Seagate supply 7,200RPM 3TB Barracuda XT internal hard drive

We've been examination about Seagate's plans to offer a problem 3TB hard drive since May of last year, but despite promises of a 2010 launch and the release of similarly large HDDs from companies like Western Digital and Hitachi, we're only now seeing the 3TB Barracuda XT shipping all on its own. We won't claim to have a clarification for the postpone, but it's possible that the company's proprietary software which breaks the 2.1TB legacy OS barrier and enables this guy to function within Windows XP could have something to do with it. It might be tardy to the party, but the new Barracuda can definitely hold its own when stacked against the competition it spins at 7,200RPM, touts a 64MB cache, and plays nice with the 6Gbps SATA interface. It isn’t the only 3TB fish in the sea, but at $280, it's definitely not dead in the water.

Super Talent launches 500GB USB 3.0 Storage Pod, only at $99

Seeing for a little zip in your next portable hard disc drive? Look no further than Super Talent's latest, the slim USB 3.0 Storage Pod. As you've likely mended together by now, that ultra slim black box contains a 500GB hard drive and the proper circuitry to transfer files using Super Speed USB or right around ten times faster than USB 2.0. It's completely bus-powered; too, need not to carry an AC adapter. The company claims that it'll pass along files at up to 90MB/sec and if you're already sold, you can fetch one yourself next month. 

Western Digital launched 2.5TB and 3TB internal hard disc drives in India

Western Digital has launched 2.5TB and 3TB HDD versions of the WD Caviar Green in India, priced at Rs. 8,300 and Rs. 10,700 respectively. The two drives feature the WD's Green Power Technology, which will apparently reduce power consumption, lowers operating temperatures, increase reliability, and decrease acoustical noise. 

Designed as "next-generation PC storage" for 64-bit operating systems, the WD Caviar Green 2.5TB and 3TB hard disc drives can also be used as secondary external storage in "legacy 32-bit systems”. The drives come bundled with an Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which seemingly enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives, and solve the previous 2.19 TB drive barrier, on Windows 7 and Vista operating systems.

More information can be found on Western Digital website.

Western Digital launched My Book Live home network drive

Western Digital's My Book Live home network drive sorts high-speed transfers, wireless backup, streaming to TV, and remote access.

Digital storage powerhouse Western Digital has declared the summary of the My Book Live Home Network Drive, which is considered to deliver customers with hassle-free centralized home media storage. The network drive claims transfer speeds up to 100 MBps, which the company statements is double as fast as other network drives in its class.



“Network attached storage presents tremendous opportunity for families wishing to centralize all of their digital content and enjoy it on computers, TVs, and smartphones around their home and outside,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of advertising for WD’s branded products group.



The My Book Live has a built-in media server that makes for cool and modest access to videos, music, and images on any Mac or PC connected to the home network. Users can also stream digital media to a television through a DLNA-certified multimedia device, play music and video from the drive in iTunes, and view digital photos on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with an included WD Photos application.

The My Book Live allows wireless automatic backup for both Macs and PCs. WD Smartwave for Windows makes backing up from your PC a snap and the drive is also compatible with Apple Time Machine. Users can access and share their data over the Internet with WD’s free remote access technology.

The WD My Book Live Home Network Drive comes with a limited 3-year warranty and is available in 1TB ($169.99) and 2TB ($229.99) capacities. It is now available online and in select US retailers.

1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex External HDD WIth High-Speed USB 3.0

One of the market leaders for memorystorage products, Seagate has expanded its highly-popular FreeAgent GoFlex ultra-portable drive portfolio with the launch of new high-capacity 1.5terabyte Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external hard drive, which the company claims as the world’s first 1.5TB 2.5-inch portable HDD. In addition to the record-breaking storage capacity, the 1.5TB FreeAgent GoFlex also features a high-speed USB 3.0 connectivity that performs up to 10x faster than USB 2.0, capable of storing up to 60 high-definition movies, 750 games, thousands of photos or tens of thousands hours of music with just a single compact device.

“Today’s announcement is a ‘triple-crown’ of consumer technology—packaging record breaking capacity, blazingly fast USB 3.0 connectivity and the bonus of movie entertainment—making the 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive an unprecedented and innovative solution,” commented Darcy Clarkson, vice president of Global Retail Sales and Marketing at Seagate. “Bringing this solution to market on the heels of our 3TB GoFlex Desk drive and the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive is proof of Seagate’s continuing technology leadership and tradition of setting storage industry milestones.”

The new 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex ultra-portable HDD that pre-loaded with a blockbuster Paramount film (Star Trek) and comes with a high-speed USB 3.0 adapter is now available for around $250, fully compatible with both Windows and Mac computers.

LaCie MosKeyto Cuts USB Thumb Drives Down to Size

LaCie's new MosKeyto is a USB drive offering 4 to 16 GB of storage...and is just over 0.75-inch long and weighs just 10 grams.

Peripheral and accessory maker LaCie is looking to re-invent the USB thumb drive with its new MosKeyto, a tiny USB storage device that measures just over 0.75 of an inch long—not much more than a USB connector itself—and weird just 10 grams. The idea is that the MosKeyto is tiny and innocuous—and since it sits flush against many devices, can even be left in a USB port when packing up a notebook computer or other device.

