Usually we use three programs to evaluate hard disk drive performance, DiskSpeed32, HD Tach and HD Tune. DiskSpeed32, however, would freeze exactly in the middle of the data gathering process and our best guess is that this program isn’t compatible with 2 TB drives. Thus unfortunately we had to keep it out of our benchmarking process.

We tested Barracuda XT 2 TB under four different scenarios. First we plugged it on the same computer we used to test all other hard disk drives, i.e., connected to a SATA-300 port. This is the result marked as “SATA-300.” Here we wanted to know what performance to expect when connecting this drive on a PC without a SATA-600 port. Then we installed it on a SATA-600 port and measured its performance. The hard drive came with firmware version CC11 and Seagate sent us the latest firmware available, CC12. So we repeated these two tests with the newest firmware to see if it would increase performance. It is important to note that we also tested the Barracuda XT drive installed on a SATA-300 port from our new system, however the results were absolutely the same, meaning that other components (CPU, motherboard, etc) don’t make any difference on hard disk drive performance.

HD Tach provides only two results, the burst transfer rate and the average transfer rate. We ran the “long bench” test from this program.

On the burst transfer rate measured by HD Tach Western Digital RE4, Caviar Black and Caviar Green achieved the same performance level, being, on average, 10% faster than Seagate Barracuda XT when this drive was connected to a SATA-300 port. Upgrading the firmware made no difference here, but when connected on a SATA-600 port the burst rate increased 27%, making it to be around 16% faster than the other drives.

Average transfer is certainly the most important parameter for the regular PC user. According to HDTach there is no difference in using a SATA-300 or a SATA-600 port with Barracuda XT, and it achieved the same performance level of its main competitor, Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB. Its performance was also similar to Western Digital RE4 2 TB. Also upgrading the firmware made no impact in performance here. Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB was 20% faster than Seagate Barracuda LP 2 TB and 45% faster than Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB.