Going Green in Heart and Mind: Seagate Barracuda 2TB

ATTO


With ATTO Disk Benchmark, this drive did perform quite well, but since the data is already in bar graphs there really isn’t much to analyze beyond the easily visible data. The data at hand shows that the Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB handily wipes the floor with the Western Digital 3TB green drive. This is illustrated by the read write tests which show the Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB drive mostly performing over 140MB/s on both reads and writes while the Western Digital 3TB green drive primarily stays below 120MB/s on writes and barely touches 120MB/s on reads. This shows a fairly large performance difference between the two and was a little unexpected considering the mixed data from the previous tests. In terms of putting notebook and desktop hard drives in the same category, you can easily see for yourself that 5900rpm green drive beats the 7200rpm notebook drive.


Temperature and Noise
When it comes to the noise level or sound output of a hard drive we feel it is important to remain practical. Granted we could use a dB meter and a quiet room to measure the exact noise level of the hard drive in question but that setting would be atypical of the average usage scenario for a desktop computer. Secondly the dB scale is not an easy indicator to relate to as each increase is in order of magnitude and not easily comparable. How much more annoying is sound level of 82dB versus one with 80dB? It's hard to tell. Therefore we feel it makes more sense to break down the sounds levels into four categories akin to real world experience, and these "measurements" are taken in a standard office/room environment with standard ambient noises
such as HVAC present:

Unnoticeable: At this level the sound of the product is not perceptible. Either completely silent or only perceptible when your ear is place directly next to the hard drive itself

Noticeable: At this level the sound of the drive is perceptible, generally as a low hum of the motor. The noise at this level is unobtrusive and generally blends in with other ambient noises, such as case fans, power supply exhaust fans etc. The noise from the drive can be heard but you have to listen for it to really hear it.

Clearly Noticeable:At this level the noise output from the card is clearly evident. When performing Search function, the hard drive is discernable as the source of the noise and tends to be of higher magnitude than the ambient noise around it.

Annoying:This moniker pretty much describes itself. Usually reserved for drives spinning at 10,000 rpm or more, or hard drives with loud actuators, the sound of the hard drive is distracting. The disc drive is clearly discernable as the source of noise and during gameplay/media enjoyment speaker and/or headphone volume must
be increased to overcome the noise by the drive.



When it came to temperature and noise, the Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB performed fantastically and clearly belongs to the Unnoticeable category. When compared to other 3.5" drives, the Barracuda Green 2TB performed the best of all drives and when adding the 750GB laptop drives, it then came in 3rd. Nevertheless, we aren’t really comparing the 2.5" 750GB drives as they will almost always run cooler than 3.5" drives. They are simply there for reference. If anything we’d consider the Barracuda 2TB Green to be the #1 3.5" drive when it comes to being cool and quiet.