Of course, in the ever-getting-misplaced world of USB thumb drives, the MosKeyto might be too little, too late for some users.

“While the MosKeyto has resemblance to a bug, with its small size and big bytes, this USB key is far from pesky,” said Lacie’s accessories product manager Alexis Kobassian, in a statement. “It provides high capacities in a low-profile connector, allowing you to insert it into your notebook and forget it. And with its low cost/gigabyte price, you can forget about that, too.”

The MosKeyto comes with a nylon stray to latch onto a keyring, which also keeps track of a plastic cap that protects the USB connector. The MosKeyto supports USB 2.0 connections, and will be available in 4, 8, and 16 GB capacities starting in mid-September; the 4 GB version is priced at just $17.99, while the 8 GB version will go for $27.99. The MosKeytos also come with 4 GB of online storage from Wuala—of course, Wuala also offers 1 GB of online storage for free.

Apacer AC203 external HDD 500GB - sleek, trendy and portable [Review]

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is reasonably sleek and stylish. It provides good value for money and at Rs. 4,250 makes a decent buy.

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is sleek and stylish. The body contours are delicately lined with a rubberised strip - adding nice grip, while making it easy on the eye.

The Apacer AC203 features an intuitive single click backup button within the PCClone EX Lite software that comes preinstalled on the drive, enabling an easy backup of important data to a user specified folder on the drive. The backup software provides a user-friendly graphical interface that allows you to conveniently configure system backup and personal files.

The Apacer AC203 weighs 143g and is just 14mm thick. It is available in three colours namely: Ruby Red, Graphite Black and Snow White.

Performance:

We subjected the Apacer AC203 external hard drive to various synthetic benchmark tests and real-world tests including: HD Tach 3.0.1.0, SiSoft Sandra 2010, 8GB single file/assorted file read & write test and Photoshop CS2 1GB file upload test. It yielded very decent scores in the HD Tach test and modest scores in the SiSoft Sandra 2010 test. Although, it showcased faster read times in the 8GB sequential and assorted file tests with a score of 23.57 seconds and 24.02 seconds; it appeared considerably slower in the 8GB sequential and assorted write tests with a score of 30.14 seconds and 30.33 seconds respectively. However, it delivered impressive performance in the Adobe Photoshop CS2 test, with a load time of just 39 secs. Overall, the Apacer AC203 delivered quite satisfactory results across all the performance tests.

Verdict:

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is a sleek, stylish and user-friendly product in the 2.5-inch external hard drive segment. It provides good value for money with an intuitive data-backup software interface (PCClone EX Lite), that is designed to take both system and personal file backup with a single click of a mouse button. Delivering a decent performance at an affordable price of Rs. 4250 (taxes extra), it offers a good bang for the buck!

 Specifications: 2.5-inch SATA HDD 500GB; USB 2.0 interface; Rotational speed up to 5400RPM; 8MB cache; PCClone EX Lite data backup software; OS support: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.3 or higher;

Ratings:Features: 7.5

Build Quality: 7

Performance: 6.5

Value for Money: 7.5

Overall: 7

Contact and Price details:Company Name: Apacer Technologies Pvt Ltd

Contact no: +91 80 4152 9061/62/63

E-mail: shiva_neelangi@apacer.com

Website: http://www.apacer.com

Price: Rs. 4,250

You could view the performance results and detailed list of specifications below.

Brand	Apacer
Model Name	-
Model Number	AC203
Price (Rs)	Rs. 4, 250
Features
HDD capacity (GB)	500
HDD Interface	SATA
Device Interface	USB 2.0
Number of Platters	-
Rotational Speed (RPM)	5400
Buffer Size (MB)	8
Performance
Synthetic Tests
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 (8 MB file)
Average Read (MBps)	28.7
Average Write (MBps)	24.6
CPU Utilisation % (correction)	9 (+/- 2%)
Random Access Time (ms)	16.7
Read Burst Speed (MBps)	34.1
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 (32 MB file)
Average Read (MBps)	28.6
Average Write (MBps)	24.6
CPU Utilisation (%)	9 (+/- 2%)
Random Access Time (ms)	16.8
Read Burst Speed (MBps)	34.4
SiSoft Sandra 2010
Drive Index, Read (MBps)	28.14
Access Time, read (ms)	12.69
Drive Index, Write (MBps)	24.14
Access time, write (ms)	4.7
Real World Tests
File Write 8 GB Single File (MB/s)	23.57
File Write Test Assorted 8 GB File (MB/s)	24.02
Read Test Single 8 GB File (MB/s)	30.14
Read Test Assorted 8 GB File (MB/s)	30.33
PhotoShop CS2 (1 GB File, in seconds)	39
	.

 

Apacer AC203 external HDD 500GB - sleek, trendy and portable [Review]

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is reasonably sleek and stylish. It provides good value for money and at Rs. 4,250 makes a decent buy.

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is sleek and stylish. The body contours are delicately lined with a rubberised strip - adding nice grip, while making it easy on the eye.

The Apacer AC203 features an intuitive single click backup button within the PCClone EX Lite software that comes preinstalled on the drive, enabling an easy backup of important data to a user specified folder on the drive. The backup software provides a user-friendly graphical interface that allows you to conveniently configure system backup and personal files.

