Seagate 6TB Enterprise NAS HDD Review

Introduction When Thecus sent me the amazing N7770-10G NAS a little while ago, they also sent along five of Seagate's Enterprise NAS 6TB hard disk drives. While they are intended for NAS usage as the drive name already suggests, they still deserve a review on their own. Seagate's Enterprise NAS drives come in capacities ranging from 1TB and all the way up to 8TB, but I only got the 6TB models in today. The Enterprise NAS series is designed for cloud-based systems and NAS application and support the use in systems with up to 16 drive bays, double that of the consumer NAS drives. It is very important to use a drive suited for your area of operation and not just pick any random cheap drive from the shelve. A farmer wouldn't use an SUV to plow his fields either, it's just not built for the task. So forget all about misleading Backblaze reports, the figures, features, and warranties speak for themselves here. The 6TB Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD comes with 128MB cache and a spindle speed of 7200RPM. This is also quite a bit more than the variable speeded drives that have a maximum speed of 5400RPM. This makes the drives a little louder, but the Enterprise NAS HDD is surprisingly silent compared to other 7200RPM drives and only generates 2.5 bels during idle and 2.7 bels maximum during seek operations. The average seek times are set to 8.5ms reading and 9.5ms writing. The performance is rated with up to 216MB/s sustained data rate and an average read/write rate of 154MB/s. You can run the drive in harsher environments as the Enterprise NAS HDD will work from zero to 70 degrees and can withstand up to 70Gs shocks at 2ms read and 40Gs at 2ms write. This 6TB version is built with 12 heads total for the 6 1TB disks it houses. The Enterprise NAS drives have a long endurance and great workload ratings. The endurance is rated for 300TB a year and they have a 1.2 million hour mean time before failure rating. Seagate is also backing these drives with a 5-Year warranty and also offers optional 5-Year Rescue Data Recovery options. The available Rescue Data Recovery Service options can save the day when the worst case scenario happens. It is an extra feature that you might want to consider when dealing with your important data. Any company is more or less lost when they lose their digital data. Seagate Recovery Services (SRS) can save the day in the following situations: RAID controller failure, Lost RAID configuration, accidental reconfiguration, accidental re-initialization of the RAID array, power surges that cause multiple drive failures simultaneously, missing RAID partitions, reformatted RAID partitions, virus damage, natural disaster, human error and drive failures. Most data can be recovered in-lab with a nearly 90% success rate. The drives are built on customer proven technologies coupled with the newest density platters that allow for lower power consumptions, smaller overall footprint, and lower total cost of ownership over previous drive generations. The RV sensors provide strong reliable performance and the controller is flashed with NAS-optimized firmware for balanced reads and writes. The drives naturally support ATA8 streaming commands, NCQ, and are performance tuned for RAID applications. On-the-fly ECC algorithms make sure that the data arrives as it should and S.M.A.R.T. allows you to check on the drives status and health. The PCB of the Seagate Enterprise NAS 6TB HDDs is well protected and the HDD controller and motor controller both feature heat transfer pads to help them stay cool in hot environments. The 128MB cache on the HDD is provided by an SK Hynix chip. Features: Enterprise-class reliability and performance for cloud-based storage and NAS applications in 1- to 16-bay enclosures 1.2 million hours MTBF for enterprise-class reliability 300TB-per-year workload rating for mid-range NAS and cloud-based storage Backed by the Seagate 5-Year Limited Warranty 7200-RPM spindle speed performance Double the cache size, 256MB multisegmented on 8TB capacity, 128MB on the other sizes Dual-stage actuators to deliver precision seeks every time SATA 6Gb/s interface for easy integration into NAS and RAID rackmount systems RV sensor for sustained performance and reliability Optional 5-year Rescue Data Recovery Service plan protects against data loss in NAS and RAID environments. Specifications The specifications are taken directly from the manufacturers homepage at the time of the review and might as such be subject to possible future changes. Test Procedure & Specifications Testing a mechanical hard drive's performance is pretty straightforward and there isn't much to say tell in this section. I will be testing the drive that in this case is the Seagate Enterprise NAS 6TB drive in a wide a variety of applications to gather as many tests results as possible. In return, it will hopefully allow you to find just the right comparison so you are well equipped with knowledge when you decide what you next storage drive should be. Test system: Supermicro C7Z97-OCE Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3 Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Sapphire R7 240 2GB be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer Lian Li PC-T60 Software used: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Benchmark CrystalDiskMark HD Tach IOMeter PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark Each of the following pages will contain the benchmark screenshots as well as charts comparing the drive to similar drives previously tested. AIDA64 Engineer AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one we'll be using. Linear Performance The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives, as the name says, a linear view on the drives overall performance from start to end. Random Performance The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Drive Comparison Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a relative new benchmarking utility that has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. It is completely free as well, which is a nice thing As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests, it also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to give days, months and potentially even years of use in a shorter period of time to see how the drive handles in the long run. Compressible Data Incompressible Data Drive Comparison AS SSD The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests. Special the copy test is one that I think is relevant on the consumer level as it gives the user a view To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests, also the copy test. While it isn't the most static test, I think it is a relevant test in the eyes of consumers, giving them a view into one of the operations they're going to be doing many times. Compression Drive Comparison ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark is a performance measurement tool is for Windows. It measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for both reads and writes. It has multiple options available to customize your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. ATTO can be used to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives so it is a popular tool everywhere. Drive Comparison CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Drive Comparison HD Tach HD Tach is a program that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive etc.). Drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, IEEE 1394, USB, SATA, and RAID are all supported. Version 3.0.4.0 is sadly the final version and the software has reached its end-of-life support. It's still a nifty benchmarking tool and it can't hurt to include it in our tests. Quick test Long test Drive Comparison PCMark 8 PCMark 8 Storage benchmark is used test the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games. You can test any recognized storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Yes, I know that the WD Purple isn't designed to be worked in a desktop environment where these apps and games are run, but I'll still include it for the sake of comparison. Drive Comparison IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behavior of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. IOMeter allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file. Sequential Performance Random Performance Final Thoughts Pricing At the time of writing, the Seagate Enterprise NAS 6TB HDD can be found at NewEgg for $304.99, at Overclockers UK for £179.99, or starting at €314.84 through Geizhals. Conclusion You should never compromise when you purchase storage, after all, this is where you keep all your precious files. This is a rule that is more important for NAS usage than anything else as this is where you not only store your precious files, but also backups and possible even run your entire company from. The Seagate Enterprise NAS 6TB HDDs are a great choice as the come with a high endurance rating and a 5-year warranty. The Enterprise NAS series is built for usage in systems with up to 16 bays thanks to the intelligent sensors and motors that keep everything balanced despite vibrations. The 7200 RPM spindle speed provides that extra boost of performance that might be needed while the 128MB cache help to maintain a constant data flow. We saw a great performance and scaling in comparison with the earlier tested 5400 RPM drives, easily justifying the slightly higher power consumption. Surprisingly the Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD climbed to the top of the charts in the PCMark 8 test, one that isn't actual suite for a NAS drive. But it goes to show that it would be great as a storage drive in a local system too and the word Enterprise shouldn't scare you away from that. Pros 7200RPM spindle speed 5-year warranty Good performance Low total cost of ownership Up to 8TB capacity in 3.5-inch Supports up to 16 drive bays Silent for a 7200RPM drive Cons Mechanical drive: higher noise and power consumption than solid state "Seagate's Enterprise NAS 6TB hard drives offer great reliability at a low TCO. A cheap and silent 7200RPM drive that performs as well as it should." Thank You Thecus for providing us with this sample