Conclusion

First of all, we would like to note the excellent performance of the Western Digital RE3. Thanks to high recording density, fast mechanics and effective firmware algorithms, this HDD delivered the highest performance in most of our tests. This product is a good development of Western Digital’s server product series but its predecessor Western Digital RE2 is quite good, too. The RE2 was the best among the three-platter models in our server tests and occasionally challenged its two-platter opponents with larger cache.

Seagate’s products leave an ambiguous impression. On one hand, the new generation is more effective than the older one and this can hardly be explained by the increased recording density alone. On the other hand, it is unclear why the enterprise model is slower than its desktop counterpart in RAID arrays and why it has firmware flaws that showed up in IOMeter: Database. So, Seagate still has a lot of work to do yet.

Samsung and Hitachi have got some work to do on their firmware, too, if they care about this market sector because RAID arrays are not used only for processing small files. Their HDDs have strong points, but they are not so easy to see.

Generally speaking, it is good that hard disk drives develop in other ways than just towards higher recording density. The performance of the Western Digital products in this test session proves once again that good firmware contributes a lot to the resulting performance of an HDD.