The Apacer AC203 weighs 143g and is just 14mm thick. It is available in three colours namely: Ruby Red, Graphite Black and Snow White.

Performance:

We subjected the Apacer AC203 external hard drive to various synthetic benchmark tests and real-world tests including: HD Tach 3.0.1.0, SiSoft Sandra 2010, 8GB single file/assorted file read & write test and Photoshop CS2 1GB file upload test. It yielded very decent scores in the HD Tach test and modest scores in the SiSoft Sandra 2010 test. Although, it showcased faster read times in the 8GB sequential and assorted file tests with a score of 23.57 seconds and 24.02 seconds; it appeared considerably slower in the 8GB sequential and assorted write tests with a score of 30.14 seconds and 30.33 seconds respectively. However, it delivered impressive performance in the Adobe Photoshop CS2 test, with a load time of just 39 secs. Overall, the Apacer AC203 delivered quite satisfactory results across all the performance tests.

Verdict:

The Apacer AC203 external hard drive is a sleek, stylish and user-friendly product in the 2.5-inch external hard drive segment. It provides good value for money with an intuitive data-backup software interface (PCClone EX Lite), that is designed to take both system and personal file backup with a single click of a mouse button. Delivering a decent performance at an affordable price of Rs. 4250 (taxes extra), it offers a good bang for the buck!

 Specifications: 2.5-inch SATA HDD 500GB; USB 2.0 interface; Rotational speed up to 5400RPM; 8MB cache; PCClone EX Lite data backup software; OS support: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X 10.3 or higher;

Ratings:Features: 7.5

Build Quality: 7

Performance: 6.5

Value for Money: 7.5

Overall: 7

Contact and Price details:Company Name: Apacer Technologies Pvt Ltd

Contact no: +91 80 4152 9061/62/63

E-mail: shiva_neelangi@apacer.com

Website: http://www.apacer.com

Price: Rs. 4,250

You could view the performance results and detailed list of specifications below.

Brand	Apacer
Model Name	-
Model Number	AC203
Price (Rs)	Rs. 4, 250
Features
HDD capacity (GB)	500
HDD Interface	SATA
Device Interface	USB 2.0
Number of Platters	-
Rotational Speed (RPM)	5400
Buffer Size (MB)	8
Performance
Synthetic Tests
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 (8 MB file)
Average Read (MBps)	28.7
Average Write (MBps)	24.6
CPU Utilisation % (correction)	9 (+/- 2%)
Random Access Time (ms)	16.7
Read Burst Speed (MBps)	34.1
HD Tach 3.0.1.0 (32 MB file)
Average Read (MBps)	28.6
Average Write (MBps)	24.6
CPU Utilisation (%)	9 (+/- 2%)
Random Access Time (ms)	16.8
Read Burst Speed (MBps)	34.4
SiSoft Sandra 2010
Drive Index, Read (MBps)	28.14
Access Time, read (ms)	12.69
Drive Index, Write (MBps)	24.14
Access time, write (ms)	4.7
Real World Tests
File Write 8 GB Single File (MB/s)	23.57
File Write Test Assorted 8 GB File (MB/s)	24.02
Read Test Single 8 GB File (MB/s)	30.14
Read Test Assorted 8 GB File (MB/s)	30.33
PhotoShop CS2 (1 GB File, in seconds)	39
	.

Iomega eGo USB 3.0 Review

We review Iomega's eGo portable hard drive with USB 3.0 which boosts transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB 2.0.

Introduction

USB 3.0 has arrived, and with it, a whole new batch of drives designed to let you push around those Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints, and Blu-ray rips of Pulp Fiction, even faster. While most USB 3.0 drives still command a premium, Iomega will be one of the first to drop the USB 2.0 entirely and fold USB 3.0 into all of its drives – without increasing prices – later this fall. We put the new eGo through its paces to see whether the upgrade is worth the wait.

Features and Design

Iomega hasn’t bothered to give the eGo a facelift to reflect its newfound speed, but that’s quite alright with us. The eGo USB 3.0 remains one of the slimmer drives on the market at just 0.625 inches thick, and its similar shape will allow you to use it with old eGo accessories, like the carrying case. At the moment, opting for USB 3.0 will limit you to only charcoal color, but that will change in October when USB 3.0 begins migrating over to even more drives and the prices drop to current USB 2.0 levels. For the record, charcoal has a clean, professional air, and if the drive enclosures weren’t plastic, the slippery glossy layered on top could almost pass for automotive-grade clear coat.

The only real clue you’re dealing with a new drive: Where a standard mini-USB jack used to lie, you’ll now find a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connector, a new configuration that looks a bit like a long, sideways letter B. The extra pins here translate to better performance, but conveniently, that B shape also breaks it into connector into two ports, one of which you can use with old-style microUSB cables. Obviously, you won’t reap the benefits of full USB 3.0 speed, you’ll be thankful for it when you need to pull files off in a jam.

