Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB HDD Review – Large Capacity At A Low Price!

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as Xbox
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

PCMARK VANTAGE RESULTS

Of the eight testing scenarios, the ST3000DM001 achieved its fastest transfer speeds for the Windows Media Center suite at 99.28MB/s, and was slowest in loading applications at 5.76MB/s. The total score of 5212 is about typical for a large capacity HDD.

PCMARK 8 EXTENDED STORAGE

PCMark 8 allows us to do some extended storage testing with this drive. There are a total of ten testing scenarios that involve gaming applications, Adobe software including Photoshop and Illustrator, and Microsoft Office functions. The total test run takes over three hours to complete.

In our PCMark 8 extended storage testing, the ST3000DM001 was fastest in the Microsoft PowerPoint section, with an elapsed time of 20.9 seconds, and was slowest in the Adobe Photoshop (heavy) at 438.8 seconds. Once again, the total score of 2640, and storage bandwidth of 11.25MB/s are about typical for this type of drive.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

Seagate’s ST3000DM001 3TB HDD is a solid-performing large-capacity storage product. It has not been long ago at all that 7200rpm HDDs could barely attain 100MB/s sequential reads/writes. Today we are seeing nearly double that, as the ST3000DM001 has demonstrated for this report. We saw sustained sequential reads and writes of up to 196-197MB/s. We saw random read/write speeds of up to 191-196MB/s. This is remarkably consistent performance for a large-capacity storage drive. It took our very last testing with HD Tune to bump up against 210MB/s, which was what Seagate was claiming as this drive’s maximum sustained read/write speeds in the specifications section of the ST3000DM001’s product page. Our testing shows that Seagate’s published performance specifications for the ST3000DM001 are credible.

If you are looking for a large-capacity HDD, the Seagate ST3000DM001 is an excellent choice. At a price of $89.30 (at time of publication), or $0.0297/GB, this drive represents a good value for a premium large-capacity storage device. Seagate’s ST3000DM001 has earned our Silver Award.

 Check Out Seagate ST3000DM001 HDD Pricing On Amazon!