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With SSDs taking center stage, it’s been a while since we looked at traditional moving-parts hard drives. However, with 3.5in drives delivering capacities at least 20 times greater than comparably priced solid state competitors, they are far from extinct.

Given that the greatest SSD capacity that is even reasonably feasible is 256GB, customers with a huge amount of data will still choose a magnetic hard drive, which now offers up to 2TB. (2,000GB). Western Digital’s Caviar Green 2TB, which got our Recommended Award, was the first to hit the market.

Over a year later, we’re looking at Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD, the first drive to claim SATA 6Gb/s compatibility and dubbed “the world’s fastest desktop hard drive” by the firm. Can it possible live up to its billing?

Seagate released an upgrade to their eco-friendly hard disk series just before the end of the year. Seagate has altered its branding from Barracuda LP (Low Power) to the more common Barracuda Green.

The Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD is more than just a marketing ploy; the 3.5′′ hard drives have capacities of up to 2TB, a SATA 6Gb/s interface, 64MB cache, and a spin speed of 5,900 RPM. Because of this combination of specifications, Seagate claims that the Barracuda Green is the best performing green drive on the market.

Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD Specifications & Overall Information

The Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD resembles the Seagate LP before it and has the same name on the tag. In some aspects, I believe Seagate desired a new marketing brand, but the product team refused to abandon the previous “LP” moniker. If you look attentively, you can see Barracuda LP printed at the top and Barracuda Green printed lower on the drive, around halfway down.

The bottom of the case appears to have gone on a diet, shedding some of the bulk of the previous drive and utilizing a thinner circuit board. To compensate for the lost material, the construction surrounding the motor has been strengthened. Seagate appears to have entirely redesigned the 2TB Barracuda Green rather than simply slapping a label with a new name on an old disk.

The board design of the Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD brings all of the components in direct contact with the drive body. The board is fastened in place by six Torx screws and may be readily removed. With the PCB removed, we can observe that Seagate does not employ the previous LP’s thermal or vibration mitigation pad between the body and the circuit board on the new Green variant.

The Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD has been updated with a new controller, additional cache, and a quicker interface. The transition to SATA 6.0Gbps is becoming increasingly common, even though most SSDs do not truly saturate the previous interface.

The expanded cache was a welcome sight, as it’s difficult to go overboard in that region. A 512Mb (64MB) DDR400 Samsung K4H511638G-LCCC chip, an LSI B6650B controller (also present on the new 750GB Momentus), and a Texas Instruments SH6968B motor driver are included on the board.

The LP and Green 2TB variants differ greatly inside. The old version 2TB LP had four 500GB platters, however the current Green 2TB has just three. We suspected this based on the thinner hard drive body and were subsequently verified by Seagate. While it’s tempting to dismiss the new Barracuda Green as only a branding, interface, and cache refresh, there are several important improvements beneath the hood that boost our hopes and expectations for its performance.

Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD General Information

Standard Model Numbers	ST2000DM008
Bytes per Sector	4096
Heads/Disks	2/1
Interface	SATA 6Gb/s
SATA Transfer Rates Supported (Gb/s)	6.0/3.0/1.5
Cache, Multisegmented (MB)	256
Load/Unload Cycles	300,000
Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max	1 per 10E14
Power-On Hours per Year (24×7)	2400
Workload Rate Limit (TB/Year)	55
Limited Warranty (years)	2
Startup Power (A)	2.0
Operating Mode, Typical (W)	4.3
Idle Average (W)	3.0W
Standby Mode/Sleep Mode, Typical (W)	0.3/0.3
Voltage Tolerance, Inc. Noise (5V)	±5%
Voltage Tolerance, Inc. Noise (12V)	±10%

Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD Performance

Is the Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD really the “world’s fastest desktop hard drive”? Not by any means. After all, there are plenty of SSDs that will outperform Seagate’s beast. However, it comes close to being the quickest we’ve tried. We say ‘close’ because Western Digital’s VelociRaptor still wins in the majority of instances, but considering the capacity differential, that’s hardly a knock. Despite hardly benefiting from SATA 6Gb/s’ increased bandwidth, the Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD works well in terms of speed, has a faint hum when in operation, and never becomes hot to the touch.

Price is where the Barracuda falls badly short. Sure, we’re used to paying a premium for new technology, but at about £246 compared to £115 for a 2TB Hitachi Deskstar or £130 for the cool and quiet 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green, it’s scarcely good value. In reality, for the same money, you could acquire a compact SSD – like the Kingston SSDNow! V-series 40GB – for your primary system install and most frequently used programs, plus a quality 2TB drive for all your huge data and be just fine.

Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD Conclusion

The Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD hard drive is a worthy successor to the previous 2TB LP. They took advantage of the enhanced performance that comes with more density by switching to a three platter configuration instead of four 500GB platters on the previous generation. This enhanced inner-platter speeds, which are slower as ring size decreases. The new Green topped the speed charts, providing a significant increase in sequential file transfers over the other low-power 2TB drives we tested.

Overall, we were extremely happy with the Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive ST2000DM006 HDD and expect it to become a popular drive in the NAS space as price wars rage in the ever-expanding low-power 2TB market. If Seagate provides a mechanism to enable a low-startup power level, as other manufacturers do, this might be one of the prettiest ‘Green’ drives available today.