Testing and Performance

Unless you just cracked your computer out of its foam packing a few months ago – or built it yourself with one of the few USB 3.0-capable motherboards out there – chances are, you don’t have USB 3.0 onboard. We tested with a LaCie USB 3.0 PCI Express card, but just about any USB 3.0 adapter should provide similar performance. At the moment, they all use the same NEC chips.

To provide a performance baseline, we ran the eGo through the wringer at USB 2.0 speeds. It turned in write speeds of 23.67 MB/s and read speeds of 25.86 MB/s – a marked improvement over the last USB 2.0 eGo we reviewed, but still not as fast as one of our favorite USB 2.0 drives, LaCie’s tiny Rikiki, which hit speeds of 30.45 MB/s and 29.18 MB/s, respectively.

Switch over to USB 3.0, and things heat up. While claims of performance “10 times faster than USB 2.0” are sheer marketing hype, we found that you can expect an honest doubling of speed in real-life performance. We hit average write speeds of 49.35 MB/s and read speeds of 50.0 MB/s. At that speed, an entire 4.19GB DVD rip of The Empire Strikes Back transferred to the drive in just one minute, 24.9 seconds. You could hypothetically fill the drive to its entire 500GB capacity in two hours, 49 minutes.

While USB 3.0 performance is certainly impressive, it’s worth noting that Iomega’s FireWire 800 eGo still has it beat. That model hit 57.39 MB/s write speeds and 53.93 MB/s read speeds in the same transfer tests, just barely edging out the USB 3.0 model for speed supremacy.

Conclusion

Iomega’s eGo USB 3.0 portable drive maintains the same winning look and feel as previous iterations while essentially doubling transfer speeds. The 500GB version of the drive still commands a $20 price premium over the (list price) USB 2.0 version, but the USB 3.0 version will be a no brainer when Iomega switches the rest of the eGo line to USB 3.0, without increasing price, in October.

Highs:

• Vastly improved transfer speeds


• Sleek, portable design


• Affordable (more so after October price drop)


• Backward compatible with microUSB cables

Lows:

• Not the speediest competitor in USB 2.0 mode

ioSafe SoloPRO Rugged External HDD With USB 3.0 Or eSATA Interface

ioSafe has launched its new ioSafe SoloPRO rugged (waterproof and fireproof) external harddrive (HDD), which available in high-speed USB 3.0 and eSATA/USB 2.0 models, featuring FloSafe active airflow cooling technologyaimed for an optimal operating temperature.

“The new SoloPRO provides industry-leading performance and physical securityas well as plug-and-play simplicity,” commented Robb Moore, CEO for ioSafe. “Additionally, the new interfaces and upgraded Data Recovery Services make the SoloPRO a logical choice for disaster protection in home office and business environments.”

ioSafe SoloPRO external hard drive that available in 3 variants of memory capacities – 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB, are priced at $249.99, $319.99 and $419.99, respectively.

Toshiba makes hard drive capacity breakthrough

Toshiba is to make an announcement later today about a data storage breakthrough, which is set to give users significantly higher capacity hard drives.

The company has apparently made significant headway with research of magnetic storage bit-patterened media, which is set to be the technology behind the hard drives of the future, making up for the limitations of current hard drives, which use dated technology that has reached its limit for capacity growth.

Current hard drives use magnetic material spread across the disk surface, with data stored over a large area. Bit-patterned technology, however, allows for storage of data within a single magnetic bit – and there can be thousands of them upon a single disk.
Toshiba said that it has managed to produce a sample which organises the bits in a pattern of rows, which is vital for identifying the location of specific data. Without this ability the technology might have greater capacity, but it would be impossible to sort through.

While the technology is still in the development stage, it should increase hard drive space by roughly 400 percent. Current technology has a density of 541 gigabits per square inch, but the bit-patterned media has a density of around 2.5 terabits per square inch, according to InfoWorld.

Toshiba is set to formally announce the breakthrough today at the Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego. It expects the first hard drives to use the technology will be out by 2013.

Infinitec's Infinite USB Memory Drive finally up for pre-order, priced at $129

Dubai-based Infinitec has finally overcome ‘industry delays’, and has put its much-awaited Infinite USB Memory Drive, or IUM, up for pre-order. Priced at $129 with shipping starting at the end of the month, on August 31, the IUM Drive promises to offer unheard of wireless storage and networking possibilities in the near future.



The delay did the IUM Drive some good though, as it now sports the dual-WiFi feature, which allows a laptop to connect both to a WiFi network as well as the IUM’s ad-hoc wireless network, simultaneously.



In case you haven’t heard of the Infinite USB Memory Drive before, you can check out our previous comprehensive coverage of the device here, or you can check out Infinitec’s just-released video explanation of the IUM below:

Enterprise Storage: Two 2.5" 600 GB Hard Drives Tested

The latest 2.5” hard drive generation ships with SAS 6Gb/s and delivers up to 600 GB of storage space, narrowing the gap with much larger 3.5" disks. Today we're comparing the latest 2.5" drives from Seagate and Toshiba to see if they're faster, too.
Seagate’s Savvio was the first 2.5” hard drive product for enterprise applications. Today, you can get 2.5” SAS drives from Hitachi, Seagate, and Toshiba, but only Seagate and Toshiba ship the latest 600 GB, 10 000 RPM models for mainstream enterprise applications.

