst of initial spin-up. The 5V rail, however, usually hits maximum upon actuator initialization.

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WD’s latest turns in an idle sound pressure measurement of just 35.9 dB/A, a score that ties it with the Samsung SpinPoint T166 (a smaller 500-gigabyte not included in this review’s charts… full scores, as always, are available from the SR Performance Database) as the quietest drive we have ever measured. Subjectively speaking, the GP’s noise floor is utterly amazing. It is easily the quietest ever at idle, eerily silent even outside of a case. Seeks are also whisper quiet, significantly lower than all other modern 7200 RPM drives.

The Barracuda ES.2’s measured pressure of 42.0 dB/A places it slightly above the ES 750’s recorded score. Subjectively, however, the ES.2’s idle noise floor is lower than that we perceive from the ES 750, though not as quiet as the Caviar GP. Seeks remain on par with those of the ES 750, noticeable but unobtrusive when grinding away.

At 3.8 watts, the Caviar GP delivers the lowest measured power dissipation by far of any drive that has met Testbed4, a reduction of 54% when contrasted with the WD7500AAKS. Under a full load, the power savings remain with the GP weighing in well under 8 watts… a figure lower than that of any other 3.5″ drive at idle.

When compared to its predecessor, the Barracuda ES.2 shaves one watt off when idle and manages 11.4 watts when fully seeking. The latter represents a 17% improvement, just shy of meeting Seagate’s claim of a 20% difference.

The ES.2 trims about 7 watts off of the ES 750’s peak current draw when spinning up from a cold start, a decent improvement that places Seagate’s newest in the upper echelon when it comes to power-up draw. WD’s drive manages a more modest one watt improvement over the WD7500AAKS.

Reliability The StorageReview.com Reliability Survey aims to amalgamate individual reader experiences with various hard disks into a comprehensive warehouse of information from which meaningful results may be extracted. A multiple-layer filter sifts through collected data, silently omitting questionable results or results from questionable participants. A proprietary analysis engine then processes the qualified dataset. SR presents results to readers through a percentile ranking system. Note that the percentages in bold above may change as more information continues to be collected and analyzed. For more information, to input your experience with these and/or other drives, and to view comprehensive results, please visit the SR Drive Reliability Survey. Conclusion When it comes to sheer single-user performance, the newest offerings from Seagate and Western Digital cannot touch Hitachi’s mighty Deskstar 7K1000. Those seeking the ultimate in capacity and speed remain with the 7K1000 as their only choice. Of course, that said, the newcomers reviewed here approach their respective manufacturer’s arrival at the one terabyte mark with goals that differ from Hitachi and from each other. Seagate Barracuda ES.2 Perhaps most surprising when it comes to the ES.2 is the relative lack of single-user performance improvements over the Barracuda ES 750. The newer drive features a 32 MB buffer, only the second drive to do so. While Seagate has never been about bleeding-edge desktop performance, many assumed that a doubling in buffer size would, through brute force, yield some significant performance gains. This is not the case when it comes to the ES.2 and non-server speed. Under multi-user loads, however, the story changes entirely. In the past, Seagate’s ATA and SATA offerings have been middling performers with drives from firms such as Western Digital and the old Maxtor aggressively seizing the lead when it came to loads featuring significant amounts of concurrency. The ES.2, however, performs a laudable about-face and delivers the best scores we have yet seen from a 7200 RPM drive. What this means for the Barracuda 7200.11 (a virtually identical drive marketed to consumers rather than the enterprise) is unclear, but with the ES.2, Seagate has succeeded in its goal of offering a server-oriented terabyte drive that offers top-notch performance while trimming power draw to lower levels. WD Caviar GP WD10EACS The Caviar GP stands as an iconoclast when compared with the rest of the SATA field. 5400 RPM drives went out of vogue several years ago yet the advantages of a lower spindle speed have possibly become more important than ever before in this age of environmental awareness. As a result, the firm’s desire to shy away from publishing traditional specs is understandable. Citing “IntelliPower” rather than “lower RPM” makes sense from a marketing standpoint given the drive’s goal: power consumption in a class of its own without sacrificing performance. Has it succeeded? WD’s latest trails the older 750 GB Caviar WD7500AAKS by margins of 11%-17% when it comes to StorageReview’s single-user performance tests. Given that WD has traditionally been a firm that pushed the envelope when it comes to the speed that enthusiasts crave, the GP falling short of a speed-oriented design is unsurprising and perhaps inevitable. Of course, what is considered “fast” and “slow” can be relative. After all, the Caviar GP trounces the 7200 RPM, 32-megabyte buffer Barracuda ES.2 in single-user tests. The GP does easily draw the least amount of power of any 3.5″ drive we’ve ever tested… less than 1/2 of any other unit when idle. Even under a full seek, the GP enjoys an advantage of over 30% over the typical 7200 RPM SATA drive. In what almost seems like an ancillary effect, the GP also happens to be the quietest drive we have ever measured and heard here at SR. Its miniscule power dissipation also translates into far less need for cooling which yields yet more acoustic benefit. Especially when taken in the context of arrays featuring many drives that run 24×7, lower cost of operation also becomes significant. So, those seeking the ultimate in speed and those inclined to judge solely by low-level specifications probably will not find the Caviar GP on their short list. However, those who have always found that concentrating on power, heat, and noise issues always meant sacrificing on high capacities and/or competitive performance may just find their soul mate in WD’s GreenPower drive.   Review Discussion 0 comment 0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail storagereview previous post Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 next post 5400 RPM & Speed: Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K250 and WD’s Scorpio WD3200BEVT Home Storage Reviews Consumer Reviews Enterprise Reviews SR Merch Leaderboard Storage Reference Guide About SR StorageReview.com Sweepstakes Rules and Regulations Copyright © 1998-2024 Flying Pig Ventures, LLC Cincinnati, Ohio. All rights reserved.