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The other day we took a look at Western Digital's 2TB offering, it's only fair that we see what Seagate has to offer as well. Seagate offers both the Barracuda XT and Constellation drives in 2TB capacities. Today we will  be taking a look at the Constellation. In the past we have reviewed a 2 1/2 inch Constellation drive, I'm curious what four times the capacity and a larger form factor has done to its performance.

Product Name: Seagate Constellation 2TB Hard Drive

Review Sample Provided by: Seagate

Review by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

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Specifications

Capacities

2TB, 1TB, 500GB

Interface(s)

6Gb/s SAS, SATA 3Gb/s

Spindle Speed

7200 RPM

Power (SAS)

8.0W typical idle, 12.2W operating, as low

as 5.4W with PowerChoice™ option

Power (SATA)

7.0W typical idle, 11.2W operating, as low

as 4.4W with PowerChoice option

Mean Time Between Failures

1.2 million hours at 24×7

Max. Sustained Transfer

Rate150MB/s (SAS), 140MB/s (SATA)

Cache

Up to 64MB (2TB)

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Our Test Rig

Intel i7 920

Gigabyte GA-EXS8-UD4P Motherboard

Corsair 620 Power supply

1gb x 3 Triple channel A-Data Ram

Western Digital Velociraptor

Sparkle X265 Video Card

Cooler Master Storm Sniper Case

Windows 7

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Performance

Just like the 2TB Caviar Black that we tested yesterday, I put the Constellation 2TB against some of the fastest drives on the market including the Caviar Black and a Crucial SSD. Using our i7 test rig I ran each hard drive test using HD Tach Pro, here are the results.

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Surprisingly the Constellation outperformed even the Caviar Black 2TB in Maximum and Average performance. Of course the Constellation didn't perform very well in the Access Time test with only  a score of 10.4 compared to the Caviar Black's 9.7. However the Constellation didn't outperform its 15K RPM brethren or the Crucial SSD, but the extra capacity makes up for it.

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Overall

What if I told you that you could have Velociraptor level performance (and more) with almost seven times the capacity? Seagate's Constellation  Hard Drive fits that bill to a T. It Outperforms the Velociraptor by almost 20mb/s on maximum read performance, and with 2TB of space it puts the 300GB  capacity of the Velociraptor to shame. So, for once you can have your cake and eat it too. Of course the Enterprise class drives demand a premium  price and this is no exception. With a price higher that the Caviar Black it's hard to call Seagate's Constellation drive a value. But what you do get is Enterprise quality, huge capacity, and good performance in a  hard drive that would be perfect for your gaming rig or an Enterprise server.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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