Hard Drives? Aren’t SSDs Better?

Hard drives will remain with us for many years, not just because of higher capacities and certainly not because of stellar performance. A decent SSD can easily overtake most hard drives. However, performance is only one of several requirements for enterprise storage, and there are many reasons to favor hard drives over SSDs.

First and foremost, there still are no long term studies on the reliability of SSDs. While we doubt that reliability issues will suddenly plague SSDs, individual cells will likely start failing as wear leveling retreads the same memory cells over and over. The result would be somewhat erratic performance, making it difficult to manage high-availability solutions. Performance variance is already an issue because most SSD performance isn’t 100% predictable. This is not the case for hard drives. But as long as operating parameters remain stable, performance is predictable. Administrators should plan to account for performance variances with oversized SSD arrays.

Then there's the issue of validation. While SSDs could take over many tasks from hard drives (high-capacity applications excepted), many products haven't been validated for specific environments, which means they can't be used. We already mentioned possible performance variances, but other issues, such as short product cycles and missing SAS interface support, don’t help. Most enterprise managers prefer to play things safe.

This is where SAS hard drives like the Seagate Savvio 10K.4 and Toshiba’s MBF-series fit in. Both deliver solid, predictable performance based on SAS 6Gb/s interfaces that enable easy deployment and management in standardized storage solutions. We wanted to know which drive is the better option from a performance standpoint.

The first Savvio drive arrived in 2004, and it was still based on an Ultra320 SCSI interface. At that time, the 10 000 RPM Savvio provided as much throughput as notebook hard drives did two years ago. The second-generation Savvio 10K.2 and the first 15K.1 were already based on SAS at 3 Gb/s. The Savvio 15K.1 at 15 000 RPM in 2007 was good enough to receive our editor’s choice award. Only last year, we tested the Savvio 10K.3 (10 000 RPM) and 15K.2 (15 000 RPM) in a large enterprise hard drive roundup. Both of these drives were among the first enterprise products that implemented the faster SAS 6Gb/s interface. The Savvio 10K.3 was great at delivering high efficiency, while the 15K.2 dominated our I/O benchmarks. It's time to look at the latest Savvio offering, especially since fresh competition has arrived.

The Savvio 10K.4 is Seagate's forth generation, and if you realize that it took six years for four product updates, you see that the enterprise market is much more conservative than the mobile and desktop segments, where new products are launched once or twice each year. This latest Savvio spins at 10 000 RPM and is available at 450 GB and 600 GB capacities. Both drives utilize three platters to reach their capacity. Since the 450 GB model does not take advantage of the full recording area on each of its platters, the drive can deliver slightly improved access time and I/O results.

Both drives come with SATA 6Gb/s interfaces and 16 MB of cache memory. Seagate still offers a Fibre Channel version (4 Gb/s), and there are SAS models with built-in encryption (TCG-compliant controller required). Seagate boasts that the Savvio 10K.4 is the first enterprise drive to deliver two million hours MTBF (mean-time between failure). This is at least 20% more than usual in this field.

The drive remains relatively cool, literally, with a surface temperature of 60°C after 30 minutes of intensive operation. However, the Toshiba drive runs cooler. We measured an impressive peak throughput of more than 140 MB/s. But again, Toshiba comes out slightly on top.

Toshiba has been very active recently, especially since the takeover of Fujitsu’s hard drive business. The overlap in the 2.5” notebook space is probably less significant than the fact that Fujitsu’s enterprise drives were a strong asset. Fortunately for Toshiba, the results appear profitable, as the latest mainstream enterprise 2.5” hard drive, the MBF2600RC, delivers very solid performance.

The Toshiba drive has a specification list similar to Seagate's model: 10 000 RPM spindle speed (10 025 to be precise), 16 MB of cache memory, and a 6 Gb/s SAS interface. Toshiba offers the same 450 GB and 600 GB capacities, but you can also opt for 300 GB. The latter runs two, instead of three platters, which should decrease power consumption.

We looked at the 600 GB drive. An excellent 3.5 W idle power comes courtesy of Toshiba's enhanced power condition state. This technology dynamically reduces spindle speed when the drive is not in use. Our active idle test requires the drive to be instantly available, but since there is no noticeable delay upon access, we can’t say anything negative about this feature. This is probably why the drive runs as cool as it does. A 54°C (rather than 60°C) surface temperature is quite a difference, and it's mirrored by the low power consumption numbers at maximum throughput, 1080p video playback, and workstation I/O.

A quick look at the benchmark results shows us that aggressive power savings don’t come at the expense of performance, although this isn’t the fastest 2.5”, 10 000 RPM enterprise drive across the board. The MBF2600RC delivers the best throughput of all comparable drives, and it delivers better I/O performance than the Savvio 10K.4. This is because Seagate apparently hasn’t optimized the latest Savvio drive for I/O performance at all. I/O numbers are still higher on older Savvio 10K drives and the Fujitsu 300 GB 2.5” MDB2300RC. In the end, the low power consumption paired with strong performance ensures that Toshiba’s 600 GB drive delivers great power efficiency.

We use PCMark Vantage test less for everyday applicability and more for the sake of looking at possible performance differences due to varying workload types.

