Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB vs. Western Digital WD Black 4 TB Hard Drive Review

Introduction

While SSDs are the best choice in roles that need high speed (mostly boot drives for the home user), many people need large amounts of storage space, and traditional hard drives still give the best value per gigabyte. Four-terabyte drives are the biggest drives available today, and today we will test two of them: the Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB and the Western Digital WD Black 4 TB.

Both tested drives have an actual capacity of 3,726 GB (read our “Hard Disk Drive Capacity Limits” tutorial to understand why), which should provide more than enough space even for high-demanding applications.

The Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB (ST4000DM000) spins at 5,900 rpm, has 64 MiB of cache and uses a SATA-600 interface.

Figure 1: Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB (top)

Figure 2: Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB (bottom)

The Western Digital WD Black 4 TB (WD4003FZEX) also has 64 MiB of cache and uses a SATA-600 interface, but spins at 7,200 rpm.

Figure 3: Western Digital WD Black 4 TB (top)

Figure 4: Western Digital WD Black 4 TB (bottom)

Despite the high capacity, the drives look aesthetically identical to any other hard drive occupying a 3.5” form factor.

In our tests, we will be comparing the performance of the drives, in order to see which one is the fastest.

In the table below, we will compare the basic specifications of these products.

Manufacturer	Model	Model #	Rotational Speed	Interface	Buffer	Capacity	Price*
Seagate	Desktop HDD	ST4000DM000	5,900 rpm	SATA-600	64 MiB	4 TB	USD 165
Wester Digital	WD Black	WD4003FZEX	7,200 rpm	SATA-600	64 MiB	4 TB	USD 260

* All prices were researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.