Seagate BarraCuda, 8TB, Internal Hard Drive, 3.5 Inch, SATA, 6GB/s,, 5,400 RPM, 256MB Cache, for Computer Desktop PC, FFP (ST8000DMZ04)

Product Information

Mainstream hard drives of 8TB capacity generally can’t fit into a portable size, but the WD My Book is still a reasonably compact unit that houses a 3.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD). It stands upright and measures 6.7 inches tall, 1.9 inches wide, and 5.5 inches deep. You must plug it into the wall with a power adapter, so it’s not easy to tote around different places.

When Western Digital stopped trying to make the My Book series look like actual books, it heralded a vast improvement in aesthetics. And, the two-tone wavy/flat styling still looks good on this latest version. In considering the non-enterprise drives, we note that the 'Unrecoverable Read Errors' metric is 10x worse for the WD and Toshiba drives compared to the Seagate ones. The MTTF metric for the IronWolf Pro is slightly better than the other drives (at 1.2M vs. 1M hours).What’s great about the My Book is that it is remarkably easy to configure and use, being the definition of a plug-in-and-go scenario. One of the easiest ways to narrow down the search for a suitable hard drive is to look at the target market of each family. The table below lists the suggested target market for each hard drive family we are considering today. Hard Drive Families - Target Markets The price differential is so small that the Elements drive might only be for those who might be buying in bulk, but there are cheaper options available elsewhere. After filtering out models that don't apply to your use-case (as an example, for usage in a 4-bay NAS enclosure, one could rule out the Toshiba X300 straight away), we can then take a look at how the specifications of various drive families compare. Hard Drive Families - Metrics of Interest The WD My Book strikes an amazing balance of storage and price, offering enough room for massive game libraries. Running on USB 3.0, it may not be quite as fast as an internal drive upgrade, but it will run games and offer more storage at a cheaper rate.

The primary opposition to the My Book is the Seagate Desktop 8 TB External Hard Drive (STGY8000400), a practically identical concept from another seasoned hard drive maker. For performance, HDDs are also often gauged by rotations per minute (RPM), which is usually a direct indicator of performance. The RPM value impacts sequential transfers as well as random access latency. Lower RPM drives tend to be quieter and more efficient, while higher RPM drives have better performance. There are also variable RPM drives that try to achieve the best of both worlds. Power draw, heat, and noise are factors related to performance. Based on these metrics, it is clear that the enterprise drives (Seagate Exos Enterprise and WD Gold) are rated to be more reliable in the long run over a big sample set. However, most consumer use-cases do not need a 550 TB/yr workload rating. 180 - 300 TB/yr workload rating is plenty reasonable for most users when the drives are going to be used as part of RAID arrays. The Seagate ST8000DM008 BarraCuda 8TB is a standard 3.5-inch internal hard drive designed for mass storage needs in desktop computers. In this unbiased review, we will assess its various aspects to provide a comprehensive overview.

It might not be anything groundbreaking, but if you need to dump 8TB, or more, of data from your computer and have it still accessible, the Western Digital My Book does this job admirably. It must also be kept in mind that the Segate Exos Enterprise and WD Gold are enterprise drives meant to be used in server rooms where noise and power consumption (to a large extent) are not as important as performance. As per the Exos 16TB and 18TB Exos Enterprise product manuals, the acoustics specifications are around 28-30 dB at idle, and 32-34 dB for performance seeks. Power consumption ranges from 1.31W at standby to 9.45W for high queue-depth random writes, with idling average being around 5.26W. The numbers for WD Gold are very similar. On the other hand, a drive like WD Red Pro has idle acoustics around 20 dB for the high-capacity models, though performance seeks are around 36 dB. Unless one is buying for a datacenter storage array, it is fair to expect that the drives are going to be idle for more time than doing performance seeks in SMB or SOHO NAS units. While WD doesn't break down power consumption by access trace type, the specifications indicate power numbers between 0.6W and 6.2W - considerably lower than the Exos / Gold. Price can be a key factor (which is the reason for shifting a number of our recommendations to the Exos series), but data hoarders with multi-bay NAS units or those in a SOHO setting may prefer thte NAS to be not as noisy or consume more power than needed. Traditional hard drives have a circular disk (platter) that stores your data - as the disk spins, the read-write arm reads data on the disc or writes data to it as it spins. Solid state drives (SSDs) have no moving parts, instead using NAND (Negative-AND) flash memory - the more memory chips an SSD has, the more storage capacity. The Seagate Skyhawk AI HDD is designed with “AI'' firmware to improve the drive’s ability to handle recording, video analysis, and GPU analytics workloads. This includes up to 64 HD video streams and 32 AI streams with zero dropped frames. This is combined with a robust warranty, including a high workload rate and Seagate’s three-year data recovery service.

The 3.5-inch form factor makes it compatible with most desktop computer configurations, ensuring easy installation and integration into my existing system.Generally, you're going to get the best performance out of an M.2 NVMe SSD, followed by a SATA SSD, and then a 7,200 RPM HDD, with a 5,400 RPM HDD coming in last. That said, an HDD can offer much higher capacities, making them great for longer term storage of files you don't need to access regularly. How we tested the hard drives

Testing hard drives isn't that much different than testing an SSD. Typically, this involves running file copy tests to measure the transfer times of very large files and folders, but it also includes testing the hard drives with benchmarking tools like CrystalDiskMark. So how do you know which hard drive is best for you? There are a lot of things to consider, so it's not as simple as just buying the "best" hard drive. Which hard drive is best? The BarraCuda Pro strikes a nice balance across many metrics, but it is rated only for 300K load / unload cycles. It also doesn't have the RV sensors present in the rest of the drives (other than the Toshiba X300 / X300 Pro). In our series of Hard Disk Drive guides, here’s the latest update to our list of recommended HDDs. All numbers in the text are updated to reflect pricing at the time of writing. Best Consumer Hard Drives: November 2022 There are two important issues here that need to be confronted, in our opinion, those of redundancy and securing live data.

Game consoles hard drives fill up fast with massive libraries. And, like laptops, the upgrade path for 2.5-inch hard drives isn’t all that great, but that’s where an external drive comes in. And, in the UK the best value per TB is the 6TB and 14TB models, where stateside the 8TB and 14TB hold those honours. The Seagate BarraCuda ST8000DM008 is an exceptional 8TB internal hard drive that combines massive storage capacity with reliable performance, making it an ideal solution for all my data storage needs. With its 3.5-inch form factor, SATA 6Gb/s interface, and impressive RPM and cache size, this hard drive has far exceeded my expectations, providing ample space for my files and ensuring fast and consistent data access.