Power Consumption

Idle power is radically low on the new Toshiba MBF2600RC drive because the spindle slows down when the drive is idle. Otherwise, it wouldn't turn in results as conservative as it's turning in. Seagate looks worse, though that's not really true. The new Savvio 10K.4 still delivers very low idle power consumption compared to other 2.5” enterprise hard drives.

Delivering data at peak throughput takes a bit more power on the Seagate drive than on Toshiba’s product. This is disappointing, as the last Savvio 10K generations did better.

The 1080p video playback test isn't a typical enterprise workload, but it shows how much power is required if the drives have to deliver a continuous, limited stream of data. In this case, Toshiba again does better.

Power consumption at high workstation I/O activity triggers the highest power consumption numbers on the Toshiba drive. Seagate requires the same power here.

Efficiency

Performance per watt for streaming read workloads looks extremely good on the new Toshiba drive. It delivers high throughput, while maintaining relatively low power consumption.

Workstation efficiency is also better on the Toshiba drive because of its higher performance paired with equivalent power consumption relative to the Savvio 10K.4. However, other drives deliver better power efficiency in I/O-intensive workloads.

Although the wheels don’t turn as quickly in the enterprise space as they do for notebook and desktop class products, there's still significant progress from one product generation to the next. Seagate and Toshiba beat Hitachi to the 600 GB capacity point on 2.5” drives, and both have characteristics that qualify them for different scenarios.

First, let’s talk about performance. Neither drive competes well with other enterprise hard drives when it comes to I/O performance. SSDs aside, 15 000 RPM drives are much faster. However, we must advise against purchasing the Savvio 10K.4 if your applications involve much I/O activity. Using the default firmware, the Seagate drive shows hardly any optimization for I/O-intensive workloads. The Toshiba drive isn’t a racer either, but its I/O results are acceptable.

On throughput and application performance, the clear winner is Toshiba’s MBF2600RC. It delivers better results in most of our benchmarks. At the same time, the drive’s power consumption is well below the Savvio 10K.4's numbers. This isn't only because of the Toshiba drive’s variable spindle speed at idle, but the drive is slightly lower on power overall. This places Toshiba on top when it comes to power efficiency, as well. The drive wins our throughput and I/O performance per watt testing.

Seagate still has an ace up its sleeve, althoguh it's a card that might not be perceived as an ace for mainstream users. While both Seagate and Toshiba provide the common five-year warranty, Seagate’s Savvio 10K.4 is the first drive to be rated at two million hours MTBF. Enterprise customers that need to deploy hundreds of hard drives may throw all of our performance findings overboard and go with the product delivering the highest statistical reliability.

Seagate releases its Solid State Hybrid Drive, the Momentus XT, for Rs. 6,800

Seagate today officially announced the release of ground breaking Solid State Hybrid Drive technology based on Adaptive Memory, which learns and optimizes the drive’s performance for each user by moving frequently used information into the flash memory for faster access. It simultaneously unveiled the Momentus XT, the world’s fastest 2.5-inch laptop PC hard drive to distribution channels, VARs and system builders in India. The Momentus XT reportedly combines the performance of both a SSD (Solid State Drive) & hard disk drive, delivering strong performance across both random and sequential data access, at lower costs than SSD. The Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive is claimed to boot up to 100 percent faster than traditional 5400RPM drives, the mainstream hard disks for laptop PCs, and sets new benchmarks for real-world system performance for laptops and gaming systems. Adaptive Memory technology reportedly uses intelligent algorithms designed to learn and adapt to the users’ most demanding needs and thereby delivering custom tailored performance for every individual user.

At the technology briefing, held to demonstrate the ground breaking new drive technology, Rajesh Khurana, Seagate Country Manager for India and SAARC had this to say, “We see the Momentus XT drive as a game changer, a product heralding a new generation of hard drives that combine SSD and HDD capabilities so that laptop users don’t have to make trade-offs on speed, cost or capacity. The feedback we’ve received from customers, industry experts and early reviews worldwide has been overwhelmingly positive, and Seagate will continue to drive innovation that provides more value and a better computing experience to consumers.”

Today’s high-performance SSDs for mobile computing are known to cost almost 10 times more than hard disk drives of the same capacity, with the price of a 250GB SSD outstripping even the cost of many laptop PCs. As a result, most consumers and system builders are not in a position to bear or pay the staggering price, as a compromise for the greater speed and silent operation of SSDs. Additionally, SSDs claim to offer fewer capacity options than hard disk drives.

The Momentus XT drive is said to be a “best-of-both-worlds” solution that combines a 7200RPM spin speed, 4GB of solid state memory and Seagate’s Adaptive Memory technology to deliver unsurpassed hard drive performance at the given price point.

The Momentus XT drive purportedly installs easily as a traditional 9.5mm-high notebook drive for new systems or laptop upgrades. It is also claimed that unlike earlier hybrid drives, it operates independently of the operating system & the motherboard chipset. The Momentus XT drive is reportedly shipping in capacities of 250GB, 320GB and 500GB at their MSRPs of Rs 6,800, Rs 7,400 and Rs 8,100 respectively in India.

