Seagate cuts itself a slice of NAS media sales pie
Normally when I review hard drives, the critical part of the exercise is a speed test. However, I haven't done one for the Seagate NAS HDD, because precisely how quick it operates isn't that relevant.
That's because once you've put a NAS box and a Ethernet network between the drive and your PC, even the slowest drive would deliver around the same performance, because it's not the limiting factor.
Seagate rated the NAS HDD 4TB at up to 140MB/S - about 10MB/S less than the WD Red equivalent. That still faster than I've ever managed to get a NAS file transfer over gigabit Ethernet, and often they'd be used in a RAID configuration for even greater speed. For those who really see this as an issue, Seagate does make the even quicker Constellation CS HDD and ES.3 drives, though frankly they're all just messing around compared with even the slowest SSD drives.
Deeper analysis reveals that while single file throughput is slightly down, under a multithreaded (and multi-user) workload it performs rather well against its competitors.
But unless you're specifically told this by benchmarks, most users wouldn't be able to differentiate between this and an alternative in everyday use.
Where this drive is good, undoubtedly, is that it uses very little power, as low as 4.8 watts - a tiny bit more than the WD Reds. That's ideal for a home NAS scenario, where the machine is left on indefinitely. The small difference in power usage between this and the WD Red is probably down to this being a 5900rpm drive, and the Reds are a variable spin speed that may allow for greater power efficiency.
I could read this another way and say that Seagate's design is simpler, and therefore potentially more reliable, yet gets the job done.
Warranty is the same three years that Western Digital is offering on its WD Red series. If you're sensing that the Seagate NAS HDD was designed and built specifically to match off against a competitor product, that doesn't seem a wild assertion.
Normally this would come down to pricing, but compared with the WD Red 4TB, there isn't much difference at all, with these being just a few pounds cheaper. They're much less than HGST's 7200rpm drives, but as I've explained earlier, in most situations drive speed isn't the limiting factor.
What Seagate lacks with this product range is the larger sizes above 4TB (5TB and 6TB) that Western Digital is offering, but at, 4TB they're very closely matched.
In the end the Seagate NAS HDD is so difficult to separate from its major competitor that it may well become a brand loyalty point. Depending on what historical experience you've had with Seagate would probably influence your buying decision and vice versa.
There isn't anything in this design that makes it an obvious winner, but equally little that would exclude it from being a logical choice. Mark Pickavance
An solid alternative to using WD Reds in your NAS box.
Features:
• SATA-3 5900RPM 64MB Cache.
• Only 4TB drive optimised for NAS use.
• Quiet drive operation.
• Built-in vibration resistance.
• Built and tested for 24x7 NAS applications.