Two 2TB Hard Drives For Storage Applications, Reviewed

Samsung and Seagate are each offering new high-capacity drives that strive to cram tons of data into a 3.5" form factor. Today's battle is the eco-friendly Spinpoint against the nearline Constellation, low power against business-class. Which one is best?

Samsung may be the challenger and Seagate the 800-pound incumbent, but both companies are very serious about capturing share in the high-capacity storage market. Both have new products and both adjusted their branding to do justice to this particular segment. Samsung’s drive is the first 2TB offering, and Seagate has just revamped and renamed its 2TB product. Which product is better?

Disregarding Market Segments Today

The 3.5“ hard drive market is split into various segments, but these are straightforward. Basically, there are drives designed to deliver maximum performance at 7,200 RPM, and there are products that target high capacity with low power. Both appear in consumer and business segments, as do our two candidates. Samsung’s Spinpoint F3EG is a low-power, high-capacity consumer drive. The Constellation ES is a high-speed business drive. We deliberately decided to disregard market segments for this review, because both drives are well-suited for network storage in home or small business environments.

Quo Vadis, Hard Drive?

The first 2TB hard drive to market was Western Digital’s Caviar Green WD20EADS, a low-power unit with four platters. It took several months until WD and its competitors delivered 2TB performance drives. Samsung's Spinpoint F3EG is the latecomer, as Samsung previously lacked a 2TB model.

All other hard drive makers have reworked their 2TB offerings, increasing storage density, performance, and efficiency. Two terabytes remain the maximum you can get on a single hard drive, and we assume this will stay true until the second half of this year. Therefore, enthusiasts had better make sure they're choosing the right type of 2TB drive for their needs.

7,200 RPM or 5,400 RPM?

This question can be answered rather quickly for primary boot drives. If you're going to run only a single hard drive, it makes sense to pick the fastest model your budget can afford, and that usually means a drive that spins at 7,200 RPM. If you can afford a fast hard drive or an even faster SSD to use as a boot drive, you can instead get away with an efficient (slower-spinning) high-capacity drive for data storage. The same applies to external hard drives. Go with 5,400 RPM if you mainly need to store, back up, and archive files.

In this review, we look at Samsung’s new Spinpoint F3EG, which is supposed to be biased toward power efficiency, rather than performance. The second drive is Seagate's Constellation ES, a performance drive available in SATA 3Gb/s or SAS 6Gb/s that aims at business scenarios. Which hard drive concept is best for your storage needs?

The EG suffix on Samsung hard drives stands for EcoGreen, and it clarifies pretty quickly what the drive was designed to do. The question always remains, though: does power-friendly also mean great performance per watt efficiency? We’re about to find out.

This latest product excels at blending high capacity with low power consumption. We reviewed the 2TB top model, but you could also get the 1.5TB version. The limited variety in capacity points underlines that this product was designed only for highest capacity storage applications. We should add that this is Samsung’s first 2TB hard drive, and it's also the company's first four-platter hard drive. The manufacturer likes to boast that it implements high capacity at a low platter count (Samsung was first to realize 1TB on three platters), but apparently times have changed.

The drive still utilizes a SATA 3Gb/s interface. Running a 6Gb/s transfer speed won't make any difference, since the drive is limited by its physical performance in moving data from and onto the medium. We measured an encouraging maximum read transfer speed of 115 MB/s. The average and minimum throughput, however, is a bit disappointing. So are access time and I/O performance. Obviously, the drive was designed to be low on power, but unfortunately, this also thwarts all performance ambitions with the exception of throughput. Knowing the performance results in PCMark Vantage, we can only recommend against utilizing this model as a system drive.

On the power consumption side, we measured idle power at 4.1W, which isn’t an all-time low record by any stretch, but it is a bit less than the idle power of the Barracuda LP, another low-power drive with four platters. However, WD’s RE4 drive turned in superior power results. Power consumption at defined workloads, such as 1080p video playback or workstation I/O activity, is low, but not amazingly so.

The F3EG offers decent throughput performance and low power consumption, and it showed extremely low surface temperatures during operation. Unfortunately, it has disappointing application performance and only average power efficiency. It's suitable for storage applications like backup and archiving, but the drive is not a good choice for applications that require concurrent activity.

What’s considered high-end on the desktop is often low-end for business applications. The Constellation is a new business product line based on the same foundation as the Barracuda XT. Therefore, the technical specifications don’t come as a surprise. The Constellation ES is available at up to 2TB with either SAS 6Gb/s or SATA 3Gb/s interfaces.

Capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB are available with both interfaces, but we found some differences in cache capacity. All SAS drives utilize 16MB of on-drive cache while the SATA models have different buffer sizes. You'll find 32MB in the 500GB and 1TB capacities, while the 2TB is backed up by 64MB cache, very much like the Barracuda XT. However, the latter is specified at a MTBF of 750,000 hours while the Constellation ES specifies 1.2 million hours.

The SATA models are clearly lower on power consumption than the SAS models, probably because of the different controllers, as well as the increased 6Gb/s link speed on SAS. The performance results of the Constellation ES are roughly similar to the Barracuda XT. This product is a great example to show what minor hardware modifications, firmware tweaks, and a different validation can lead to.

Read throughput is probably the most important performance characteristic for single-user storage applications, where no or few concurrent requests happen. This is the case with external eSATA or USB 3.0 devices used for backup, archiving, and high capacity storage. NAS devices also belong to this category, but these are usually bottlenecked by the gigabit network interface at just over 100 MB/s.

Samsung’s F3EG reaches 115 MB/s in our read throughput test, which is an average result today. The Seagate Constellation ES delivers almost 140 MB/s and, more importantly, a much better average result. Spindle speed wins.

Access time is less relevant, unless you need to use the drive to host your operating system, swap file, and applications. In this case, Samsung’s drive shows undesirably long access times. Seagate’s Constellation ES wins again thanks to the decreased rotational latency, which is an effect of the faster 7,200 RPM spindle speed again.

I/O Performance

It almost seems as if both drives weren’t designed for I/O-intensive activity. Fast 3.5” hard drives deliver between 120 and 180 I/O operations per second, depending on the chosen benchmark pattern. However, both drives (even the Constellation ES) underperform on this test.

This most likely results from a consequent market categorization: 3.5” high-capacity hard drives aren’t meant and aren’t ideal for delivering high I/O numbers. Faster 15,000 RPM enterprise hard drives and enterprise flash SSDs in particular are the premier choice for such applications.

Idle power is probably the key characteristic for low-power drives like Samsung’s Spinpoint F3EG, but you have to take form factor, spindle speed, and the platter count into consideration at all times. WD’s 1TB Caviar Green does particularly well because it spins at a low 5,400 RPM and it only comes with two or three platters. In this context, Samsung’s 2TB EcoGreen shows excellent idle power consumption, requiring only 4.1W in active idle. WD’s 2TB Caviar Green is at 5.2W, and the Seagate Barracuda LP requires 4.2W. Clearly, Samsung did a great job.

Meanwhile, the Constellation ES is right where we would expect, given its higher spindle speed.

At maximum read throughput, the Samsung drive still shows excellent power consumption results on par with similar drives, and is beaten by drives that use fewer moving parts. Seagate’s Constellation ES power consumption readings are equally impressive given that it is in a different segment. Other performance drives from Hitachi or WD require more power at peak throughput.

Power consumption at a defined and limited data stream (in this case, 1080p video playback) is another important test that helps to find out which drive is lowest on power in a variety of application scenarios.

Samsung doesn’t deliver impressive I/O performance with its Spinpoint F3EG, but the power consumption stays low. The Seagate Constellation ES doesn’t seem very efficient at workstation I/O, as the power consumption is rather high at 8.7W. However, some 2TB high-performance competitors are worse.

Efficiency

These are the performance per watt readings for streaming reads at peak throughput. The Seagate Constellation ES requires more power at maximum speed, but it also delivers much better performance. Therefore it's superior on throughput power efficiency.

When it comes to I/O efficiency, Samsung takes the lead over Seagate. Samsung is so much lower on power that the significantly lower I/O performance doesn’t matter much in the end. Still, there are better solutions for I/O-intensive workloads than these two hard drives, so please consider these results mainly for the sake of completeness, rather than as a deciding factor.

Our desktop performance index provides a useful summary and overview on the performance characteristics of both hard drives reviewed here. Seagate’s Constellation ES is much faster than the Samsung Spinpoint F3EG. The Constellation ES slightly outperforms the Barracuda XT, but the two are comparable overall. The Spinpoint F3EG is Samsung’s first 2TB hard drive, but it still underperforms the Spinpoint F3 (without the EG suffix). Instead, the drive seems better suited to low power consumption.

Samsung vs. Seagate

If you're mainly looking for a reliable archiving and high capacity storage drive without specific performance targets in mind, then you’ve found an excellent option. Samsung's drive is huge, cool, quiet, and low on power.

In turn, Seagate’s Constellation ES is the much faster drive that may be able to meet performance demands unreachable by Samsung’s 2TB drive. Keep an eye on the WD Caviar Black or RE4 drives, as well, as these are occasionally faster than the Constellation ES.

Be Aware of Sharp Segmentation

Also note that neither drive does particularly well at delivering an impressive amount of I/O operations per second. We can’t help but assume that Samsung and Seagate stopped optimizing their 3.5” high-capacity drives for applications and I/O-intensive workloads. This makes sense, since faster 2.5” drives and SSDs in particular are significantly faster at random operations. But it's very important to be fully aware of this situation. As a consequence, it will be even more important to look at performance numbers before purchasing hard drives. I’d like to be sure that my new drives are a good match for the intended purpose.

Cost? Now We’re Talking

Last but not least, there's cost to consider. The Constellation ES 2TB SATA is available at $300 and up, which equals $0.15 per gigabyte. Frankly, this is a lot of money, even for a business-class drive with a five-year warranty. If you were to purchase four drives for a storage solution, you’d hit $1,200. Knowing that Samsung’s Spinpoint F3EG is only $150 (albeit with a three-year warranty with much lower MTBF), you would spend $600.

Personally, I'd probably purchase the Samsung drives for half of Seagate's price and get myself one or two spare drives as replacements in a RAID 5 or 6 array. The cheaper option is acceptable because I'm a consumer and I can live with downtime. In the business segment, though, I wouldn't take the risk, and would go with the Constellations.